Dorothy Stang,
BRAZILIA – President Luiz Inacia Lula da Silva has created a national park and an environmental reserve the combined size of Austria in northern Brazil, after a violent dispute over land ownership this past week claimed four lives, including that of an elderly US-born nun.
Environment Minister Marina Silva announced the presidential decree on Thursday, saying it was the government's response to the murder Saturday of sister Dorothy Stang, 74, in Para state where she was fighting for landless peasants and against land poachers. "There will be no backsliding in the government's environmental and land reclaiming policies," she told reporters. "We cannot give in to the logic of those who seek to intimidate the government." The decree sets aside 8.2 million hectares (20.3 million acres) in a region between the Xingu and Tapajos rivers in Para state, known as "Half-Way Land." Of roughly equal size, one part of the area will become a national park, while the other will be a protected environmental reserve.

In addition, Lula also ordered a six-month stop to all private and public construction in another area also the size of Austria around the main highway linking Para and Matto Grosso states, in the northern Amazon jungle.
The decisions were taken at a cabinet meeting Thursday. Minister Silva had already proposed the creation of protected land in the area last year to stem confrontations between poor farmers and landowners who illegally turn jungle into farmland.
"There are territories where the dispute respects neither law and order or human life ... where the fight over land and natural resources is as mean as it can get," said Silva, who worked on a rubber farm in the Amazon jungle when she was young.
The area set aside by the government includes the Anapu township, where Stang had lived for the past 27 years and where three local union leaders representing farmworkers and landless peasants were also murdered recently.
Three men were arrested Monday for Stang's murder, for which authorities have blamed the owners of illegal ranches who are encroaching on the Amazon land.
On Tuesday, Vice President Jose Alencar deployed some 2,000 army troops to Para state to contain the spiraling violence.
The troops will patrol streets in the towns of Anapu, Paraopebas and Altamira to enforce calm and back up local police and troops, the army's communications department said.
The military deployment will be for an indefinite period. "We don't know how long the mission will take," General Jaria Cesar Nass, top army commander in Para state, said on Thursday.
"We're going to tighten the noose around all illegal activities," he added.