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1994-05-02
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<text>
<title>
Brazil: Human Rights Watch
</title>
<article>
<hdr>
Human Rights Watch World Report 1992
Americas Watch: Brazil
</hdr>
<body>
<p>Human Rights Developments
</p>
<p> More than a year and a half since the election of President
Fernando Collor de Mello, Brazil's first directly elected
president in twenty-nine years, human rights violations in
Brazil remain a serious concern. As in previous years, Brazil's
rural activists faced unchecked violence and extrajudicial
execution by powerful economic interests, and urban criminal
suspects faced similar treatment at the hands of the police.
Forced labor continued to be used in rural Brazil, prison
conditions remained substandard, and violence against women met
substantial indifference by the criminal justice system. The
atmosphere of lawlessness spread to the general public, which
increasingly took the law into its own hands to lynch suspected
criminals.
</p>
<p> Brazil's ongoing economic crisis, spurred by spiraling
unemployment, unequal land distribution and large-scale
migration from rural to urban areas, has produced a high rate
of violent crime in Brazil's cities. All too often, the police
have responded with violence, including torture, extrajudicial
executions of suspected criminals and homeless children, and a
failure to investigate and prosecute so-called "extermination
teams," or justiceiros, often composed of retired or off-duty
police officers, which also commit extrajudicial executions.
</p>
<p> Statistics on violent death, whether attributed to
extermination teams or the police force, are overwhelming.
According to a report prepared by the Rio de Janeiro secretary
for public security, Dr. Nilo Batista, death squads in the
Baixada Fluminese slum of metropolitan Rio de Janeiro were
responsible for 1,230 killings between December 1990 and May
1991. ("Death Squad Killings in Rio de Janeiro Detailed," Folha
de Sao Paulo, June 26, 1991, as reported in Federal Broadcast
Information Service (FBIS), July 2, 1991.) In Sao Paulo, the
state government requested the advice of Amnesty International
in an attempt to curb violence by military police, which caused
the deaths of 585 people in 1990, and 560 in the first eight
months of 1991 (or a 1991 average of 2.33 murders a day and
seventy deaths a month). ("Amnesty International Assistance
Sought," Madrid EFE, September 28, 1991, as reported in FBIS,
September 30, 1991.)
</p>
<p> In the state of Espirito Santo, a commission of congressmen,
mayors and union representatives reported that over one hundred
people "linked to criminal activities" were killed in 1990 by
an "extermination group" calling itself "Operation Death
Penalty." (There is no death penalty under Brazilian law.) The
Brazilian newspaper O Globo reported that the death squad is
made up of policemen and operates with virtual impunity.
According to the newspaper, the chair of the state police
association said that it was not possible to confirm the
participation of any policemen in the death squad because no
investigation had been carried out into any of the killings.
("'Operation Death Penalty' Reportedly Kills 100," Madrid EFE,
March 8, 1991, as reported in FBIS, March 12, 1991.)
</p>
<p> Among those killed by death squads and by uniformed police
are children who live or work on the streets of Brazil's major
cities. According to a report released in 1991 by three
Brazilian human rights and social research organizations, at
least 2,288 street children were killed in sixteen states
between 1984 and 1989. (Movimento Nacional de Meninos e Meninas
da Rua (MNMMR), Instituto Brasiliero de Análises Sociais e
Econômicas (IBASE), and Núcleo de Estudos da Violência da
Universidade de Sao Paulo (NEV-USP), "Vidas em Risco:
Assassinatos de Crianças e Adolescentes no Brasil," Rio de
Janeiro, 1991.) Another study, quoting statistics from the
Federal Police Department, reported that 4,611 children between
the ages of five and seventeen were victims of violence between
1988 and 1990, with 2,150 children killed in the state of Sao
Paulo alone. (Vera Saavedra Durao, "Estado de Sao Paulo é o
lider em mortes violentas de crianças," Gazeta Mercantil,
October 14, 1991; Inter Press Service, "Brazil: Over 400 Street
Children Murdered This Year," June 18, 1991.) More recently,
statistics presented to a congressional commission investigating
violence against children showed that 411 children were murdered
during the first six months of 1991, mostly in the cities of
Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Recife. According to the national
coordinator of the National Movement for Street Children
(MNMMR), an average of three children a day die in Brazil due
to violence. ("Commission Told Number of Children Murdered,"
Rede Globo Television, June 18, 1991, as reported in FBIS,
June 19, 1991.)
</p>
<p> This horrendous slaughter is in part the result of death
squads or extermination teams that, according to local human
rights organizations and media reports, in some cases have been
financed by local business people eager to keep their streets
"clean" and to lower the rate of crime. In many cases, these
death squads have also been closely linked to the police, who
either allow them to operate with impunity, or actively
participate in their operations. Clashes between groups of drug
traffickers and others involved in organized crime also account
for a significant portion of the killings.
</p>
<p> The majority of the victims are between the ages of
seventeen and twenty-four, and many are younger--often minors
who have been abandoned by their families. In the states of Sao
Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, serious efforts are underway to
protect these minors in particular. In Rio, the vice governor
has established a hotline for citizens to call to denounce
groups of hired gunmen and police engaged in "extermination"
activities. Between April, when the line was installed, and
November, thirty-three civilians and twenty-three military
police have been arrested and charged with participation in the
killings as a result of evidence gathered through the hotline.
While in Sao Paulo the killings are reportedly increasing, in
the state of Rio the number of minors murdered dropped from 450
in 1990 to what experts believe will be about 300 by the end of
1991.
</p>
<p> Police participation in public lynchings caught national
attention in Brazil when television stations broadcast an
amateur videotape of the killing of three alleged criminals in
the town of Matupá, in Mato Grosso, in November 1990. The
videotape, which was delivered to the minster of justice in late
January 1991, showed the military police in Matupá arresting
three criminal suspects and handing them over to a crowd of
enraged local citizens, who poured gasoline on them and burned
them alive. ("A morte no fogo: Em Matupá, Mato Grosso, três
assaltantes apanham de uma multidao e sao queimados vivos,"
Veja, February 6, 1991.) The videotape received widespread
coverage, and a special commission was appointed by the minister
of justice to investigate the incident. Following the
investigation, eighteen people were charged with involvement in
the crime and ten of these were held in preventive detention.
("Juiz decreta prisao de 10 pela chacina de Matupá," O Estado
de Sao Paulo, April 25, 1991.) However, other less publicized
lynchings rarely yield prosecution of those involved, so the
perception remains that one can commit such lynchings with
impunity. According to police statistics, 313 lynchings were
reported in the state of Bahia in the past three years,
including thirty-seven during the first four months of 1991.
(Sam Dillon, "Lynch-mob violence mounting in Brazil," The Miami
Herald, April 21, 1991.)
</p>
<p> The Brazilian government, and President Collor personally,
have repeatedly pledged to take steps to halt the killings,
particularly of children. On April 5, President Collor
reportedly expressed his disgust with the killing of children
and announced the formation of a special National Plan to Fight
Violenc