Altamira, Pará, Brazil – Yesterday, Brazilian Judge Felippe José Silva Ferreira dismissed a criminal lawsuit filed by Canadian mining company Belo Sun targeting 33 small farmers from the Ressaca agrarian reform settlement, two leaders of the Xingu Vivo movement, Amazon Watch’s former Brazil Director, and other individuals who supported or documented a resistance occupation that protested the company’s polemic, proposed gold mining mega-project in the Brazilian Amazon.
In his ruling, the judge closed the case due to procedural flaws and lack of legal basis, deeming the charges inadmissible.
The court’s decision reinforces longstanding denunciations of Belo Sun by Brazilian and international organizations, which have documented the company’s use of lawsuits and private armed security to intimidate and repress community members whose lands lie within the proposed Volta Grande do Xingu mining zone. This highly biodiverse and ecologically sensitive region, located in Pará state, is also the host of this year’s COP30 UN climate summit.
Ana Alfinito, Amazon Watch’s Brazil Legal Advisor, said:
“The criminalization of campesino families and civil society organizations is a strategy used by Belo Sun to silence those who denounce its operations in the Volta Grande do Xingu. This is not the first time the company has targeted land defenders in such a way. The court’s decision to reject the legal complaint represents a victory for forest protection movements, reining in a company that appears to believe it is above the law. Amazon Watch stands with the defenders of Volta Grande, monitoring Belo Sun’s actions and supporting the struggle of the families and communities who sustain life in the territory.”
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Belo Sun is the target of numerous legal challenges and complaints for human rights abuses, unlawful use of public lands, and failure to carry out free, prior and informed consultation with threatened Indigenous and traditional communities, in violation of International Labor Organization Convention 169.
The project’s environmental license has been suspended since 2017, and it faces growing opposition from social movements, researchers, local communities, and members of Brazil’s Congress, as well as international watchdogs alarmed by the mega-mine’s risk of triggering irreversible damage to the Amazonian region’s forests and waterways.
In 2022, Amazon Watch and the Association of Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples (APIB) published the report Complicity in Destruction IV, identifying the Belo Sun project as one of the most egregious examples of mining-linked rights violations in the Amazon. The report denounces the company’s opaque and repressive conduct, including the use of armed private security.
“Since April 2021, armed personnel hired by Belo Sun have been patrolling the villages of Ouro Verde, Ressaca, and the Galo mining area,” the report states. “Their presence on public lands, acting on behalf of the company, intimidates and threatens traditional communities.”
