22 January 2012 Last updated at 17:57 ET
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-16675027

Brazil police storm landless settlement near Sao Paulo

Thousands of police were involved in the operation to evict slum residents


In pictures: Pinheirinho eviction

Brazilian riot police have stormed an illegal settlement of landless workers in Sao Paulo state to reclaim the land for its private owners.

Several cars were set alight as residents tried to defend their homes in the Pinheirinho slum in Sao Jose dos Campos, and 16 people were arrested.

Police say they are now in control of the area after encountering less resistance than had been feared.

Some 6,000 residents are being evicted from the eight-year-old settlement.
Eviction

Around 2,000 police officers were involved in the operation to reclaim the private land, which had been occupied by landless workers and turned into a community.

Local government officials and social workers have been going door-to-door to evict families and help them move to alternative accommodation.
Map of Brazil

Some are being put up in temporary accommodation, while others are being offered transport back to their original home villages.

The evictions follow a legal battle between the residents and administrators for the bankrupt property company that owned the land.

Activists who supported the residents briefly blocked a main road in protest against the eviction.

The Pinheirinhos squatter camp established by a land invasion in 2002 had developed into a settled neighbourhood, complete with shops and churches.

A decade of strong economic growth and social spending has helped millions of Brazilians out of poverty into the expanding middle class.

But millions of others are still poor, and extreme inequality persists.

Lula warns Brazil land activists

Squatters on vacant lots of land in Sao Paulo on Monday

As Lula spoke, squatters invaded vacant land in Sao Paulo

The Brazilian president has urged land activists to behave "responsibly" amid a wave of land invasions in April.

Speaking on his twice-monthly radio show, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said agrarian reform should be carried out lawfully and as peacefully as possible.

Frustrated by what they see as the slow pace of change, activists have invaded dozens of properties this month, which they have dubbed "Red April".

On Monday, hundreds of squatters were evicted from buildings in Sao Paulo.

Riot police used tear gas and rubber bullets to eject the squatters, who had occupied vacant buildings in the city centre before dawn, the Associated Press news agency reported.

However, hundreds more people remain inside a property on the city's outskirts, it said.

Farm invaded

On Sunday, about 420 families invaded a farm belonging to Klabin, one of Brazil's biggest paper companies.

The members of the Landless Workers Movement - known by its Portuguese initials MST - allegedly cut down native forest and pine plantations.

"Don't lose your sense of responsibility," Lula cautioned activists in his Breakfast with the President show.


President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
The rules apply to the president, those without land, and those with land
Lula
He said land activists had to act within the law.

"[Agrarian reform] will be done in the calmest, most peaceful way, because the landless understand that this country has laws, has rules.

"And those apply to the president, they apply to those without land, and they apply to those with land," he said.

Lula said the government aims to settle 430,000 families and grant 130,000 land titles by the end of 2006.

Agriculture Minister Roberto Rodrigues later warned that the recent invasions threatened to frighten off rural investors.

He also warned the remaining squatters in Sao Paulo they had no choice but to move from the occupied properties.

"The bottom line is either they get out, or they get out," he warned.

But the squatters hit back, telling AP news agency they had no choice.

"These occupations wouldn't be necessary if the government did more to help us find places to live," Roque Cuello said.

Aggressive tactics

Correspondents say Lula is trying to counter aggressive new tactics employed by land activists.

Not only have invasions surged, but land owned by multinational companies and in use has also now been targeted.

They say Brazil has some of the most unequal land distribution rates in the world, a problem which Lula has promised to address.

And with more than a million members, the MST is also a force to be reckoned with.

But scarce resources to pay for land redistribution, and fierce lobbying by landowners, means the government is prepared to proceed with reform at a much slower rate than that demanded by land activists, observers add.

25 January 2012 Last updated at 08:37 ET


Criticism grows of Brazil slum clearance by police

Police escort residents of the Pinheirinho slum as they remove their belongings from their homes the day after they were evicted Police have been overseeing the removal of furniture and belongings from the site


Criticism is growing of a Brazilian police operation to clear some 6,000 people from an illegal settlement in Sao Paulo state.

Officers moved in on Sunday to retake the land for its private owners.

Authorities say the police action was justified and within the law.

