In face of the forcible, arbitrary and illegal (given the inexistence of a judicial warrant) storming, by the police, of the headquarters of ENFF/Florestan Fernandes National School, in Guararema, São Paulo, on the morning of Friday 4 november, we express our public solidarity with the Landless Workers Movement (MST) and with the institution that ranks as one of its most symbolic and luminous achievements in the arduous struggle for social justice and fraternity. Established in 2005, the ENFF is a place devoted to encounters, training and exchanges that contribute significantly to the expansion and strengthening of the role of social movements, not just in Brazil but in all of Latin America and other continents. Throughout its existence the ENFF has been a reference point for the construction of autonomous and popular knowledge, networking with dozens of universities in numerous countries, including the University of Coimbra’s Centre for Social Studies (CES).

There were dozens of participants from more than 30 different countries in the school at around 9:30 in the morning, when it was brutally stormed by a police unit from the Armed Group for the Suppression of Theft of the Department of Investigation on Organised Crime (CLAW/DEIC). According to eyewitness accounts, no warrant was provided by the police, and even after being informed that the person they were looking for was not present, they stormed the premises jumping over one of the entrances, as shown by footage recorded by the security cameras. Shots were fired at the ground (with bullet fragments causing injuries in one of the people present) and there were two arrests for disorderly conduct. One of those arrested was Ronaldo Valença, a 64-year old voluntary teacher with ENFF who suffers from Parkinson's disease. During the police attack he was restrained, beaten and then taken to the local police station, along with an artist who had tried to protect him.

Such intimidation and criminalisation of one of the most important social movements not only in Brazil but in the entire continent is taking place in the wider context of a growing number of attacks on rights, driven by the recent parliamentary, legal and media coup that culminated in the illegitimate about-turn at the helm of the Federal Executive and in the adoption of a regressive, conservative agenda by the country’s much-contested current government. Lately Brazil has witnessed recurring reports of social movements and organisations being persecuted and criminalised, of artists, students and teachers having their freedom of speech and political expression curtailed, and of fundamental rights being disrespected, all clear signs of a situation we have been widely denouncing as “social fascism.”

Examples of this state of exception abound: see the arrest, in a square of the city of Santos (São Paulo), on 30 October, of an actor of the Troupe Olho da Rua theatre group, while staging a play that was critical of the Military Police – members of which proceeded to stop and handcuff him simply because they disagreed with the play’s artistic content; or consider the professor at the State University of Goiás (UFG) who was arrested and handcuffed on the occupied campus grounds on 2 November, when the university too was stormed by a police team lacking the necessary court order to end occupation by force; and the infamous decision by a judge of the Childhood and Youth Court for the Federal District and the Territories (TJDFT), also on 30 October, authorising the use of psychological torture techniques against high school students who were occupying schools, including the “continuous [use of] sound instruments directed at the site of occupation, in order to prevent sleep."

Meanwhile, more than a thousand schools are under occupation by high school students and more than 150 universities have taken the same path throughout the country, against the measures issued by President Michel Temer’s government not only in the area of education but also with regard to the whole set of social policies that will be reduced by PEC (Constitutional Amendment Proposal) 55. Formerly known as PEC 241, when under discussion in the Chamber of Deputies, PEC 55 – now about to be voted on in the Senate – proposes a 20-year budget freeze.

In light of these repeated attacks on the foundations of the democratic rule of law, we just cannot remain silent: in addition to repudiating the senseless, disproportionate violence perpetrated against the ENFF, against the victims of this devastating incident of police onslaught and against all that the school stands for, we reaffirm and support the rights of the MST and other social movements to express themselves and to organise in a free, democratic and autonomous manner, because it is our belief that “Fighting is not a crime.”

05 Nov 2016

- Boaventura de Sousa Santos, on behalf of the researchers of the ALICE Project

http://alice.ces.uc.pt/news/?p=5981