Venezuela: Rural Killers Enjoy Impunity http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/47646

Having arrived back in Caracas after more than two weeks visiting various rural communities, leaders from the National Campesino Front Ezequiel Zamora (FNCEZ) told us that the bodies of two of their comrades, missing since April 12, had been found.Jose Joel Torres Leves and Agustin Gamboa Duran were leading land reform activists in the Comunal City Antonio Jose de Sucre, in Barinas state. On April 12, they were kidnapped by a group of heavily armed men wearing balaclavas who raided their family home. The thugs beat and tortured other male members of the extended family present.then tied them up and covered them over with black plastic.They warned the family that if anyone informed the authorities about their ordeal,

they would be back to kill them all.Two days later, the bodies of Torres Leves and Gamboa Duran were found on the outskirts of the city, 17 kilometres from their home and with execution-style bullet wounds in their skulls.Their bodies were brutally disfigured almost beyond recognition.Such stories are a cruel feature of the life and death struggle in Venezuela’s countryside, as rich large landowners fight to hold onto their power and privileges in the face of government-promoted land reform to the benefit of poor farmers.

Since then, the government and peasants have faced a campaign of intimidation and violence every time they tried to implement a law whose purpose is to bring justice to the countryside.In January, the government decreed the expropriation of idle lands in Zulia state ― uncovering cases of peasants being kept in slave-like conditions.In response, local landowners burnt down the National Land Institute office that was coordinating government actions in the area.As a result of constant death threats against officials from the institute, soldiers from the National Guard have had to be stationed throughout the area for protection.

In this fight, the peasants count upon an important weapon promoted by the Chavez government ― peasant militias.MCJ leader and national assembly deputy Joel Pineda said that the peasant movement can no longer continue “asking for justice from a system that has given impunity to large landowners so that they can continue assassinating peasants”.“Instead, we must give life to the proposal to form peasant militias and put an end to so much negligence and injustice in the judicial system.”