Chart tracking total gun deaths, and youth gun deaths, in Brazil. Credit: CEBELA and FLACSO.

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 7 2013 (IPS)

The 1992 Carandirú massacre of 111 inmates shot down in what was Brazil’s largest prison was documented in thousands of print and televised news reports, as well as five books and a popular film.

But a similar number of people, mainly young men, are shot to death every day in Brazil, without any repercussions. “We have lost our sensitivity about this day-to-day massacre,” laments Julio Jacobo Waiselfisz, the author of the “Map of Violence 2013: Deaths by Firearm”.

The report, released late Wednesday Mar. 6 in Rio de Janeiro, was produced for the Brazilian Centre for Latin American Studies (CEBELA) and the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), based on official figures. It counts 799,226 deaths by firearm in Brazil from 1980 to 2010. Of that total, 450,255 were young people between the ages of 15 and 29.

This “invisible slaughter” is equivalent to the total official number of people killed in armed conflicts in 12 countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan and Colombia, in the critical years of 2004 to 2007, the Map says.

The data include victims of accidents, suicides and “undetermined” causes of firearm deaths. But most were homicides: an average of 84 percent in the three decades covered, rising to 94.6 percent in 2010, partly due to improvements in the Health Ministry’s Mortality Information System.

The homicide rate per 100,000 population in Brazil grew from 5.1 in 1980 to 19.3 in 2010. But among the young it climbed even faster, from 9.1 to 42.5.

Another important aspect is that 2.5 black people are shot for every white person killed by firearms in this country, where half the population of 196 million self-identifies in the census as “Afro-descendant”.

The upward tendency was not steady. The murder rate rose until 2003, to 20.4 per 100,000 people. But it went down again in the following years, to 18 per 100,000 in 2007, before rising slightly once again.

“We have been experiencing an unstable equilibrium” since 2005, with a decline in homicides in the most populous, richest states in the southeast, especially São Paulo, but with “drastic growth” in the more impoverished north and northeast, Waiselfisz told IPS.

In Maceió, the capital of the northeastern state of Alagoas, the rate of deaths by firearm rose threefold, to 94.5 per 100,000 population in 2010, while in São Paulo it dropped to 10.4 per 100,000 – just one-quarter of the rate registered a decade earlier.

Three main factors explain the shift of violent crime away from the southeast and into other parts of the country, according to Waiselfisz, an Argentine sociologist who lives in Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, one of the most violent cities in the northeast, Brazil’s poorest region.

Economic development, which was concentrated in the industrial cities of the southeast, began to be decentralised in the 1990s, with new poles of development in other states and in the hinterland drawing people and investment.

To that was added the National Public Security Plan, with a fund that helped improve the fight against crime in large cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

In addition, improvements in record-keeping reduced the number of “clandestine cemeteries” and cut the under-reporting of deaths almost in half.

Despite the progress made, the number of firearm deaths is still too high, amounting to “one Carandirú per day,” said Waiselfisz.

He described the phenomenon as a Latin American “ulcer, a legacy of colonial, slave-owning times, of disdain for human life,” basically attributable to “a culture of violence, where conflicts are resolved by exterminating the other” instead of through negotiation or the administration of justice, and to “high levels of impunity.”

United Nations figures indicate that the average homicide rate in Latin America was 26 per 100,000 population in 2010, three times the European average. According to the World Health Organisation, any country with a murder rate above 10 per 100,000 people is suffering an epidemic of violence.

Studies in São Paulo estimate that only four percent of murderers go to prison, and say “losses” are suffered at every stage of the process – in the reporting of murders, police investigations, prosecution and sentencing. That stimulates crime, which in turn fuels impunity, in a “vicious circle,” Waiselfisz said.

He cited the sharp rise in murders in the state of Alagaos – 248 percent in the last decade – which he said was due to the arrival of another severe crime problem plaguing Latin America: the drug mafias, which were forced out of other areas. He also blamed the weakness of the local police, which held strikes that lasted more than seven months, he said.

Jorge Werthein, the president of CEBELA, told IPS there is a contradiction that merits greater reflection: the fact that the murder rate remained steady, and even rose slightly, in the last 10 years, while the economy and job creation showed strong growth, and poverty and inequality shrank.

Brazilian society must acknowledge the “unacceptable levels of violence” and seek answers “that do not only rely on repression,” he said.

The few years when the murder rate was in decline in Brazil were the result of a campaign against the possession of firearms, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, which was partly frustrated by a 2005 referendum, when voters failed to approve a ban on the sale of guns and ammunition in the country.

In Brazil, like in other Latin American countries, controlling arms sales is necessary to reduce the number of murders, and measures are also needed in other areas, targeting, for example, the culture of violence that persists in the region, Werthein said.

The Map of Violence, which tracks homicides in Brazil, is mainly aimed at “bringing to light” the day-to-day deaths that remain “invisible” to society and that require “national policies” and not just the habitual short-term measures taken to combat outbreaks of violent crime in specific areas, Waiselfisz said.

In Papua New Guinea, the largest island nation in Melanesia in the southwest Pacific, where more than 60 percent of major crimes involve guns, a burgeoning illegal arms trade is associated with lack of employment growth and low human security, with vulnerable communities suffering the consequences.