Amnesty International said the eviction violated "a raft of international standards" and urged officials to urgently address the needs of the families left homeless.

The events at the Pinheirinho settlement were part of an unfortunate pattern, said Atila Roque, director of Amnesty in Brazil.

"As the country booms, tens of thousands of poor families are being removed to make way for infrastructure and private development projects, without receiving adequate protection and alternative housing," he said.

Some 2,000 police were involved in the operation to evict slum residents

Brazil's landless movement (MST) condemned the police action as an "act of war".

There was also criticism from other quarters, including from a senior official in the presidency, Gilberto Carvalho, who described the scene as a "battlefield".

This provoked a strong reaction from the Social Democratic Party (PSDB) which runs Sao Paulo's state government, as "intrusion by the federal government".
Surprise action

The evictions followed a legal battle between the residents and administrators for the bankrupt property company that owned the land.

The Pinheirinho squatter camp was established by a land invasion in 2002 and had developed into a settled neighbourhood, complete with shops and churches.

The legality of the operation to clear it has been questioned.

Judge Rodrigo Capez, who accompanied the police operation, said that the law had been followed as the residents could not be consider to have acquired rights over the land.
Police block residents from approaching their homes on 23 January The situation at the site remains tense

Mr Capez told BBC Brasil that people had not been informed in advance in order to reduce the level of resistance.

"It was exactly the surprise element that minimised the risk of deaths or injuries," he said.

The government was attending to the needs of the people as regards alternative shelter, he said.

Sao Paulo officials say that clashes broke out after the site had been cleared.

On the ground, the situation remained tense, with a continued police presence.

Officials have been cataloguing and removing furniture and other belongings to be stored and then returned to their owners.

Spying on Europe’s farms with satellites and drones
By Laurence Peter BBC News
Bales of hay in Wiltshire, UK - file pic


Farmers who claim more EU subsidies than they should, or who break Common Agricultural Policy rules, are now more likely to be caught out by a camera in the sky than an inspector calling with a clipboard. How do they feel about being watched from above?

Imagine a perfect walk in the country, a few years from now - tranquillity, clean air, birdsong in the trees and hedgerows, growing crops swaying in the breeze.

Suddenly a model plane swoops overhead.

But there is no-one around manipulating radio controls. This is not a toy, but a drone on a photographic mission.

Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometres up in space, the same patch of land is being photographed by a satellite, which clearly pinpoints individual trees and animals.

What is there to spy on here? No secret military installations, just farmland.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

They thought we had an additional building without permission - but it was actually a haystack”

Roland Randall Farmer and environmental researcher

But Europe's farms cost taxpayers billions of euros in subsidies each year, and EU agricultural inspectors are turning to technology to improve their patchy record on preventing fraud and waste.

Satellites have already been in use for several years, and drones are currently undergoing trials.

Scanning a farm with a satellite costs about one third as much as sending an inspector on a field visit - £115 ($180; 150 euros) rather than £310 ($490; 400 euros), says the UK's Rural Payments Agency (RPA), which is responsible for disbursing the subsidies in the UK and checking for irregularities.

"The RPA follows up only on those claims where there is some doubt about accuracy, and then only at the specific fields for which the doubt exists," the RPA says. "This saves time, lifts the burden on farmers and reduces cost to the taxpayer."

Satellites can rapidly cover a huge area in detail and quickly return to photograph it again if necessary.

In 2010, about 70% of the total required controls on farm payments in the EU were done by satellites, which photographed more than 210,000 sq km (81,000 sq miles) of land in all.

But they are not infallible. Austria does not use them, on the grounds that the shadows cast by very mountainous terrain sometimes make satellite images inaccurate.

And Scotland, unlike the rest of the UK, decided against satellites "because of the difficulty of getting enough clear weather for flyovers", a Scottish government spokeswoman told the BBC.

Spying bill

Commercial operators were paid 6.5m euros (£5.4m;$8.5m) by the European Commission for satellite images in 2011

EU member states pay for the image processing and analysis, estimated at 40m euros (£33m; $53m) annually

Many things in the countryside are constantly changing and when the satellite passes over, "the animals may be in a field or in a barn - you can't count the numbers very well", says Roland Randall, an English farmer and environmental researcher in Cambridgeshire.

