In Brazil, the federal government has taken a series of encouraging measures, such as drafting a National Human Rights Plan, and making torture a criminal act under the law. However, grave human rights problems persist, particularly police violence and abysmal prison conditions. Brazil's police departments are controlled at the state rather than the federal level, and are therefore subject to local pressure to control crime. A good example in this regard is Rio de Janeiro, where current authorities bestow bonuses and promotions on police officers engaged in acts of "bravery." In practice, these prizes are awarded to police who kill criminal suspects regardless of the circumstances. The bravery policy has led to a doubling of the number of civilians killed by police, now estimated at more than thirty civilians per month. As a basis of comparison, the police in New York, a city 35 percent larger than Rio, kill fewer than thirty civilians per year.
Throughout Brazil, people awaiting trial and those already convicted are held together in police lock-ups in inhuman conditions, for months and often years. As many as forty to fifty people are often held for months in small, rancid cells that are designed for short-term detention for six to eight prisoners. These detainees are frequently subject to beatings and other forms of physical abuse, and lack adequate medical and legal attention. In three prison rebellions in the past nine months, police have killed a total of twenty-two prisoners.
Question for President Fernando Henrique Cardoso: State-level courts have routinely ruled against human rights victims. Why has your administration failed to pass legislation to bring severe human rights crimes under the jurisdiction of the federal government, as Brazilian and international human rights groups have recommended?
