|
Police officers in Rio de Janeiro must stop using military-style armored vehicles to indiscriminately kill innocent bystanders or commit other gross human rights violations in the city's favelas, said Amnesty International as it launched a new campaign in collaboration with other human rights organizations in Brazil.
The Caveirão (The Big Skull) - as it is more commonly known - has become the emblem of Rio de Janeiro's elite police force, the Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais, (BOPE) and is feared by residents in the areas it operates. Local human rights organizations have received a series of shocking eyewitness reports of caveirões entering communities firing at random, while using loudspeakers to intimidate the population. Between May and September 2005, 11 people were killed in operations involving the Caveirão. Speaking at the launch of the campaign against the use of the Caveirão in Brazil's favelas Global Justice's Marcelo Freixo said: "The Caveirão has become a powerful symbol of the failings of public security policies in Rio de Janeiro. It typifies the police's confrontational and divisive approach to Rio's public security crisis." The campaign, organized by Amnesty International, Justiça Global, the Rede de Comunidades e Movimentos contra a Violência, and the Centro de Defesa de Direitos Humanos de Petrópolis will call on the state governor of Rio de Janeiro, Rosângela Rosinha Garotinho de Oliveira, to take forward a comprehensive reform of Rio's security policies, particularly around favelas. Specifically, the group is calling on the state authorities to stop using the Caveirão to kill indiscriminately, to intimidate whole communities and to mount operations involving the excessive use of force. Marcelo Freixo said: "Using violence to combat violence is fundamentally counter-productive. Not only does it lead to tragic deaths of innocent bystanders, but it does not solve the problems of escalating criminal violence in Rio de Janeiro." Amnesty International's Brazil researcher, Tim Cahill said: "By deploying a vehicle to aggressively and indiscriminately target whole communities, the authorities are using the Caveirão as a tool of intimidation. "The police have a legitimate right to protect themselves as they go about their work but they also have a duty to protect the communities they serve." The overall police strategy when dealing with Rio's security crisis has polarized its population, and lead to a collapse of confidence in the state's ability to protect all the city's citizens. Security for all will never be achieved through violence and intimidation. An inclusive public security policy based on respect for human rights must be introduced without delay. Only then will there be an end to the cycle of violence in Rio de Janeiro. Background Information In July 2005 11-year-old Carlos Henrique was on his way home when police stormed the Vila do João favela. According to eyewitnesses, he was shot in the head by a bullet fired from a military-style vehicle, popularly known as the Caveirão. In October 2004, Global Justice launched the report "Police Violence and Public Insecurity", which examines the root causes of violence in Rio de Janeiro today. The report concluded that state policy effectively "criminalized poverty", concentrating violence in the city's most vulnerable communities. Amnesty International - www.amnesty.org
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.