Human Rights in Brazil
There are many articles published discussing the violation of human rights around the world, for example a nongovernmental organization called Human Rights Watch has published many articles related to this issue. Since I am from Sao Paulo Brazil, I would like to share with the class what are and how the Brazilian citizens are treated by some Governmental organizations. Many of them do not respect the rights of the people and instead, treat them badly. I ask the question, are Human Rights really respected in Brazil?
Police violence continues to be a major cause of human rights violations in Brazil; some police use some very abusive methods toward the people. Prison conditions are extremely bad and in rural areas, violence and land conflicts are ongoing and human rights defenders constantly suffer threats and attacks.
In metropolitan areas of the country, especially in the slums, the residents are surrounded by violence, and they also suffer from threats and attacks by criminal gangs, uninformed police and armed militias, and some if not all of them are linked to the police. They are dishonest with the residents of these communities and the police force usually receives bribes from these gangs. This type of actions makes them corrupt similar to some Brazilian politicians that do nothing to stop them but instead accept bribes themselves. For instance I would like to show a video about what happened in Brazil back in 2006 when the President of the Legislative Chamber of the Federal District; Leonardo Nada Prudente was receiving cash “bribe” from the president of Codeplan, a computer company that provided services to the Government at the time. They pay the President bribe and in return they keep doing business with the company. It is really sad to see things like this happening in such a country like Brazil, the tenth largest economy in the world, and within South America it is the biggest and most populous country. But unfortunately that is the reality that we; the Brazilians citizens have to face almost every day.
To watch the video please see below or click here.
The most striking image shows him hiding a roll of money in his socks. Even though this video was shown publicly on the T.V. for everyone in Brazil to see, no actions were taken, they did not go to jail or court. However Leonardo Prudent is still working as the Legislative Chamber of the Federal District and probably keeps on receiving bribes from others politicians.
Each year, approximately 50,000 people are murdered in Brazil. Only in the state of Rio de Janeiro 694 people were murdered in the first six months of 2007 in confrontation between gangs and police. This type of murder remains as a serious problem in Brazil, but nothing is done to stop the problem. Prisons and penitentiaries are places of torture, intimidation and extortion. The police abuse is sometimes justified as unavoidable fact to combat the crime in Brazil since the rates are still very high. If not only that, rural workers also face threats, violent attacks and murdering as a result of dispute over land in rural areas. Violations of human rights in Brazil can be related to the issue of impunity.
To ease the situation, the Brazilian Government approved a constitutional amendment back in 2004 to federalize crimes against human rights. It allows certain human rights violations to be transferred from the justice of the states to the federal system of justice. Some politicians want the Government to approve a new law where T.V.s and radio shows are prohibited to show and to talk about any news that are related to any violation that cops and other politicians make that are against the Human Rights. As a result they want to hide the reality from the people, a reality that we citizens of Brazil have been suffering since the Military Dictatorship in 1964. All of this provides evidence that many human rights are not respected in Brazil.
By A. Tassini
© 2010, ATassini. All rights reserved.