Violence flared again in the Brazilian Amazon, as a fifth person in ten days was shot in an apparent clash over illicit logging in the Brazilian Amazon, officials said Friday.
Environmentalists pinned the death of Marcos Gomes da Silva on the ongoing struggle between farmers and illicit loggers in the Amazonian state of Para, although the local police chief in Maraba in the south of Para said the murder was not connected to the bloody land conflict.
The Pastoral Land Commission of the Catholic Church group criticized the police chief's comments as "overly hasty."
Silva, 33, was shot Wednesday by two hooded assailants in front of his wife.
His ear was sliced off after the murder so that the hit men could prove to their bosses that the job had been carried out, according to local farmers. On May 27, a community leader who had denounced illegal logging in Brazil's Amazon was shot dead by a motorist as he sold vegetables in the northwestern Amazon state of Rondonia.
And on May 24, a husband and wife team of environmentalists, Jose Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espirito Santo da Silva, were killed by gunmen in Para, one of the most restive regions in the country.
The latest assassination occurred near El Dorado dos Carajas, where in 1996 nineteen landless farmers were killed by the police.
Wednesday's killing prompted Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff to announce an emergency military operation dubbed "in defense of life" in the vast Para state region, where the large landowning powers behind the hitmen are rarely brought to justice.
The Pastoral Land Commission distributed a list of 125 environmentalists who have received death threats because of their fight against deforestation.
Amnesty International called Thursday on Brazilian authorities to put an end to the killings as well as "the impunity of the killers who encourage this violence."
