Today I want to share with you the worrying news of a disappeared community leader of MAP, a landless farmer's organisation in Paraguay. He is suspected of being held by police.
According to information at my disposal, on June 25, 2007, Perfecto Irala, the community leader of the landless farmer/campesino organisation MAP (Movimiento Agrario y Popular) disappeared from the community of Pariri in Paraguay.
According to witnesses, Perfecto Irala was apprehended by a member of the National Police called Vázquez, from the commissariat of Santa Clara, in the district of Vaquería. Various people and representatives of the MAP have been trying to obtain information from the local commisariats, so far without any results.
They have denounced the disappearance of Perfecto Irala to the Human Rights Commission of the Paraguayan Congress.
Perfecto Irala lives together with his wife and two children on a 14-hectare plot of agricultural land located in Pariri. Community members in support of MAP began to occupy this land on February 26, 2007, to denounce the illegal transfers of public lands in their community to Brazilian producers of genetically manipulated soy. According to the Paraguayan Agrarian Statute, the state institution INDERT (responsible for land reform), Paraguayan families are entitled to these lands. Owing to corruption many of these lands have ended up in the hands of large-scale producers.
The MAP demands from the Paraguayan government the immediate release of Perfecto Irala and due punishment for those responsible for these acts, as well as the immediate legalisation of the landless campesinos of the MAP as owners of the occupied lands at Pariri.
Photo: Placido Perfecto Irala and one of his children (March 2007).
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