RIGHTS-BRAZIL: Movement to Ban Firearms Picks Up Steam

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 7 1999 (IPS) - The movement to ban firearms was given a major boost in Brazil with the designation of human rights activist Jose Carlos Dias as justice minister. But critics abound, both within and outside of parliament.

As his secretary of justice, Dias chose lawyer Elizabeth Sussekind, previously the coordinator of public safety in the non- governmental Movimento Viva Rio, which is waging a campaign to disarm the population of Brazil.

The minister – in his post for two weeks now – and his new assistant have already come out in favour of measures to combat sales, purchases and the bearing of weapons by civilians, as a means of curbing violence and homicides in Brazil, one of the most violent countries in Latin America.

Two weeks ago, the government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso introduced a draft law that would prohibit sales of firearms and authorise only the military, police and properly registered private security agents to bear weapons.

The initiative came in response to a rash of shooting murders and accidental deaths of children and teenagers in schools and homes that shook Brazil this year, as well as the impact caused by the Columbine, Colorado school massacre and other firearm-related tragedies in the United States.

But the bill is facing heavy resistance from broad sectors of the population, who see it as anti-democratic intervention by the government, which they allege is seeking to deprive them of the right to self-defence.

Critics argue that only decent citizens would end up being disarmed, and not the criminals, who obtain their weapons on the black market. Thus, they assert, the new law would do nothing to curtail the violence, which has other causes.

The draft law is “demagogic” and will not contribute to the fight against crime, said Deputy Alberto Fraga, arguing against then bill in the Commission on National Defence of the lower house of parliament.

Another argument raised against the bill is that a ban on firearms would hurt Brazilian industry and drive up unemployment, and would be ineffective because organised crime uses mainly foreign weapons that are smuggled into the country.

But according to a study by the non-governmental Institute of Research on Religion, over 83 percent of the illegally owned firearms confiscated by police in Rio de Janeiro in the past five years were made in Brazil.

However, most of those small arms were exported to Paraguay, and returned as contraband to Brazil, said the head of the Institute, Rubem Cesar Fernandes.

The Institute’s study also pointed to the growing rates of shooting deaths among youths. While 35 percent of deaths among 15 to 19-year-olds in Rio de Janeiro in 1983 were caused by firearms, that proportion had climbed to 53 percent by last year.

Statistics presented by the Movimento Viva Rio back the argument that arming oneself in self-defence is a bad idea. According to a study of around 4,000 robberies committed in March in Rio de Janeiro, 30 percent of the victims who put up resistance were killed, and 30 percent were injured, while less than one percent of those who did not react were killed.

The studies by the Institute of Research on Religion and the Movimento Viva Rio were presented at a meeting organised by the latter Monday on controlling trade in small arms.

Brazil has long been seeking to curb the entry of smuggled firearms from Paraguay, and Minister Dias announced that he would step up efforts along with the rest of the members of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) trade bloc – Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.

The issue is not only of concern to Brazil. Indeed, the United Nations is organising a global conference on regulating and controlling the international arms trade, to be held in the year 2001.