Indigenous groups on Wednesday demonstrated in Paraguay’s capital against a law that makes it a crime to invade private property, and the protest escalated into violence that authorities said saw seven police officers injured, four vehicles set on fire and other acts of vandalism.
The police command said that one officer was hit by an arrow shot by archers from an ethnic group not yet identified.
Television coverage showed the commander of a police station about 300m from the Paraguayan Congress building lying on the ground and being hit by demonstrators with stones and sticks.
Photo: AP
Prosecutors said those protesters could not be identified as indigenous.
The unrest began when the 80-member Paraguayan Chamber of Deputies approved an amendment to the land invasion law that would increase the penalty to six years in prison from four for those who illegally occupy private property.
Indigenous groups often invade properties to press their demands that land be given to farmers.
Photo: EPA-EFE
National Peasant Federation president Teodolina Villalba said in the Guarani language in a telephone interview that “the modification of the law will not be a solution, because thousands of poor compatriots need a piece of land to cultivate.”
The group is the largest in Paraguay representing farmers, some of whom own land, but others who do not.
It seeks justice for indigenous people whose lands were taken away and given to others while Alfredo Stroessner was the nation’s president from 1954 to 1989.
The nation’s Truth and Justice Commission, created to investigate human rights violations during the Stroessner regime, presented a 6,000-page report in 2006 saying that nearly two-thirds of land allocated during the regime’s agrarian reform campaign went to people close to the government.
None of those people were poor, the commission said.
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