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Amnesty International Report 2000 - Brazil

Head of state and government: Fernando Henrique Cardoso
Capital: Brasília
Population: 159.7 million
Official language: Portuguese
Death penalty: abolitionist for ordinary crimes

Conditions of detention for common prisoners, including juvenile offenders, constituted cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Torture and ill-treatment were reported to be common in many police stations, juvenile detention centres and prisons. Deaths in custody in these institutions were generally not documented or investigated. Police and "death squads" linked to the security forces continued to kill civilians, including children, in circumstances suggesting extrajudicial executions. Human rights defenders were threatened and attacked. Most of those responsible for human rights violations continued to benefit from impunity. Land reform activists in a number of states were harassed, assaulted and murdered by gunmen hired by local landowners, with the apparent acquiescence of the police and authorities.

Violations against detainees

In 1999 approximately 170,000 common prisoners were incarcerated in more than 500 prisons and municipal jails, and in thousands of police stations. In June AI launched a campaign on the growing crisis in Brazil's penal system. In response, the authorities proposed a number of measures at federal and, in some cases, state level, which, if implemented, would improve the conditions of detention and the treatment of detainees. These included proposals to reduce the prison population by increasing the provision and application of non-custodial measures and by revising the penal code. The government also declared its intention to build smaller, decentralized prisons to relieve overcrowding and reduce the use of police stations for long-term detention.

Deaths in custody

As in previous years, scores of deaths in custody occurred as a result of violence on the part of police and prison officers, denial of medical care, or negligence on the part of the authorities in preventing violence between detainees. Military and civil police officers reacted to prison disturbances with excessive force and brutality; prisoners were injured, tortured and killed as a result.

• In March John Robert Lamartine Soares was shot dead in the São Paulo House of Detention by a military police officer patrolling the perimeter wall who opened fire on prisoners and guards in the crowded yard following a verbal dispute with another prisoner. The police officer had not been charged by the end of the year.

Torture and ill-treatment

Civil police officers routinely resorted to torture and ill-treatment as a means of extracting confessions. Beatings and intimidation were also employed in prisons and police stations in order to control long-term detainees held in very overcrowded conditions. Prisoners who complained were often subjected to further abuse and reprisals.

• In September public prosecutors, who are responsible for monitoring the police, paid a surprise visit to the Theft and Robbery police station, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais state. In a small bathroom they discovered instruments used for torture, including bare electrical wires for applying electric shocks, and a metal bar from which victims were suspended upside-down by their ankles and wrists, on the so-called "parrots perch". As the prosecutors were interviewing prisoners who had allegedly just been tortured, police forced them to leave, subjected them to abuse, and vandalized their car. The police chief and nine police officers were subsequently suspended from duty.
• In January Jessé Correia de Oliveira Filho was allegedly tortured in the Cordeiro Police Station in Recife, Pernambuco state, because he refused to confess to involvement in a homicide. He was left stripped naked for several hours. His hands were tied behind his back and four police officers repeatedly placed a plastic bag over his head and stood on him. Eventually he agreed to confess. He subsequently lodged an official complaint and was shot dead in the street near his home the evening before he was due to attend an identification parade to identify his torturers.

Conditions of detention

Many pre-trial and convicted prisoners were held in extremely overcrowded, insanitary conditions in police stations and prisons. Health care was poor or non-existent.

• AI delegates who visited the Roger Prison in João Pessoa, Paraíba state, in June found prisoners packed into dark airless cells which leaked rainwater. Broken sewer pipes were spilling sewage into the prison yard, where piles of decaying rubbish constituted a health hazard. The triage and isolation cells were small and windowless, with filthy and bloodstained walls and floors. The 600 prisoners had no work or educational facilities.

Children

Juvenile justice

Conditions of detention for many of Brazil's juvenile offenders were often no better and frequently violated the 1990 Children and Adolescents Statute.

• By August the São Paulo state detention centre in Imigrantes, run by the Foundation for the Well-Being of Minors (FEBEM), held 1,648 juvenile offenders and suspected offenders in a complex designed for 364. In October AI delegates visiting this detention centre found boys sleeping on filthy mattresses on concrete floors. There were only eight showers and six toilets for 300 boys, most of whom suffered from skin problems. The majority had no access to work, education or exercise. These conditions resulted in a spate of riots and mass break-outs. After a riot in August, 69 boys were injured, allegedly by the military police riot squad. In September hooded warders were captured on film beating boys who had surrendered; riot police fired rubber bullets at relatives waiting outside. During a riot in October, four boys were brutally killed by fellow inmates.

Killings of children

Children continued to be the victims of "death squad" and police killings.

• In February, 14-year-old Anderson Pereira dos Santos, 17-year-old Thiago Passos Ferreira, and 21-year-old Paulo Roberto da Silva were leaving a carnival party in São Vicente, São Paulo state, when they were stopped by members of the Military Police Mounted Regiment. Eyewitnesses saw them being beaten and driven off in a police car. Their bodies were found one week later dumped in an area of wasteland. They had been shot in the head at point-blank range with a high calibre pistol similar to those used by the military police. Four military police officers were awaiting trial at the end of the year.