"When planners looked at the aerial photo records of our farm they thought we had an additional building without permission, but it was actually a haystack," he told the BBC.

The satellite checks are done partly to produce accurate maps of farms, showing clearly the areas eligible for subsidies.

But farmers these days have to keep their land in "good agricultural and environmental condition" to qualify for subsidies, so images also reveal whether the farmer is complying with the rules on hedges and ponds, say, or buffer strips around arable fields.

View of fields from a CATUAV Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

1/9

A farmer who breaks the rules risks losing 3% of his or her direct payment - and more if it is a repeat infringement.

There have been few prosecutions in the UK based on satellite evidence, says Ray Purdy, a senior law researcher at University College London (UCL) specialising in satellite monitoring.
Continue reading the main story
Checking up

Agriculture accounted for 42% of the EU's budget in 2011 - about three-quarters of that went on direct payments to farmers, totalling 44bn euros (£37bn; $58bn)
In each EU country, at least 5% of farms must be inspected every year - and many check more than 5%
Satellites carried out about 70% of all inspections in 2010
Growth of satellite monitoring has cut number of infringements
EU officials say fraud accounts for only a small fraction of the irregularities - in most cases farmers overclaim because of a miscalculation

Q&A: Reform of EU farm policy

One case in the UK was dropped in 2001 because a farmer proved that he had planted a linseed crop, even though the satellite image appeared to show bare earth. The sparse young plants had failed to show up against the bright reflection off chalk downland.

This could be the kind of situation where a drone - an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) - would come in useful.

Drones are best known for their role as remote-control killers in Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal areas, but supporters see a role for smaller and much simpler drones in agricultural monitoring. They can get up close and take sharp photographs - and unlike satellites, which always look directly down, drones can get an angled view of their subject.

They are currently being tried out in vineyards in the south of France, to check that "grubbing up" of vines is done legally and ecologically.

Wine-growers get as much as 10,000 euros ($13,000; £8,300) per hectare in subsidies for digging up uncompetitive vines - a scheme to prevent new EU "wine lakes" caused by overproduction.

"There has to be 100% control, as it's a huge amount of money," says Philippe Loudjani, an agronomist at the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission's main satellite monitoring hub in Ispra, northern Italy.

"The French are testing to see if the drones need to go up to 10cm resolution - to see what accuracy is required."
Graphic showing use of Atmos 6 UAV (drone)

Drones are also being tested in Italy, and are already in use on a small scale in Spain's Catalonia region, where authorities say their 25cm and 12.5cm resolution photos are ideal for inspecting the small landholdings with mixed crops that are typical of the Mediterranean.

The EU is hurrying to develop a "strategy for Unmanned Aircraft Systems", which would see the existing very tough restrictions on the use of civilian drones in Europe relaxed.

A discussion paper prepared for a European Commission workshop in Brussels this week, envisages their use not only in crop or farm monitoring, but also terrain cartography, goods transport, monitoring of borders, the fight against illegal immigration and drug trafficking, and intervention in natural or industrial disasters.

“Start Quote

It's modern life really - I don't think there's anything you can do about it”

Rob Allan Warwickshire farmer

"They can also be sent to deliver rescue packages to ship crews in danger at sea," it adds.

However, in the short term it's likely that UAVs will only be widely approved for use within line of sight of an operator and at a distance of no more than 500m, which limits their value for agricultural inspection.

And what about the privacy issue?

Ben Hayes of the campaign group Statewatch worries that Europe is rushing into the use of drones without sufficient public discussion.

"We would accept the argument that there are lots of things they can be useful for, but ... the questions about what is acceptable and how people feel about drones hovering over their farmland or their demonstration - these debates are not taking place," he says.

Ray Purdy of UCL surveyed 202 farmers in the UK, and 428 in Australia - where satellites are routinely used to monitor land use, especially vegetation clearance - and found that only about a quarter in Australia and a third in the UK were against satellite monitoring.

Some farmers voiced concerns about invasion of privacy, but many said remote sensing was preferable to inspectors on their land taking up their time.

A majority in the UK also agreed that the satellites would help to deter fraud.

Rob Allan, a farmer in Warwickshire, said "it's modern life really - I don't think there's anything you can do about it".