Sister Dorothy Stang

Dorothy Stang was born in 1931 in Dayton, Ohio, one of nine children, and joined the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur at the age of 17. She went to Brazil in 1966 and spent decades serving rural communities, latterly in Anapu, in the state of Pará, according to the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur Ohio Province.

According to her congregation's account, Sister Dorothy and fellow sisters helped found Christian communities and literacy schools, taught health and nutrition, and supported small businesses. She worked with a government-backed sustainable development programme and taught farmers which crops grew best in the forest. The Human Rights Defenders Memorial records that she worked with the Catholic Church's Land Pastoral Commission (CPT) on reforestation of degraded land and on reducing land conflicts, and that she had reported threats against her for several years before her death.

Illegal land seizure and logging in the Amazon; land rights of small farmers; sustainable forest farming

Her killing, and the trials that followed, drew international attention to violent land disputes in Pará. Five men were eventually convicted, including two ranchers convicted of ordering the killing (NBC News).

Confirmed killing

On 12 February 2005, aged 73, Dorothy Stang was shot six times at close range by hired gunmen on a rural road near Anapu (Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur; NBC News). Gunman Rayfran das Neves Sales was sentenced to 27 years and his accomplice Clodoaldo Carlos Batista to 17 years; intermediary Amair Feijoli da Cunha confessed and was convicted. Rancher Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura was convicted in 2007 of hiring the gunmen, acquitted at a 2008 retrial that was later annulled, and convicted again in 2010 with a 30-year sentence. Rancher Regivaldo Galvão was convicted by a jury in Belém in 2010 of ordering the murder and sentenced to 30 years (NBC News; Human Rights Defenders Memorial). The masterminds' cases went through further appeals in the Brazilian courts.

We use careful labels for deaths connected with environmental defence. How we classify them.

She is remembered by her congregation and by rural communities in the Amazon as a defender of small farmers and the forest; her congregation's archive records a phrase attributed to her: 'It is not my safety, but that of the people which matters.'

1. 1931Born in Dayton, Ohio, USA.
2. 1966Goes to Brazil as a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur.
3. 2005Shot dead by hired gunmen near Anapu on 12 February.
4. 2005Gunman Rayfran das Neves Sales sentenced to 27 years.
5. 2007Rancher Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura first convicted; acquitted in 2008 retrial that was later annulled.
6. 2010Moura convicted again (30 years); rancher Regivaldo Galvão convicted of ordering the murder (30 years).