[TABD] Estudiantes de Biologia arrestados en Brazil por su trabajo en campo

Wed Jul 8 11:34:02 BST 2009

Amigos de la red TABDP, 

Aunque nuestra red esta organizada para compartir informacion sobre
mariposas andinas tropicales, les pido disculpas en esta ocasion por
enviar la siguiente informacion, no relacionada con mariposas, pero si
con todos quienes hacemos investigacion en campo, y mas sufrimos con la
penosa burocracia existente para conseguir los permisos necesarios para
realizar investigacion en campo. 

Desafortunadamente unos estudiantes (nacionales y extranjeros) fueron
arrestados en Brazil durante el desarrollo del trabajo de campo,
lamentablemente por no contar con todos los permisos necesarios. Abajo
pueden leer los detalles de esta penosa situacion, que pueda mejorarse
con la ayuda de todos firmando una peticion para que los liberen. 

Solamente necesitan contactar al supervisor de los estudiantes
arrestados en la direccion: cohen en email.arizona.edu
<mailto:cohen en email.arizona.edu> , enviando su nombre, instituicion,
cargo etc. (abajo hay un ejemplo)

Este es un ejemplo y pueda ser una leccion sobre la importancia de tener
los permisos de investigacion necesarios, pero tambien pueda ser un
ejemplo de nuestra preocupacion por el desarrollo de la investigacion
ayudando con la peticion. 

Un saludo cordial, 

Blanca

------------------------------------

Blanca Huertas FLS DIC MSc 

Curator (Lepidoptera)

Entomology Department

The Natural History Museum

Cromwell Road

SW7 5BD, London, UK.

Tel.  +44 (0) 20 7942 6215

Museum Website www.nhm.ac.uk

TABDProject www.andeanbutterflies.org
<http://www.andeanbutterflies.org/> 

________________________________

From: Ellinor Michel 
Sent: 07 July 2009 20:54
To: Zoology; Palaeontology; Entomology; Mineralogy
Cc: Andrew Cohen
Subject: FW: US graduate students arrested in Brazil
Importance: High

Dear NHM Colleagues,

One of our collaborators on paleoclimates work has had the extremely
unfortunate experience of being arrested for inadvertently working
without appropriate permits in Brazil (in the third year of an ongoing
collaboration). There is an international effort to indicate that this
is an excessive misapplication of law enforcement and to encourage the
Brazilian authorities to release the research students who are now out
of jail, but held within country.

If you can send your signature in to support the attached statement,
please do so to Dr Andrew Cohen (address below).  And of course this is
an object lesson in the importance of paperwork (as if we need to be
told).

Thanks,

Ellinor Michel & Jon Todd

On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 11:43 AM, Andrew S. Cohen
<cohen en email.arizona.edu> wrote:

Dear Colleagues,
As many of you are no doubt aware from the press, three US and two
Brazilian
graduate students in geosciences were recently arrested while doing
paleoclimate/paleolimnology field work in the Pantanal region of western
Brazil. The students are Mike McGlue and Mark Trees from the University
of
Arizona, Kelly Wendt from the University of Minnesota-Duluth, and
Aguinaldo
Silva and Fabricio Corradini  from the State University of Sao Paulo
(UNESP). I
am the co-director of this research project (alongwith Mario Assine of
UNESP)
and am writing to ask for your assistance by adding your name to the
open
letter attached. Two of the US students were from the University of
Arizona
working directly with me-the third Minnesota student was accompanying
the UA
students to assist with sediment coring.

The circumstances of the student's arrest were that the UNESP permits
which our
UA group thought in good faith covered our part of the team, turned out
not to
be applicable to us. The initial charges were that the students were
extracting
natural resources (there is gem smuggling from Bolivia in this area) and
that
they were doing this extractive work without permits. The police were
also
suspicious because one of the UA students is retired military. Finally,
the
students were in Brazil on tourist visas, although this does not seem to
be the
critical issue of why they were detained.

After their arrest the Brazilian students were released on bail after 2
days.
The American students were held in a jail cell for 9 days awaiting
release on
bail. They were released on bail on June 25th, but must remain in Brazil
awaiting the outcome of the legal process. In Brazil this happens very
slowly,
and could take months or even years. In the meantime these student's
lives and
academic work are on hold.

I am writing to ask your help by simply adding your name to the attached
letter
of support, which can be used to further demonstrate the nature of the
student's activities and the importance of their research to the
Brazilian
authorities. Several similar letters have been circulating among the
Brazilian
scientific community. I would be happy to share these with anyone who is
interested.

If you are willing to add your name to this letter simply write back a
brief
note AS SOON AS POSSIBLE to let me know how you want your name and
affiliation
to appear. If you hold a position as an officer of a professional
society that
would add weight to the statement and are willing to be identified as
such
please add that information. And finally, please send this message along
to
anyone else not on this email who you think might be interested in
signing. I
will take care of the rest. Time is critical because the police are
finishing
their part of the investigation, which will determine charges to be
brought
forward-it is important to act now to help insure that the most serious
of the
charges (which have potential prison time) are dropped.