This is the case in the autonomous region of Bougainville in the east of the country, where disarmament remains elusive more than ten years after a civil war fought over resource exploitation.

“Guns are now being used in domestic violence and armed robberies, and to settle land issues,” said Helen Hakena, director of the Leitana Nehan Women’s Development Agency in Bougainville.

“Recently there have also been armed hold-ups and shoot-outs between gun owners and police. Many people in Bougainville now accept guns as a normal part of life.”

Development and economic recovery in Bougainville have been slow over the past decade, and many issues from the civil war have not been resolved.

“We also see that guns are being traded between Bougainville and other parts of Papua New Guinea and across borders. People from the Highlands often come here to buy guns,” Hakena said.

Gun violence is no stranger to the small Melanesian communities in this part of the world, which over the past quarter century have experienced the Bougainville independence struggle (1989–1998), civil war in the Solomon Islands (1999-2003), and four military coups in Fiji between 1987 and 2006.

In Bougainville, 20,000 people were killed and more than 60,000 displaced, while a “lost generation” of children were denied education and infrastructure was decimated. In the Solomon Islands, communities were ravaged by armed violence and arson, development came to a halt, and the local economy collapsed.

There has been no armed conflict in Melanesia – which comprises Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji and New Caledonia – or the wider Pacific Islands for nearly a decade. But Gordon Nanau, a lecturer in politics and international affairs at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, said that was no reason for complacency.

“Whether there are serious conflicts or not, arms circulation should always be a big concern,” he emphasised. “Pacific Islanders are concerned about the issue of illegal arms smuggling. With weapons around, communities are less safe, and supplies of arms passing through the Pacific must be discouraged at all costs.”

The Pacific Islands account for a fraction of the global legal trade in small arms and light weapons estimated to be worth more than 8.5 billion dollars in 2012. However, there are 3.1 million civilian-owned firearms in the Pacific region, or one per ten people, which is 50 percent above the world average. And they outnumber those held by military and police forces by a ratio of 14:1.

Papua New Guinean civilians possess the largest number of guns in Melanesia, with an estimated 72,000 or 1.2 guns per 100 people, while police and defence forces hold approximately 19,000 firearms. New Caledonia is second with up to 50,000 civilian-held guns. And in the Solomon Islands, since disarmament, during which 90 percent of firearms were surrendered, there are believed to be 1,775 privately owned guns, or 0.35 per 100 people.

Gun violence is a serious issue in Papua New Guinea. The capital, Port Moresby, with a population of 450,000, has a murder rate of approximately 54 per 100,000 people, compared to an average global rate of less than 7 per 100,000 people.

And in the Southern Highlands, where an estimated 90 percent of firearms are illegally owned, 23 percent of households have been victimised by guns.

The Small Arms Survey, an independent research project located at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, concludes that crime is driven by the breakdown of traditional values, limited employment opportunities, inequality and disputes over resource ownership. Incentives for acquiring guns include self-defence and a sense of duty to defend tribal or clan interests.

And according to Oxfam International, “the impact of small arms is especially damaging in the Pacific region because of a lack of state capacity, corruption and the illegal sale and diversion of ammunition to armed groups and individuals.”

The majority of firearms used in conflicts and crime in Melanesia have been leaked or stolen from legal police and military sources. The Small Arms Survey estimates up to 30 percent of guns in public holdings in Papua New Guinea are siphoned or sold to civilians and armed groups, with the illegal trade and smuggling of guns financed by politicians and the educated elite. Poverty and low wages have exacerbated corruption.

In 2005, Papua New Guinea’s Guns Control Committee produced a report which made numerous recommendations for gun reforms. But these have never been acted upon.

There is also a known link between the trade in guns and drugs. In the Pacific Islands, the illicit commercial cultivation of marijuana has been identified in Fiji, Palau, Samoa, Tonga and Papua New Guinea, where it is regularly traded for firearms.

However, many law enforcement agencies in the Pacific Islands are under-funded, with limited capacity to implement existing gun laws or monitor the extensive maritime traffic between isolated and sparsely populated islands.

Today there are no regional agreements regulating arms transfers or the activities of arms brokers, while gun legislation varies across Pacific Island states.

The Pacific Islands Forum, an inter-governmental organisation of 16 independent and self-governing island states, which is concerned about the threat posed by illegal guns and light weapons to stability and socioeconomic well-being, has endorsed the United Nations Programme of Action on small arms and light weapons and initiated measures to address arms circulation.

The Model Weapons Control Bill was developed and accepted by member states in 2003, and was further updated in 2010 to include brokering provisions. The challenge is consistent application across states.

“The implementation of the Model Weapons Bill is a matter for members of the Pacific Islands Forum to consider based on their specific national priorities,” a spokesperson for the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat said.

“Some countries face immense firearm and law and order challenges and accordingly have undertaken activities to assess the issues they face and are working towards improving gun control and law and order.”

Another regional initiative is the Pacific Transnational Crime Network, a collaboration of law enforcement, customs and immigration agencies across the Pacific, sponsored by the Australian Federal Police, which is working to build the capacity of island states to combat transnational crime.

But ultimately, reducing the quantities, circulation and misuse of guns in Melanesia also entails diminishing their demand through raising levels of development, socioeconomic equality and human security, and effectively tackling corruption.