SAO PAULO
Brazil's Homeless Workers' Movement, which is occupying private land in the same district as São Paulo's World Cup stadium, will resist any forced eviction by police, the organization said Thursday.
The city's Court of Justice ordered Wednesday evening that the site must be cleared, giving the squatters 48 hours to clear the 1,000 meter square plot.
“If an attempt to evict [families] forcibly is made there will be organized resistance,” the Homeless Workers' Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem-Teto, MTST) said in a statement issued in response to the court's decision.
“We hope the state has the good sense not to repeat mistakes made in the past. We do not want […] the image of the World Cup to be marked by a violent conflict and massacre of homeless workers,” the statement said according to G1 news portal, referring to a previous eviction in 2012 allegedly to have resulted in deaths.
A number of protests by both the Homeless Workers' Movement and the Landless Workers' Movement (MST) were seen Thursday across São Paulo.
Protestors broke into and vandalized premises belonging to building companies associated with World Cup construction, including OAS and Odebrecht, whom they accuse of profiting massively from Brazil's staging of the tournament.
Protests subsided after the Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff met with Homeless Workers' Movement leader Guilherme Boulas Thursday afternoon at the São Paulo stadium, Folha de S.Paulo newspaper reported.
'The Cup of the People'
But the Homeless Workers' Movement said the decision to evict families discredited the court, which found in favor of the landowner, and said it would repeal, labeling the order “unfair” and “illegitimate.”
A representative for the organization told the Anadolu Agency on Tuesday that some 2,500 families were now living on the land, located around 4km from the Arena São Paulo in Itaquera, a district in the east of the city.
After occupying the site Saturday, the organization said it believed some 4,000 people could use the land, on which they want the government to build permanent accommodation for the homeless families.
The families occupying the site also told AA they have nowhere else to live after speculation created by the World Cup has made rent in the neighboring regions prohibitively expensive.
The Homeless Workers' Movement branded the squatter camp near the World Cup stadium the “Cup of the People” and decried the near $500bn spent on the stadium.
englishnews@aa.com.tr
