CRIME-BRAZIL: Public Safety Earns Priority Status

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 23 2000 (IPS) - Urban violence in Brazil is now a government priority – second only to economic stability – but has a history that seems to justify both the ambitious anti-crime initiative President Fernando Henrique Cardoso announced this week, as well as the scepticism with which it was received.

In 1998, 41,802 people were murdered in the country, nearly four times the number recorded 19 years earlier, according to the National Secretariat of Public Safety, an office of the Justice Ministry that is spearheading the new crime fighting programme.

The total number of killings over the last two decades surpasses a half million. The murder rate jumped from 9.4 cases per 1,000 inhabitants to 25.8 per 1,000 in that period, while in several of Brazil’s metropolitan areas the rate is already over 50 per 1,000.

The murder of Geisa Firmo Goncalves on June 12 in Rio de Janeiro is a case that shocked public opinion more than the crime statistics themselves could, and prompted the government to accelerate implementation of the National Public Safety Programme, which president Cardoso launched Tuesday.

Firmo Goncalves, a 20-year-old teacher who taught crafts in an impoverished neighbourhood, was one of 10 people held hostage for four hours on a city bus by pistol-wielding Sandro do Nascimento.

The incident, broadcast live on television throughout the country and the world, ended when the police fired on the attacker, who responded by shooting hostage Firmo Goncalves who he had in his grip.

Nascimento later died, asphyxiated, while in police custody.

The national outcry about Firmo Goncalves’ death, triggered by the televised violence and police incompetence, prompted the government to put its public safety programme on the fast track after suffering three months of delays and disagreements among various ministers.

Nascimento’s life story is an illustration of how factories Brazil’s major cities have turned into factories of violence.

In 1993, Nascimento was 14 years old and one of 72 street children who usually slept outside a church in the centre of Rio de Janeiro. That year, an “extermination squad,” made up mostly of police officers, attacked the children, assassinating eight of them.

Of the 64 who survived what is known as the “Candelaria massacre,” an incident that made international news, Nascimento is the 40th to be killed since then, according to attorney Cristina Leonardo, director of the Brazilian Centre for the Defence of Children’s and Adolescents’ Rights, a non-governmental organisation (NGO).

Involvement with drug trafficking or armed attacks has been the principal cause behind so many deaths, and has put another 10 of the 1993 massacre survivors in prison. Some had served as witnesses in the trials of those charged with the massacre, feeding speculation that they were victims of revenge killings.

Only five of the street children attacked seven years ago have left the streets and have a family life that could be considered normal, according to Yvonne Bezerra de Mello, an artist who has spoken out on behalf of the Candelaria victims, though she laments the “failure” of her attempts to prevent so many of the children from following a life of crime themselves.

The artist believes that a great deal of responsibility falls on the government’s shoulders for not having taken greater action in the case.

A special parliamentary commission that has been investigating drug trafficking activities for the last year has released sobering statistics on the magnitude of crime expansion in Brazil. The commission has identified many politicians, police and business leaders as being involved in criminal activity.

There are at least five witnesses who helped bring down organised crime rings who have been assassinated – a sort of “burning of the files” says deputy Pompeo de Mattos, a member of the commission. Another homicide and two suicides involving witnesses, apparently for unrelated motives, have also awakened suspicions, according to De Mattos.

The government’s new 124-point anti-crime programme – covering the short and medium term – focuses efforts on repression. A ban on firearms went into immediate effect, while funding has been earmarked for boosting police forces and to expand military presence on the nation’s borders in an attempt to halt drugs and arms trafficking.

The Justice Ministry is co-ordinating the programme, modifying its traditional profile as an agency that defends a range of legal rights by taking on this new policing role. It will have the support of the Federal Police, which increases the troops, resources and services available to carry out the initiative.

The new Justice Minister, José Gregori, who previously served as director of human rights within the same ministry, justified the changes saying that currently “there is no obligation more important” than fighting violence.

But Jaime Chemello, president of Brazil’s Catholic Bishops’ Conference, criticises the recently announced government programme because it does not address the root social causes, such as unemployment and hunger.

Many among the political opposition agree with Chemello, while still others challenge the design of the programme because it did not include input from state governments, which they say are directly responsible for the safety of the Brazilian people.