BRAZIL: Police Violence Accelerates Human Rights Projects

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 3 1997 (IPS) - The police violence screened on a national news programme Brazilian provided the momentum needed for human rights projects started years ago and left shelved.

The Senate Constitution and Justice Commission, which suggests new legal bills, unanimously approved a project aiming to define and punish the crime of torture.

This project, one of the priorities of the National Human Rights Programme, was approved in the Chamber of Deputies and “was paralysed by the Senate six months ago, for some unknown reason,” said Deputy Helio Bicudo, a lawyer and veteran militant in the war on police violence and arbitrariness.

Brazilian legislation ignores the crime of torture, even though the country signed international conventions committing itself to combatting a common offence amongst the police.

The torturers can only be prosecuted for “bodily harm” when this is scientifically proven, said Bicudo.

This type of law and other anti-violence proposals gained strength following the national uproar over images of the police torturing, humilliating and killing passersby with no apparent motive in a street of the poor Diadema neighbourhood on the outskirts of Sao Paulo.

This action, filmed by an amateur film-maker in the early hours of March 3, 5 and 7, was shown on the Globo TV network on Monday night. Interviews with survivers of this “barbarism” and the widow of a worker killed by the police increased the impact of the events.

Two military police chiefs, responsible for the area of Diadema and internal discipline, were forced to resign by the Sao Paulo state government.

The press discovered that five of the ten police officers seen carrying out the brutal acts had also been accused of other crimes, including murder.

National indignation strengthened proposals to disband the military police. A long tradition of massacres and crimes mark the history of these bodies created by the state governments early this century.

It was the military police who killed 19 landless rural people calling for land reform a year ago in Eldorado de Carajas, in northern Brazil.

In 1992, they were involved in the massacre of 111 prisoners in Sao Paulo and another 10 rural workers in Corumbiara, in the northeast, in 1995.

There is no justification why the civil functions of the police should be carried out by people with military training, who tend to look on the public as the enemy, said Dalmo Dallari, a renowned lawyer from the University of Sao Paulo.

Pressure from human rights campaigners led to the approval of a law aiming to eliminate the privileges of these police, who are presently judged for offences by a military Human Rights Watch, a non governmental organisation active in Brazil.

“It is known that torture, murders and arbitrary behaviour by the police are widespread in the nation, but their victims and witnesses are afraid to report them for fear ofty Bicudo already presented the Chamber with a plan which aims to correct this distortion by reducing the power of the Military Justice. He also proposed incorporating this police force into the civil security corps.

These projects, brought to a halt in Congress, could gain new momentum with the scandals revealed this week.

A national witness protection plan must also be approved in order to put an end to the impunity which stimulates the violence, said James Cavallaro, director of Human Rights Watch, a non governmental organisation active in Brazil.

“It is known that torture, murders and arbitrary behaviour by the police are widespread in the nation, but their victims and viour by the police are widespread in the nation, but their vic