Thank you very much for your help in advance

Andy Cohen

Andrew S. Cohen
Professor of Geosciences and Joint Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary
Biology
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
cohen en email.arizona.edu

Andrew S. Cohen
Department of Geosciences
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
Tel 520-621-4691
Fax 520-621-2672
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/web/Cohen/AC_page.html

------ End of Forwarded Message 

***************ejemplo*************************** 

A few examples of how people who signed replied (i.e. all you need to
send is a name, affiliation and as many titles as is appropriate):

Andy - I am very sorry to read that this unfortunate incident is still
ongoing and dark.   
Please add my name to the open letter as follows - 

Dr. John G. Lundberg
Chaplin Chair of Ichthyology
President American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists 
Department of Ichthyology
Academy of Natural Sciences
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Philadelphia, PA 19103 USA

Anthony W. Walton
Chairman, Board of Directors
DOSECC, Inc. 
Associate Professor
Department of Geology
The University of Kansas
Lawrence, Kansas  66045
TWalton en KU.edu  785 864-2726
Mobile: 785 727-0435

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Statement for signature by American scientists (to be translated and
issued in both English and Portuguese)

Three American graduate students, Michael McGlue and Mark Trees (U.
Arizona), and Kelly Wendt (U. Minnesota), working with two Brazilian
colleagues, Aguinaldo Silva and Fabricio Corradini (Universidade Federal
de Mato Grosso do Sul ) were arrested on June 17, while doing
paleoclimate and environmental change field work in the Pantanal, north
of Corumba. This research project has investigated how changing climate
conditions in the recent geological past  have affected the Pantanal
ecosystem, world famous as one of the Earth's largest wetlands. The UA
research team, under the direction of Professor Andrew Cohen and in
collaboration with Prof. Mario Assine of UNESP does this research by
collecting short sediment cores from the bottom of lakes and wetlands in
the Pantanal region. The cores provide records of past climate as
particles sensitive to climate change settle to the bottom of the lake.
Lake and wetland deposits are well known for their ability to provide
detailed information about global warming and other aspects of
environmental change.

Since its inception the project has offered an opportunity for Brazilian
and American scientists to work together, and obtain important training
on climate and environmental research methods.   Two UNESP scientists
spent 3 months at the University of Arizona in 2008 working on this
project in Tucson and taking advantage of UA facilities for the
collaborative effort and UA scientists have made several visits to the
Pantanal with the Brazilian team.

The five researchers were initially arrested and charged with Article
2nd, paragraph 1st, law # 8176/91 and Articles 44 and 55, law 9605/98,
charges primarily related to the extraction of mineral resources and
permit violations. The charge that these researchers were involved in
minerals or natural resource exploitation of any kind is simply
untrue-the sediment cores are only collected to interpret signals of
environmental change such as global warming and its affect on the
Pantanal region. The Students were working in good faith under the
Geosciences Research Project grant on research and collaborating with
Brazilian scientists at the time of their arrests. The University of
Arizona and the Students each believed that all of the necessary
Brazilian research permits were in place to authorize the research The
Brazilian environment, and especially the Pantanal region  benefits
greatly from this type of environmental research from sediment cores,
since it gives clear signals of how such changes have affected and will
affect the region in the future. 

We the undersigned can understand why the authorities initially may have
questioned the legality and appropriateness of what the researchers were
doing.  But with a clear understanding of the beneficial nature of this
research program, we urge the authorities to treat this issue as a
simple misunderstanding on the researcher's part of permit requirements.
We respectfully request that the US students be permitted to return to
the United States as soon as possible to continue their education and
research

Statement for signature by international scientists 

(to be translated and issued in both English and Portuguese)

Three American graduate students, Michael McGlue and Mark Trees (U.
Arizona), and Kelly Wendt (U. Minnesota), working with two Brazilian
colleagues, Aguinaldo Silva and Fabricio Corradini (Universidade Federal
de Mato Grosso do Sul ) were arrested on June 17, while doing
paleoclimate and environmental change field work in the Pantanal, north
of Corumba. This research project has investigated how changing climate
conditions in the recent geological past have affected the Pantanal
ecosystem, world famous as one of the Earth's largest wetlands. The UA
research team, under the direction of Professor Andrew Cohen and in
collaboration with Prof. Mario Assine of UNESP does this research by
collecting short sediment cores from the bottom of lakes and wetlands in
the Pantanal region. The cores provide records of past climate as
particles sensitive to climate change settle to the bottom of the lake.
Lake and wetland deposits are well known for their ability to provide
detailed information about global warming and other aspects of
environmental change.

Since its inception the project has offered an opportunity for Brazilian
and American scientists to work together and obtain important training
on climate and environmental research methods.   Two UNESP scientists
spent 3 months at the University of Arizona in 2008 working on this
project in Tucson and taking advantage of UA facilities for the
collaborative effort, and UA scientists have made several visits to the
Pantanal with the Brazilian team.

The five researchers were initially arrested and charged with Article
2nd, paragraph 1st, law # 8176/91 and Articles 44 and 55, law 9605/98,
charges primarily related to the extraction of mineral resources and
permit violations. The charge that these researchers were involved in
minerals or natural resource exploitation of any kind is simply
untrue-the sediment cores are only collected to interpret signals of
environmental change such as global warming and its effect on the
Pantanal region. The students were working in good faith under the
Geosciences Research Project grant on research and collaborating with
Brazilian scientists at the time of their arrests. The University of
Arizona and the students each believed that all of the necessary
Brazilian research permits were in place to authorize the research. The
Brazilian environment, and especially the Pantanal region  benefit
greatly from this type of environmental research from sediment cores,
since it gives clear signals of how such changes have affected and will
affect the region in the future. 

We the undersigned can understand why the authorities initially may have
questioned the legality and appropriateness of what the researchers were
doing.  But with a clear understanding of the beneficial nature of this
research program, we urge the authorities to treat this issue as a
simple misunderstanding on the researcher's part of permit requirements.
We respectfully request that the US students be permitted to return to
the United States as soon as possible to continue their education and
research.  

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