Human RIghts Watch, World Report 2003: Brazil

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Human RIghts Watch, World Report 2003: Brazil

Human Rights Developments

Defending Human Rights

The Role of the International Community


Brazil made only limited progress in curbing such long-standing human
rights problems as police brutality, inhumane prison conditions,
assaults on freedom of the press, and forced labor. Positive steps
taken by the outgoing administration of President Fernando Henrique
Cardoso included the passage of a renewed National Human Rights
Program and the opening of police archives containing information on
abuses committed during the 1964-1985 dictatorship.

The October election to the presidency of the Workers' Party
candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, raised hopes for human rights
improvement. Although human rights issues were not central to his
political campaign, President-elect da Silva publicly committed
himself to promoting the welfare of Brazil's marginalized populations.


HUMAN RIGHTS DEVELOPMENTS
Extrajudicial killings and abusive police practices continued to be a
severe problem in many parts of the country. In the coastal state of
Espírito Santo, for example, a paramilitary vigilante group called
Scuderie Detetive Le Cocq--composed mainly of members of the civil and
military police forces--was known to operate freely, engaging in death
squad activity as well as organized crime.

In July, the country's top official human rights body--the federal
Human Rights Defense Council (Conselho de Defesa dos Direitos da
Pessoa Humana, CDDPH), headed by Justice Minister Miguel Reale
Junior--recommended that the federal government intervene in Espírito
Santo to re-establish order. The council's recommendation for federal
intervention was made after the local bar association filed a
complaint claiming that the state government had been infiltrated by
organized crime and after the president of the bar association had
received several death threats. Federal Attorney General Geraldo
Brindeiro overruled the council's request for federal intervention,
arguing that it was not a viable option during an election year. This
decision, supported by President Cardoso, prompted Reale Junior's
resignation, as well as that of the head of the Federal Police and
other high-ranking law enforcement officials.

Instead of intervening in Espírito Santo, the federal government
decided to create a joint federal and state police task force to
investigate organized crime and human rights abuses. At this writing,
the task force was investigating the murder of human rights lawyer
Joaquim Marcelo Denadai (described below), the links between the
Scuderie and the state's public authorities, and several death threats
against state judges.

Despite widespread police abuses, only four of Brazil's twenty-six
states (São Paulo, Pará, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro), and the
Federal District, had a police ombudsman's office to respond to
complaints of police brutality. Low wages, poor training, and
inadequate equipment all contributed to widespread corruption and
violence among police forces. In certain cases, police allegedly
resorted to extrajudicial killings to eliminate potentially
incriminating witnesses. On May 29, for example, two hooded men--who
according to local press reports were members of São Paulo's military
police--murdered José Luciano do Nascimento, a construction worker
with no previous criminal record. Nascimento had previously filed a
complaint for grievous bodily harm against police sergeant Wagner
Gomes de Oliveira, who shot him in the knee during a police operation
in Vila Bulow, causing serious injuries and forcing him to use
crutches.

Violence against rural workers remained widespread and sometimes
involved police participation. According to the Pastoral Land
Commission (Comissão Pastoral da Terra, CPT) a total of 1,548 rural
workers were killed in land disputes in Brazil from 1988 to August
2002. In 2002 alone, at least sixteen rural laborers were murdered in
land conflicts and seventy-three people received death threats.

Violence against rural workers was primarily directed at the leaders
of peasant organizations. On January 19, for instance, Jose Rainha
Junior, the general coordinator of the Rural Landless Worker's
Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, MST), was shot
in the shoulder as he escaped an ambush in western São Paulo state.
According to a Brazilian rights group, the ambush was organized by a
local landowner whose farm had been occupied by MST members earlier
that day. On June 27, Ivo Laurindo do Carmo, another MST leader, was
stabbed to death in the Irituia region, in the east of Pará state. Do
Carmo was a prominent land reform activist who promoted occupation of
farms and plantations by peasants as a means of putting pressure on
the government to accelerate land reform. According to MST officials,
in the months prior to his killing Do Carmo had received repeated
threats from gunmen hired by plantation owners. On July 23, another
MST leader from the state of Pará--Bartolomeu Morais da Silva--was
tortured (both of his legs were broken) and killed with twelve shots
to the head. As with Do Carmo, Da Silva had received anonymous death
threats prior to his assassination, and believed that local landowners
were responsible.

