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UN special rapporteur supports Brazil's Landless Workers Movement
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-10-17 14:26
BRASILIA: UN special rapporteur on the right to food Olivier de Schutter expressed support on Friday for the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil.

"There's a strategy to make people not believe the movement," Schutter said in an interview with the official Agencia Brasil.

"It is important to understand that these people need support. Occupation is the last option they have. In Brazil, rural properties are very concentrated. People still starve because they cannot posses areas to produce", he said.

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While paying compliments to Brazilian government for its efforts in distributing land, Schutter said land property was more and more concentrated in Brazil because of, among other reasons, the sugarcane production to make ethanol.

During his five-day stay in Brazil, Schutter visited camp of the movement  where he talked to landless workers about their living conditions, their production and the aid they received from the government.

The Landless Workers Movement was under pressure due to the recent violent occupation of an orange plantation, as filmed by a local TV channel, and in the Chamber of Deputies, many conservative parties have called for an investigation into government subsidies to the movement.

The Landless Workers Movement is a social movement that has an estimated 1.5 million landless members, and its major objective is to carry out land reform in the country, where most of arable land is owned by a small percentage of the population.