GENEVER LETTER IN SUPPORT OF THE QUILOMBOLA RIGTHS
The Quilombolas Communities from Brazil refer to the participants of this Review Conference of Durban, that is taking place from this April 20th through 24th, 2009, in Geneva, Switzerland, to reaffirm the international task within the Durban Plan of Action, as it was adopted in the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Correlated Intolerances, of 2001.
In this opportunity, we denounce to the international community the attacks that an important segment of the Brazilian society, the quilombola communities, have been inflicted permanently.
We are now about 5.000 quilombola communities in the territory of Brazil, descendents from Africans made slaves that were neglected from the democratization project of the country, and thus, organized themselves in autonomous societies, almost independent inside the New Republic.
Only 100 years after what was called the abolition of the black slavery in Brazil, the Quilombola Communities had their first juridical right recognized, in occasion of the new Federal Constitution that states, in his transitories dispositions, the 68 article, a constitutional rule that doesn’t need any other rule to be valid, with a view to the warrant of fundamental collective rights, as it says the Constitution itself. This rule states the following: “To the ‘remanescentes das comunidades dos quilombos’ that are occupying their lands is recognized the definitive property and the State must give them the respective titulations”.
After 20 years the new Federal Constitution has been in place, instead of forseeing a way to recuperate the time lost, what we see it is an unfortunate debate about irrelevant questions, representing obstacles to the regular procedures of the regularization process of quilombolas territories.
In the 2003, the President of Brazil, Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, in the use of his attributions and in consonance with the Durban Plan of Action, signed an infra-constitutional rule, the Decree 4.887/2003 establishing a National Policy to the Quilombolas Communities and regulamenting the administrative procedures to the regularization of the traditional lands of quilombolas.
Soon came the attacks, as we were seen in 2004, the now extinct Political Party (PFL - Partido da Frente Liberal), now ‘Democratas’, presented to the maximum juridical court in Brazil, ‘STF - Supremo Tribunal Federal’ an Action (‘ADI - Ação Direta de Inconstitucionalidade de no. 3239/04’) declaring the referred rule (Decree 4.887/2003) unconstitutional.
In 2007, a federal parliamentary called Valdir Colatto (PMDB/SC) presented a Project of a Parliamentary Decree (‘Projeto de Decreto Legislativo de no. 44/07’) in the Federal Parliament asking for the annulment of the Decree 4.887/2003. As if it wasn’t enough, exactly in the year of the revision of the Durban Plan of Action, the Senator Lúcio Alcântara presented in the Federal Senate a Project of a Constitutional Amendment (‘Projeto de Emenda Constitucional de no. 190’), this time not intervening in the Decree 4.887/2003, but in the own constitutional article that ensures the right (‘artigo 68 do ADCT - Ato das Disposições Constitucionais Transitórias, da Constituição Federal’).
All this actions occur simultaneously to a series of violent events, as the quilombolas communities live in times of fear, in front of frequent aggression cases, in their most various faces, and constant threats, actions accompanied by a strong media play, a real cold war, trying to conform the public opinion in the sense of putting the social movement of the quilombolas communities as a marginal group, that threats the social peace and the property right. The case has come to be theme of a soap opera in defense of the eucalypt monoculture to produce cellulose, one of the main cases of violation of human rights, evolving quilombolas communities in the north of the state of Espírito Santo, southeast region of Brazil.
It is worthy to remind that ethnic territories are collective properties, necessary to social, cultural economical, religious and environmental reproduction of the group, identified by the self definition criterion, as it says the Decree 4.887/03 and the Convention 169 of International Labor Organization. The process of regularization of those territories obeys the rules of inalienability, that is against the interests of groups connected to the agribusiness and other economic forces, especially of multinationals from the developed countries, that violently explore social groups and natural resources in Brazil, as well as in developing countries in general sense.
Today the Project of Parliamentary Decree (‘Projeto de Decreto Legislativo de no. 44/07’), as well as the Project of Constitutional Amendment (‘Projeto de Emenda Constitucional de no. 190’), are in the National Congress in analyses, while the Action declaring the Decree 4.887/2003 unconstitutional (‘ADI - Ação Direta de Inconstitucionalidade de no. 3239/04’) is in times of being judged in Supreme Federal Tribunal. We believe that a victory or a fail in Brazil can be a precedent for other similar cases of strengthen or weakening of the struggle of these people in all Latin America and in the world. As so, we ask the support of international community, sensible to the minority causes, in as politic intervention asking for as effective action of Brazilian State in all his instances of power, in defense of Quilombola People.
Finally, we ask the international community to echo the voice of the afro-Brazilian community:
 For the maintenance of the Decree 4.887/2003 and the immediate implementation of the Article 68 from Federal Constitution;
 For the enforcement of Convention 169 of ILO and the International Treaties in defense of Human Rights;
 For the approval of the Racial Equality Estatue in absolute consonance with the interests of Quilombola People;
 And for the solidarity to the religious groups perceived in the whole world, especially the Africans religions.
In this opportunity, we repudiate those who use the arena of the Durban Review Conference, so important in the solution of historical controversies amid minorities, to make it their disputing pulpits, taking the focus of the debate away. We also repudiate those who use futile arguments intended not to participate of the debate, showing total indisposition in the search for solutions to racial, social, ethnical, religious and migration problems, increased by the fact that a relevant part of this population is composed by young and women, submitted to all sorts of similar intolerance that historically afflict the smaller disfavored groups all over the world.

Geneva, 22 de abril de 2.009.
CONAQ - Coordenação Nacional de Articulação das Comunidades Quilombolas







Signing the manifest for quilombola rights, in the link: www.PetitionOnline.com/conaq123/petition.html
www.conaq.org.br