Cases of rural violence, including killings, were rarely prosecuted,
and criminal prosecutions rarely ended in convictions. An exception
was the case of the Eldorado dos Carajás massacre, which came to trial
in 2002. The massacre occurred in 1996 during a protest roadblock
organized by members of the MST. On April 16, 1996, around 1,500
peasants blocked a rural highway in Eldorado dos Carajás, in the
Amazonian state of Pará, to demand agricultural reform and to draw
attention to their petition for the right to settle on idle farmland
nearby. On April 17, the state governor of Pará, Almir Gabriel, and
the secretary of public security, Pablo Sette Cbmara, ordered the
military police to disperse the crowd. In the ensuing confrontation,
nineteen landless peasants were killed and sixty-nine were wounded.
According to judicial investigations, some of the victims were shot at
point-blank range, while others were killed at a considerable distance
from the site of the clash. The three commanding officers in charge of
the operation were Col. Mario Pantoja, Maj. Jose Maria Oliveira, and
Capt. Raimundo Lameira, all members of Pará's military police force.

In May 2002, a Pará court found Colonel Pantoja guilty of the murder
of the nineteen peasants, sentencing him to 228 years in prison. Major
Oliveira, one of Pantoja's subordinates, was sentenced to 158 years in
prison: eight years and four months for each of the people killed.
Despite their convictions, Pantoja and Oliveira were not arrested,
being allowed to appeal their sentences in freedom. Captain Lameira,
the third commanding officer charged in the case, was acquitted. The
tribunal also absolved nine police sergeants and another 126 military
police officers, ruling that they had only "fired their weapons into
the air" and not at peasants. The prosecutors handling the case
announced plans to appeal the acquittals, arguing that "the
condemnation of the high-ranking officers and not those who
perpetrated the massacre is absurd."

The government officials with political responsibility for the
institutions that carried out the massacre--the governor of the state
of Pará, Almir Gabriel, and the general commander of the military
police at that time, Colonel Fabiano Lopes--were not prosecuted for
the massacre. The MST and the Pará Society for the Protection of Human
Rights, both of which withdrew from the trial claiming that judges
were subject to pressure from local politicians and landowners,
continued their efforts to transfer cases involving human rights
violations to federal courts in Brasilia. Advocates of federalizing
human rights crimes believed that such transfers were needed because
of the undue influence of local authorities and powerful land-owning
elites over trials affecting their interests. At this writing, a bill
was pending before Congress that would grant the federal government
jurisdiction over serious human rights violations.

The torture of criminal suspects remained a widespread practice. A
particularly notorious case of torture and negligent treatment was
that of Fernando Dutra Pinto, who died in January 2002. Dutra Pinto
had kidnapped Brazilian media tycoon Silvio Santos and his daughter,
killed two police officers, and then turned himself in to the local
authorities. The governor of São Paulo state, Geraldo Alckmin,
publicly guaranteed Pinto's safety, promising him protection from
police retaliation. Only six months later, however, Dutra Pinto was
dead. According to the Teotônio Vilela Human Rights Commission
(Comissão Teotônio Vilela de Direitos Humanos), a respected
nongovernmental organization (NGO), Dutra Pinto was attacked and
severely beaten by prison guards at the Belém Temporary Detention
Center (Centro de Detenção Provisória do Belém). He was denied
adequate medical treatment in prison and, as a result, died of a
pulmonary infection three weeks later.

The living conditions of many of Brazil's penitentiaries, jails, and
police lockups remained inhumane, and violence against prisoners was
common. A central problem was the overcrowding of Brazil's penal
system, especially in the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia,
Rio Grande do Sul, and Pernambuco. According to official figures, as
of April, Brazil's 903 penal institutions housed 235,000 inmates, well
above the system's capacity of 170,000. The lack of space, combined
with an underfunded and understaffed penal system, led to frequent
prison riots and other outbreaks of violence.