There appeared to be a resurgence of killings of street children in Rio de Janeiro by individuals in civilian clothes with the apparent acquiescence or collusion of on-duty police officers in the area.

• In June a group of street children who were being rowdy on a bus were removed by a police officer. A man in civilian clothes then called over one of the children, 10-year-old Fabiano Teodoro Teixeira. As the boy ran away, he was shot dead by a man who was reportedly later identified as an off-duty military police corporal. The on-duty officer took no action to stop or detain him.
• João Fernando Caldeira da Silva, a 17-year-old paper recycler, was shot dead in June by a motorist near the Candelária church. A witness, Márcio Silva de Souza, ran away and was stopped and threatened by another man. Three military police officers nearby reportedly took no action. Márcio Silva de Souza is a survivor of the Candelária massacre of July 1993, when a group of off-duty military police officers killed eight people, seven of them children.

'Death squads'

"Death squads", acting with the participation or collusion of the police, continued to operate in a number of Brazilian states, including Acre, Bahia, Mato Grosso do Sul, Rio de Janeiro, Amazonas, and Rio Grande do Norte.

• In September the Brazilian Federal Congress removed from office a federal deputy for the western Amazonian state of Acre accused of international drug and arms trafficking and of running a "death squad" responsible for the deaths of at least 30 people whose bodies were often mutilated. Twenty-one civil and military police officers were also arrested in connection with these activities. At the end of the year, a federal Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into drug trafficking was looking into similar allegations involving state officials in a number of other states, including Piauí and Espírito Santo.

Police

Eldorado de Carajás massacre

In August the trial began of the 153 Pará state military police officers indicted on a charge of aggravated homicide for the killing of 19 landless peasants in Eldorado de Carajás in April 1996. The three commanding officers, the first to be tried, were acquitted amid allegations of bias among the jurors and misconduct of the trial. The trial of the remaining accused was suspended pending a number of appeals in the state High Court. The governor of the state, the Secretary of Public Security and the Commander-in-Chief of the military police at the time of the massacre continued to enjoy immunity from investigation and prosecution, in contravention of the principle of chain-of-command responsibility in relation to extrajudicial executions.

Brasília's Urbanization Company

In December police in Brasília shot and killed José Ferreira da Silva while breaking up a demonstration in Brasília. Two men lost an eye, and some 30 others were wounded. Employees of Brasília's Urbanization Company (NOVACAP), responsible for the maintenance of public spaces, were negotiating an end to their occupation of the NOVACAP building when police from the Special Operations Battalion stormed the building firing rubber bullets and live ammunition. Investigations into the incident were hampered by the failure to register firearms to users, and delays in handing over arms for ballistic tests. At the end of the year individual police responsible for the shootings had not been identified.

Human rights defenders and witness protection

In July, the government approved a new federal witness protection scheme which, if fully implemented and resourced, would enable witnesses and victims, including those with criminal convictions, to testify without fear of reprisals.

However, witnesses and human rights defenders frequently paid a high price during 1999 for their willingness to testify against the police and local politicians. Their vulnerability underscored the importance of federal government action to investigate serious human rights violations where the state authorities were unwilling or unable to do so promptly and impartially. At the end of the year a constitutional amendment was still under debate in Congress which would give the federal government additional powers to do so.

• Human rights defenders involved in investigating the "death squad" in Acre received death threats. In August Valdecir Nicásio Lima, a lawyer assisting investigations, left the country to ensure his and his family's safety. In September Maria de Nazaré Gadelha Ferreira Fernandes, a lawyer working with the Rio Branco Diocese Human Rights Defence Centre, suffered intimidation by known "death squad" members at her place of work and at home.
• In Rio Grande do Norte state, Antônio Lopes, a transvestite also known as "Carla", was shot dead outside his house in March. His death appeared to be linked to that of Francisco Gilson Nogueira, a lawyer at the Centre for Human Rights and Collective Memory, who was killed in 1996 while investigating a "death squad". Antônio Lopes uncovered and handed to the public prosecutor evidence which brought about the reopening in October 1998 of the police investigation into Francisco Gilson Nogueira's death.

Land-related violence

Land conflicts generated increasing tension and violence in Paraná state.

• In March Eduardo Anghinoni was shot dead by a gunman in Querência do Norte. He was visiting his brother, Celso Anghinoni, a well-known local leader of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST). One week later, Seno Staats, an MST regional coordinator, was abducted and tortured for five hours by armed men who told him that he and 10 other MST members, including Celso Anghinoni, were on a death list. While interrogating him about MST activities, they punched and kicked him, burned him with cigarettes, put a rope around his neck, placed a plastic bag over his head, and threatened to kill him, his family and other MST leaders. Some of those threatened were later arrested and placed under preventive detention on account of their MST activities.

AI country reports and visits

Report

• Brazil: "No one here sleeps safely" - Human rights violations against detainees (AI Index: AMR 19/009/99)

Visits

AI delegates visited Brazil in June and July, and again in October and visited prisons and youth detention centres. They launched the above report and discussed its recommendations with both state and federal authorities. An AI delegate visited Paraná state in July to discuss with the authorities a resolution to land-related violence.