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In a video made public today, September 5, Amnesty International brought the suffering and fears of Brazil's most deprived to the attention of the country's presidential and governmental candidates.
The video, which has been sent to candidates running in the presidential and general October 1st elections, includes footage and testimonies of living conditions and police operations in Brazil's poorer areas. It also includes a call from Amnesty International's Secretary General Irene Khan for Brazil's candidates to tackle the country's security crisis. In particular, Irene Khan urges candidates to develop human rights based public security policies, promote a Code of Conduct for public security forces and establish tougher measures to regulate the flow of small arms. "Brazil's public security crisis is the country's most pressing issue. The message emerging from Brazil's poor and rich communities is loud and clear: ensuring effective public security is the only way to create real human security and allow all in Brazil to live with freedom from fear and from want," said Irene Khan. "This is a wake-up call for presidential and governmental candidates across Brazil. The discriminatory posture of consecutive governments towards the most vulnerable communities has historically criminalized poverty and currently endangers hundreds of thousands of lives. It is time to ask why things have gone wrong for so long." 36.000 people were killed across Brazil during 2004. Most of them were living in poor areas with reduced police presence. "Poverty, violence and the proliferation of small arms - daily realities for millions of Brazilians, are creating and sustaining environments where human rights abuses are flourishing." Amnesty International has, for decades, documented how consecutive governments in Brazil have resorted to the public security forces to deal with the symptoms of state neglect. Such policies have resulted in poor communities across the country sinking deeper into violence and police officers ending up as both the perpetrators and the victims of violence. "Violence and social exclusion are two sides of the same coin. The policy of containing violence within Brazil's favelas is not only leading to human rights abuses, but it is clearly not working. Genuine security cannot be achieved by defending the rights of some at the expense of the rights of others," said Irene Khan. Brazil's institutional failure runs through the entire criminal justice system. The overcrowded and poorly resourced prison system is reinforcing gang culture with its policy of requiring inmates to choose between factions on entry. Corruption within the police and political classes has generated a climate of lawlessness in which organized crime has flourished. The video sent to politicians running for office on October 1st can be seen here: http://emedia.amnesty.org/brazil-310806-por.asx
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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.
I have written time and time again that Brazil has the World Highest Poverty rate when compared to their GDP per capita.
What is happening in this country is a tragedy where there is no rule of laws for those who steal millions and billions from the government, while at the same time one poor stealing 10 Reais will go for a long time in jail...or could be killed by the police.
The sad reality is that even without stealing 10 Reais.....he has the same risk.
A country where the norm is everything for a few and the rest for the majority.
A true shame to those Brazilians politicians who prefer stealing government money one way or the other rather than filling the mandate for which they have been elected.
All these politicians just deserve to be killed by the PCC or get the same jail cells as the general population ! The society will do its own justice with these bastards.
Brazilians Politicians are the true criminials. They are guilty of bad governances and of the country decrepitated state.
Theses poliiticians are just NOT humans. They are the shame of MANKIND !!!