In December, 2007, the Court filed a suit against Brazil on this case, stating that the Brazilian government had not complied with its obligation of “investigating and punishing the murder of Mr. Setimo Garibaldi, which took place on November 27, 1998, when a group of (…)gunmen carried out the extrajudicial eviction of landless workers’ families occupying a rural estate located in Querência do Norte municipality, in the state of Paraná”.

In the same document, the Court adds that “the incident was reported to the police, and a police investigation was opened and sent to the archive; thus, the obstacles and mechanisms responsible for the impunity in the case were not removed; adequate judicial guarantees for pursuing the matter were not provided; and Mr. Garibaldi’s next-of-kin were denied due redress”.

The initial denunciation submitted before the Court – which allowed to open the first legal case with these features related to the murder of a rural worker, was driven by the Landless Rural Workers Movement from Brazil (MST), Global Justice, Terra de Direitos, the Pastoral Commission for Land and the National Network of People´s Lawyers.

Now, the IACHR has six months to decide on this case, which represents one of the approximately 2000 murders of rural workers denounced by Brazilian social organizations since 1987.