The attack was organised by Cardoso's "social-democratic" national government and by the Workers Party (PT), local Brazilian government led by Cristóvam Buarque.

Cardoso is implementing one of the most reactionary programmes against the landless peasants and the workers in alliance with all the right wing and former dictatorship forces.

The PT, instead of defending the workers and peasants against it, is becoming a supporter of Cardoso's offensive against many layers of the discontent people. Immediately after these incidents the whole of the Brazilian mass-media launched a campaign against the far-left.

TV Globo and the daily newspapers O Globo, O Estado de Sao Paulo, Jornal do Brasil and Folha da Tarde are denouncing the PSTU (United Socialist Workers Party), the LBI (Internationalist Bolshevik League) and Causa Operaria.

This propaganda offensive is trying to prepare the ground for a most sophisticated witch-hunt against all the organisations that are claiming to defend Trotskyism against the PT right-wing evolution.

The Brazilian military police has a record of annihilation of the left during the military era, of killing today hundreds of street children, and of participating in the recent assassination of landless leaders in Pará and other parts of Brazil. Today they are targeting the independent left.

We call upon the international left and trade unions to defend the Brazilian far left against repression.