Altamira, Brazil – In October 2023, mining company Belo Sun Mineração Ltda. (Brazilian subsidiary of Canadian mining company Belo Sun Mining Corp.), which aims to carve Brazil’s largest open-pit gold mine a few kilometers from the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam, in the Volta Grande do Xingu region of Pará state in the Brazilian Amazon, filed a criminal lawsuit against more than 40 people, including community representatives, environmental defenders, researchers, and staff of national and international NGOs. The suit brings a baseless claim that these people illegally occupied land that Belo Sun claims to own (Brazilian law allows for private entities to bring criminal charges). Most of the defendants are small-scale farmers camped in part of the Ressaca Settlement Project (PA Ressaca), 21 plots of which were irregularly ceded to Belo Sun in 2021 by Brazil’s agrarian reform agency INCRA. Since then, the farmers have been claiming that this area serves its legally intended purpose, for agrarian reform and food production.
The irregular concession of public land to Belo Sun Mineração Ltda is the subject of a Public Civil Lawsuit, filed in 2022 by the Public Defenders Office of the Union (DPU) and of the State of Pará (DPE-PA), which demonstrates the illegality of Belo Sun’s land acquisition and calls for the annulment of this contract. Almost two years after it was filed, the lawsuit has still not been ruled upon.
In a clear effort to intimidate, Belo Sun’s criminal action, filed in October, targets these farmers in its complaint. It also includes representatives of Brazilian and international civil society organizations, as well as researchers who are working to defend the communities threatened by the mining project. Several of these defendants do not live in Brazil.
In its criminal suit, Belo Sun also makes a series of other requests that undermine the political and civil rights of activists, human rights defenders, and researchers, such as rescinding the bank secrecy of activists and organizations, blocking the accounts of NGOs and social movements and their representatives, mandating police intervention, and arresting farmers.
“Belo Sun is expelling us from our ancestral territory. It robs us of our souls by distancing us from our traditional practices and culture. And now it’s trying to criminalize us as invaders of our own land. We are daughters of this place. This land is our Mother,” said Ana Laide Barbosa, a social educator from the Movimento Xingu Vivo para Sempre.
To denounce Belo Sun’s legal harassment, those accused by the mining company called a press conference on November 15, 2023 in Altamira (PA). The press conference was attended by representatives of the Public Defender’s Office of the Union, representatives of the Pará State Bar Association (OAB-PA) Human Rights Commission, the Paraense Society for the Defense of Human Rights, as well as lawyers for criminalized rural workers and community leaders. During the event, a letter was published and signed by 26 regional social movements and organizations denouncing Belo Sun´s attempt to criminalize farmers, activists, and researchers.
The criminalization of human rights defenders on environmental issues and activists is a recurring pattern identified in at least 21% of the 37 Canadian projects present in nine Latin American countries. This modus operandi was denounced by an international coalition of more than 50 organizations from the Caribbean and Latin America during Canada’s Universal Periodic Review at the UN last year.
Volta Grande Project
Belo Sun intends to set up a mega gold mining project overlapping the PA Ressaca region, on the banks of the Xingu River, to operate the largest open-pit gold mine in Brazil. The so-called Volta Grande Project (PVG), if approved, would substantially and potentially irreversibly affect a territory already severely impacted by the Belo Monte hydroelectric mega-dam, as well as impact the lands and traditional ways of life of various Indigenous peoples, rural settlements, and riverine communities living in the Volta Grande do Xingu region.
Several lawsuits have been filed registering the irregularities committed by Belo Sun, including the lack of consultation and Free, Prior, and Informed Consent of the Indigenous and traditional communities affected; the illegal acquisition of land within the Ressaca PA; the violation of local communities’ the right to free movement and access to their territory; and the lack of jurisdiction of the State of Pará to issue the environmental license for the PVG. Its licensing has been suspended since 2017 by a decision of a Federal Regional Court and on September 11, 2023, the project’s environmental licensing was handed to federal authority of Brazil’s Institute of Environment and Natural Resources (IBAMA).