In January, for example, twenty-seven inmates were killed during a
prison riot in the Urso Branco penitentiary, near the Rôndonia state
capital of Porto Velho. The uprising began after a failed escape
attempt and a protest against overcrowding and restrictions on
circulation inside the prison. According to local press reports, the
victims were stabbed, shot, hung, or flung from the roof of the
penitentiary by prisoners belonging to rival gangs.

A similar incident occurred in late May, when twelve inmates and a
guard were killed during a riot at a maximum-security prison in
Manaus, Amazônas. Prisoners organized the riot to protest the death of
an inmate who, according to press reports, had been beaten and
tortured to death by prison guards. Inmates also demanded improved
health care and that steps be taken to address overcrowding.

On September 15, São Paulo state authorities shut down the largest
prison in Latin America, the Casa de Detenção, in the Carandirú prison
complex. The prison was notorious as the site of a 1992 massacre in
which 111 inmates were killed by riot police. Prisoners were
transferred to smaller and more modern penitentiaries in the state's
interior.

Youth within the penal system were also subject to a range of abuses
and ill-treatment. Human Rights Watch research in northern Brazil
revealed that it was common practice for youth detention facilities to
punish inmates through improper cell restriction, sometimes for
periods of a month or more. Many detained youth were deprived adequate
health care and education, despite the requirements of Brazilian law.
They were also vulnerable to violence. Responding to a disturbance in
a facility in the state of Pará in April, military police shock troops
fired tear gas and rubber bullets at the youth inside, and beat some
of them with batons and tree branches.

Censorship prior to publication, exorbitantly high lawsuits against
the press, and violence against journalists continued to undermine
freedom of expression in Brazil. Federal and local judges repeatedly
banned publications and ordered the confiscation of newspapers and
magazines under the guise of protecting "honor and integrity." On May
24, Judge Marcelo Oliveira da Silva censored CartaCapital, a weekly
magazine published in the city of São Paulo. The magazine was ordered
not to disclose the contents of taped conversations between
presidential candidate Anthony Garotinho and Guilherme Freire, a donor
to Garotinho's previous campaigns, or else incur a U.S.$200,000 fine.
Media outlets suffered disproportionately high monetary damages in
civil lawsuits involving libel charges. Journalists investigating acts
of corruption and embezzlement often ended up facing criminal
prosecution.

Violent attacks against journalists, including threats and killings,
were also of concern. According to the National Newspapers Association
(Associação Nacional de Jornais, ANJ), an organization of newspaper
publishers, nine journalists were murdered since 1995. At the time of
this writing, most of these crimes remained unsolved, contributing to
impunity and encouraging further violence against members of the
press. A particularly violent case involved Tim Lopes, an
investigative reporter for the Brazilian television network TV Globo
who disappeared on June 2. Lopes was last seen in a shantytown in the
city of Rio de Janeiro, where he was investigating drug trafficking
and the sexual exploitation of minors. According to police reports,
Lopes was executed by Elias Pereira da Silva, a powerful local drug
trafficker. Lopes was tortured and dismembered, after which his body
was burned and buried in a clandestine cemetery. On August 8, Maurício
de Lima Matias, a suspected accomplice in the assassination, was
killed in a shoot-out with police officers. At this writing, seven
suspects in Lopes' murder were in custody, including Pereira da Silva.

Journalist Domingos Sávio Brandão, owner and publisher of the Folha do
Estado daily newspaper, was killed by two unidentified gunmen on
September 30. According to local press reports Brandão's death was
related to his investigations of drug trafficking and corruption among
public officials. However, no suspects had been apprehended at this
writing.

Violence against gay men and lesbians was also a cause of concern.
Hate crimes against gay men were believed to be especially serious in
the states of São Paulo, Pernambuco, and Bahia, and in the Federal
District.

Forced labor--formally abolished in 1888--re-emerged over the past
years, especially in the northern states' ranches and timber
industries. According to the Catholic Church's Pastoral Land
Commission, at least twenty-five thousand people were subject to
forced labor in Brazil in 2002, and local authorities--including state
police forces, attorneys, and courts--largely tolerated such abuses.
Earlier in the year the Ministry of Labor's special antislavery Mobile
Enforcement Team reported that 1,400 workers had been freed, many of
them showing signs of malnourishment and suffering from potentially
deadly diseases such as malaria and hepatitis.

