Let´s remember that 18 people affected by Tucuri dam, the biggest dam in Brazil, were repressed during a mobilization carried out on April 26th, and after two weeks 14 of them were released.

The MAB and other national and international organizations have been denouncing the unequal treatment to workers carried out by the legal system, and protested in defense of the four political prisoners.

The struggle of the people displaced by Tucuri has been developing for over 25 years, featured by two opposite realities: promises of compensation which were never complied with and state subsidies for big energy consumers, among them US Alcoa, Canadian Alcan, Japanese Nippon Aluminium, and Brazilian Vale do Rio Doce.

The MAB estimates that approximately 32 thousand people were forced to leave their homes due to the building of the megaproject in Tocantins River, and denounces that the kilowatt/hour rates paid by the Brazilian people are ten times more expensive than the rates paid by the companies.

During the last years there have been countless conflicts in Minas Gerais state due to the building of new hydroelectric dams. Dorvalina Batista, MAB activist, told Real World Radio that the struggle carried out by the organization is also against agribusiness and fights for improving conditions to access land, something that is in the centre of the claims of the populations affected by dams, mainly peasants.

The MAB aims at unifying their struggle with urban organizations, since the average consumer of electric power is also affected by this model, Batista explained.

According to her, the future dams and the ones that are already installed in Minas Gerais, especially on San Francisco River, one of the most important rivers of the country, respond to the interests of the big corporations present in the territory, like Vale do Rio Doce, Votorantim Celulosa and Aracruz, in addition to the ones entering into the sector of cane and sunflower monoculture to produce agrofuels.