Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

RIGHTS-BRAZIL: New Hot-Line to Combat Abuses

Mario Osava

Rio de Janeiro, Jun 21 2004 (IPS) - Abuses including killings and torture by a police force that ”is not yet democratic,” the persistence of slave labour, and degrading prison conditions are several of the severe human rights challenges facing Brazil.

But equally important, according to the government’s Special Secretary for Human Rights, Nilmario Miranda, is the fact that things are slowly changing.

Miranda said the concept of human rights ”is new” in Brazil, which only abolished slavery a little over 100 years ago and has lived in democracy for just a few decades in the years that have passed since 1946.

A new easy-to-remember hot-line, reached by simply dialling the number 100, is a new weapon aimed at drastically reducing human rights violations in this South American country of 178 million.

The new hot-line system will be launched during next week’s National Conference on Human Rights, Miranda told foreign correspondents at a news briefing in Rio de Janeiro Monday.

”We expect some 40,000 telephone calls a month denouncing abuses,” most of which would never even be reported if an anonymous hot-line did not exist, because the public ”does not trust” the police, he said.

Through the hot-line, each case will be referred to the appropriate authorities, whether the public prosecutor’s office, the police, commissions charged with overseeing the rights of children and adolescents, or other institutions.

The aim is ”to make the institutions and laws that already exist, but may be weak or unenforced, work,” said Miranda.

But greater effectiveness in the fight against human rights abuses will only be achieved once a new constitutional amendment goes into effect, which will put human rights crimes under the jurisdiction of the national police and judicial authorities.

Brazil is a federal republic where the 26 states have a high degree of autonomy and are in charge of public security, controlling the police and the courts that directly combat crime and violence, said the secretary, who has the rank of a cabinet minister.

The constitutional amendment, which took 11 years to make its way through Congress, will transfer jurisdiction over serious human rights crimes from the national to the federal courts.

State courts are vulnerable to pressure from local authorities and political and economic interests, which according to human rights activists explains the impunity surrounding many gross human rights violations, like mass killings of rural activists committed by the police in northern Brazil in the mid-1990s.

The police and other state agents are implicated in 98 percent of the 103 cases of human rights crimes in Brazil brought before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which forms part of the Organisation of American States (OAS), said Miranda.

Some progress has been made under the current government of leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, said the secretary.

For example, since Lula took office in January 2003, no rural activist belonging to the ”landless” movement has been killed by the police, said Miranda, who added that it is the armed militias created by landowners ”who kill” activists now.

The official said that combating private militias will be easier now thanks to a law approved last December that bans anyone but the police, members of the military, or private security guards working for legally constituted security agencies from carrying firearms.

In addition, voters will decide in an October 2005 referendum whether firearm sales to civilians should be banned.

The referendum will provide the opportunity to carry out a campaign to raise awareness ”not only on disarmament, but on tolerance, respect for others, and human rights,” said Miranda.

He pointed out that the great majority of the 44,000 homicides committed in Brazil every year involve firearms, and that half are the result of ”futile” or insignificant conflicts, like street fights, drunken brawls and family arguments.

These murders could be avoided, said the secretary, if it were not so easy to buy and carry a gun in Brazil.

A ”culture of human rights” is lacking in this country, especially among the police, which – the official recognised – were created to protect the state and private wealth, ”not to defend citizens.”

But the outlook is changing due to the training of new police officers and the creation of a national system of police records and public security.

State violence, in the form of extrajudicial executions at the hands of police, and torture and brutal mistreatment of suspects and prisoners, is only one of the four main categories of violence in Brazil that the secretary outlined.

Besides the high rates of crime, he mentioned domestic violence, which is widespread and one of the origins of other forms of violence.

In addition, he pointed to ”social violence” carried out by social movements, ”which should not be approached as merely a criminal phenomenon,” but whose underlying causes must also be addressed, said Miranda.

Also falling under Miranda’s jurisdiction is the problem of slave labour, in which workers are not allowed to leave their workplace and are subjected to substandard, often appalling, conditions. Last year, 4,995 people were freed from slave labour, mainly in northern Brazil.

The government hopes ”to eradicate slave labour by 2006,” said Miranda. The most effective measure has been for state banks to suspend credit to estates and plantations that use slave labour, he said.

The Lula administration is also pushing through a law that would allow for the confiscation of land belonging to landowners and business interests that use slave labour.