( AP ) - Police used rubber bullets and tear gas Tuesday to remove 900 activists from a tree farm they had invaded to highlight allegations its Swedish-Finnish operators violated a law forbidding foreign companies from owning certain lands, media reported.
Via Campesina, the farm workers' rights group that staged the invasion, said in a statement that dozens of its members were injured.
But police commander Paulo Mendes, who coordinated the ouster of the protesters, said he was unaware of any injuries suffered by demonstrators, according to UOL, the Web site of the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper.
Mendes confirmed that about 50 officers took part in the operation, some of them on horseback and others using police dogs to break up the occupation of the farm.
Stora Enso's 5,200-acre tree farm in Brazil's southern Rio Grande do Sul state is illegal, protesters said, because it lies within 95 miles of Brazil's border with Uruguay.
Brazilian law forbids foreign companies from owning land within 95 miles of the country's borders.
"Planting this green desert in the border zone is crime against our country, against the pampas ecosystem and against the food sovereignty of the state," Via Campesina said in a statement.
Stora Enso had applied for an exception to the law and asked a judge to evict the activists, said Otavio Pontes, a spokesman for the company's Brazilian unit. The land is owned by a Brazilian firm, he said.
But accusing Stora Enso of using a Brazilian front company to evade the law, activists invaded the farm before dawn Tuesday, cutting down trees and replacing them with the saplings of native trees.
The Via Campesina group staged similar invasions against Stora Enso and other pulp companies last year, arguing that paper companies harm the environment by replacing native forests with eucalyptus and pine trees.
Stora Enso is one of the world's largest paper companies.