Country exports murder-tainted illegal logging: Greenpeace

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November 21, 2017 7:56 PM

Endangered Amazon hardwood sold by a Brazilian exporter allegedly behind the massacre of nine farmers this year is being sold unimpeded around the world, Greenpeace said Tuesday.

The environmental pressure group said the purchase of murder-tainted products by importers from as far apart as Japan and the United States illustrates lack of control over a logging industry ravaging the world's greatest rainforest.

In its report, "Blood-Stained Timber -- Rural violence and the theft of Amazon timber," Greenpeace catalogued continued large-scale shipments from the Madeireira Cedroarana sawmill in the months following the April 19 massacre.

Police accuse the company's owner, Valdelir Joao de Souza, of sending a death squad dubbed "the hooded ones" to attack poor farmers in the way of logging expansion in a timber-rich area of Mato Grosso state.

Victims were tortured, then shot or hacked to death, at least one of them with his hands tied behind his back. De Souza has been charged but is currently evading arrest.

Despite the scandal, de Souza's "timber milling and export operations continue unimpeded, as witnessed by Greenpeace during a July 2017 field expedition," the report said.

Greenpeace said companies in the United States, Holland and France were the biggest importers of Cedroarana timber in the last year. Clients were also located in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Italy and Japan, the report said, citing trading data.

"On the day of the massacre, the company shipped loads of timber to the United States and Europe," Greenpeace said.

The massacre of the nine farmers in a remote area was especially bloody, but hardly shocking in a country with around 60,000 murders a year. Far-flung regions, where powerful ranchers and loggers are blamed by environmentalists for massive deforestation, are among the most dangerous.

"Such brutal violence is a feature of the everyday lives of rural communities in Brazil, especially in the Amazon, where violent conflicts over land are a frequent occurrence, driven both by illegal loggers and by land grabbers who clear the forest illegally to grow crops or pasture cattle," the Greenpeace report said.

The report said that the story of the Mato Grosso massacre and the apparent impunity so far for the alleged mastermind's company reflects much broader brutality and illegality in the Amazon timber industry.

"Many of the deaths and much of the violence that have occurred in recent decades could have been prevented if the problem of illegal logging had been taken seriously by successive Brazilian governments," Greenpeace said.

But foreign companies have an equal responsibility, the report said, stressing that seemingly strict US and EU legislation against illegal wood imports is not properly applied.

The report can be seen at:

https://www.greenpeace.org.br/hubfs/Greenpeace_BloodStainedTimber_2017.pdf

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