Amnesty International report shows police violence around the world

Police violence, difficulty for the population in accessing basic rights, delays in demarcating indigenous lands and titling quilombola territories are some of the aspects that the non-governmental organization (NGO) Amnesty International rescued to describe Brazil in the report The State of Human Rights in the Mundo, released this Wednesday (24).

The document contains analyzes of 156 countries and dedicates around five pages to Brazil. At the beginning of the chapter on the country, it is highlighted that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva assumed his third term with an attempted coup d’état, which culminated in the conviction of 30 people by December 2023. Until March of this year, the Supreme Federal Court (STF) sentenced 130 people for involvement in the acts, held responsible for crimes such as criminal association, violent abolition of the Democratic Rule of Law and deterioration of listed heritage.

The organization also recalls that Lula’s main opponent, former president Jair Bolsonaro, became ineligible for eight years, until 2030, by decision of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE). The court even denied the appeal to which Bolsonaro was entitled, maintaining its understanding of the issue.

The section dealing with Brazil was subdivided into economic, social and cultural rights; excessive use of force; impunity; people defending human rights; right to a healthy environment; rights of indigenous peoples; sexual and gender-based violence; and sexual and reproductive rights. Amnesty recalled recent climate events that affected the population of several states, such as São Paulo, Acre, Maranhão and Pará, as well as Manaus, with tens of thousands of people affected. In the case of Acre, the contingent reached 32 thousand people, according to the report.

Police brutality

Another problem still open, highlights the organization, is the total of 394 people killed during police actions in Bahia, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, where operations Escudo and Verão were carried out, one after the other, to investigate allegations of human rights violations. Only deaths from the period from July to September 2023 were mentioned in the document, which assumes that the number is even higher and the situation more serious.

The conduct of the police officers who worked in operations Escudo and Verão, which covered Baixada Santista, was questioned numerous times. One of the organizations that previously demanded explanations from the authorities was Human Rights Watch. The National Human Rights Council (CNDH) also warned of abuses, highlighting, after sending a delegation that collected statements from people linked to the victims, that security agents even committed torture.

“Police interventions continued to cause the deaths of children and adolescents. On August 7, 13-year-old Thiago Menezes was unlawfully killed by the police while riding a motorcycle. On September 4, the Court of Justice of the State of Rio de January decreed the preventive detention of four police officers involved in the homicide. On August 12, 5-year-old Eloah Passos was hit by a stray bullet while playing indoors. On August 16, three-year-old Heloísa Santos. died after being shot by a police officer while she was in a car with her family”, recalls the NGO in another part of the report.

The set of facts that the organization records about cases of police impunity is also worrying. “The illegal use of force by the police continued without being investigated quickly or effectively. The forced disappearance of Davi Fiuza, 16, during a police raid in Salvador, Bahia, in 2014, remained unsolved. Three police officers indicted for the murder of activist Pedro Henrique Cruz in 2018 in Tucano, also in Bahia, had not yet been brought to trial, and his mother, Ana Maria, continued to suffer threats and intimidation”, says Amnesty, which sent representatives to a meeting with the prosecutor -general of Justice of the Public Ministry of Bahia, Pedro Maia, on the 16th, to deal with the execution of activist Pedro Henrique Santos Cruz, who campaigned against police violence in the state.