In September, the federal government opened police archives from the
1964-1985 dictatorship, bringing to light information regarding the
killing or disappearance of hundreds of activists who had opposed the
military government. However, the archives were only made available to
victims and their families, as well as to a special commission
investigating the crimes committed during this period.

In May, President Cardoso launched a renewed version of the 1996
National Human Rights Program, created to curb discrimination and
protect the rights of minority groups, including blacks, indigenous
people, lesbians and gay men, and the elderly. The right to same-sex
unions, which permitted the transfer of property and the extension of
social security and health benefits to partners of the same sex, was
one of the highlights of the 518-item program. Some of the measures,
like the right to same-sex marriages, were discussed in Congress.

While this program represented a step forward, history indicated the
need for sustained attention to the program's implementation. For six
years, the Cardoso administration had failed to adequately put into
practice the 1996 human rights plan and to bring about significant
improvements in human rights conditions.


DEFENDING HUMAN RIGHTS
Human rights defenders faced death threats and harassment. A report
released in early 2002 by Brazil's Global Justice Center and Ireland's
Front Line analyzed fifty-six cases of violence against human rights
activists over the preceding five years. The report identified
nineteen homicides and thirty-seven other incidents, including
attempted murders, beatings, kidnappings, and disappearances.

The paramilitary group Scuderie Detetive Le Cocq, active in the state
of Espírito Santo, was believed to be responsible for the murder of
local human rights lawyer Joaquim Marcelo Denadai on April 15. Prior
to his assassination, Denadai had accused the Scuderie of "death
squad" killings and complained about widespread corruption in the
state's police forces, including police participation in numerous
illegal activities. At this writing, police officer Dalberto Antunes
da Cunha, an alleged member of the Scuderie, was awaiting trial. A
police detective who had been investigating the Scuderie, Francisco
Badenes, also received death threats.


THE ROLE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
United Nations
In January, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary
Robinson visited the country for three days. She met with Ministry of
Justice officials to follow up on the implementation of the results of
the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia
and Related Intolerance. She also met with President Cardoso and
participated in a number of activities organized by the World Social
Forum in Porto Alegre.

Jean Ziegler, U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, visited
Brazil in March. After meeting with the president, other political and
judicial figures, and NGO representatives, he declared that serious
and chronic malnutrition in a country as rich as Brazil was
unacceptable and constituted a violation of the right to food.

In March, Brazil extended a standing invitation to the United Nations
Commission on Human Rights to send special thematic rapporteurs to
investigate human rights conditions in the country.


Organization of American States
In February, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)
issued a report on the 1993 extrajudicial execution of Deniz Bento da
Silva--a landless activist--by members of the military police of
Paraná state. The commission concluded that the police violated da
Silva's right to life, among other rights.

In March, the IACHR urged the Brazilian government to take measures to
protect inmates at the Urso Branco penitentiary, in the city of Porto
Velho, state of Rôndonia, after a January prison riot ended in the
killing of twenty-seven inmates. The government's failure to adopt
such measures, leading to the killing of ten more inmates after the
commission's report, forced the intervention of the Inter-American
Court of Human Rights, which in June ordered the government to adopt
measures to prevent further inmate deaths at Urso Branco.


European Union
Bilateral relations between the European Union and Brazil were
strengthened in 2002. The European Union remained Brazil's main
trading partner, absorbing the largest share of its exports, and
serving as the most important source of development aid and foreign
investment. As of April, the European Union had committed €210 million
(roughly U.S.$205 million) to cooperation projects in Brazil.


United States
In its 2002 human rights report, the U.S. Department of State
identified police brutality as an ongoing problem, observing that
state police forces engaged in extrajudicial killings, arbitrary
detentions, and torture. The State Department also lamented the
failure of state governments to adequately investigate and prosecute
human rights violations. Other issues addressed in the report were
harsh prison conditions, violence against land reform leaders, the
harassment of human rights defenders, child abuse and prostitution,
and violence against women and gays and lesbians.

At this writing, the United States government had not engaged in any
programs aimed at addressing human rights issues in Brazil.