Free Lula National March Closes People's Siege on Brasilia

Nearly 5,000 members of the Landless Rural Workers'' Movement (MST), grouped in three columns, are participating in the Free Lula National March that end in a ''popular siege'' on Brasilia today.

The march departed from the towns of Formosa and Luziania, in the state of Goias, and Engenho das Lages, in the Federal District, last Saturday to walk nearly 50 kilometers to Brasilia to accompany the registration of the presidential candidacy of Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, who has been held in prison for 130 days.

On Monday, the Peace Nobel Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel joined the march in solidarity with the Brazilian people and for the release of Lula, 'who is a political prisoner', he stressed. Perez Esquivel noted that the efforts to exclude the founder and historic leader of the Workers' Party (PT) by force from the presidential elections in October is not a maneuver that is used in Brazil only, but in the entire Latin American continent.

The extreme right wing is advancing in the domination of the peoples, said the human rights activist in statements to the newspaper Brasil de Fato. He underlined that 'we demand to free Lula, to run in the elections and that the people chose what party has to rule'.

Perez Esquivel also noted that there is great international solidarity with the cause of the former Brazilian president, who was sentenced without evidence to 12 years and one month in prison and has been held in custody since April 7 at the Federal Police Superintendence in Curitiba, the capital of the state of Parana.