AN AMERICAN nun and human rights activist who had lived in Brazil since the Sixties has been murdered in the Amazon jungle, in a killing believed to have been ordered by a local rancher and illegal logger.

Dorothy Stang, 74, was shot in the back three times by two men in the Amazonian state of Pará in northern Brazil, a week after meeting the country’s human rights minister to denounce landlord-directed violence in the region as “out of control”. Reports say that her attackers shot her a fourth time in the face after she had fallen to the ground.

Sister Stang had frequently reported death threats made against her to the police and local press and reportedly told her family that she relied on being an elderly nun to protect her. The murder, which took place late on Saturday, happened in one of the most violent regions in Brazil’s long-standing conflict over land.

Hours after the killing a worker on a nearby ranch was shot and killed in front of his wife and five children by eight armed men, police said.

The Amazon has become a battleground between landless peasants looking to carve out small plots of land and ranchers clearing large areas to raise cattle, a lucrative export.

Sister Stang helped to set up a programme to promote sustainable development among small landholders and had frequently come into conflict with ranchers and illegal loggers whom environmental groups say are responsible for the deforestation of the Amazon.

The killing has shocked the Government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, which has strong ties to the country’s landless peasant movement. Senhor Lula ordered his human rights and environment ministers to Pará to lead the investigation.

Sister Stang was leaving the village of Esperança, a settlement devoted to sustainable development that she had helped to found, when the attack took place. According to a local peasant — who was with her at the time — the two gunmen approached her and taunted her. When she ignored them they opened fire on her, shooting her three times.

Nilmário Miranda, the Brazilian Human Rights Minister, said that the man with Sister Stang at the time of the killing was now in protective custody and had identified two local gunmen. Only last week Sister Stang had met Senhor Miranda to denounce attacks on Esperança by such gunmen allegedly hired by a local landlord.

“She was a legend, a person considered a symbol of the fight for human rights in Pará,” Senhor Miranda said.

Sister Stang was a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of Notre Dame. Originally from Dayton, Ohio, she had Brazilian citizenship.

Last year the state assembly of Pará voted her the honorary title “Citizen of Pará” and in December she won an award from a Brazilian lawyers group for her human rights work.

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