Jan Jarab, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for South America, voiced concern at a meeting this Wednesday at the spiral of violence recorded in Brazil.
The UN representative’s warning came during a meeting with the Arns Commission. At the meeting, the Brazilian activist group presented a document demanding immediate action from the United Nations for both the murder of Genivaldo Santos in Sergipe and the Vila Cruzeiro massacre in Rio de Janeiro.
According to commissioners, Jarab described a recent visit to indigenous lands and expressed his “concern about the spiral of violence” in Brazil in general. The column, along with UN members, confirmed that the country has become part of the radar of the organization’s main concerns, particularly due to political tension and President Jair Bolsonaro’s role in promoting such actions.
Both the visit and the reports Jarab receives will form part of the information that the representative will transmit to the headquarters of the human rights body in Geneva. The regional office of the UN High Commissioner has called for independent investigations into the police brutality recorded in recent days.
If both the UN and activists agree that police violence has come before Bolsonaro’s government, everyone’s fear is that it will gain new proportions this election cycle. There are also concerns about the proliferation of decrees authorizing the Highway Police, the end of human rights courses for the training of agents, and the celebration of the results of operations by the highest echelons of government.
The violence tends to get worse “given the president’s respect for the massacres,” according to the Arns Commission. “Authors are celebrated as heroes,” says Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, former secretary for Human Rights and Commissioner in the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
In the document, the Arns Commission asks the UN to pressure national authorities to “fulfill Brazil’s commitments with regard to human rights and national and international judicial decisions”. The group also points out that the UN should “strengthen the need to increase external control of police activities exercised by the Public Ministry, in the face of the uncontrolled increase in police violence in the government of Mr. Jair Messias Bolsonaro. It calls the National Council of the Public Ministry, the external control body, to monitor investigations into serious human rights violations.” calling”.
Activists still want the UN to condemn “expanding the powers of the Federal Highway Police to act outside of its original constitutional qualifications and promoting quasi-institutional actions, as well as demonstrations and statements by Brazilian authorities that are hostile to human rights, violent and unlawful action by the police”.
In addition to the meeting, the Arns Commission turned to a new UN mechanism to address police violence and racism. The instrument was created after the murder of George Floyd by the American police. Now, the independent mechanism will examine the Brazilian case, a fear that Jair Bolsonaro’s government has always had when the debate about the American victim is on the UN agenda.
Brazilian activists also brought complaints to other UN rapporteurs about human rights violations committed by Brazilian police and the role of the Executive in promoting these actions.
Praetorian Guard and coup
The Arns Commission fears that the violence recorded in recent days is a sign of what lies ahead, as the Highway Police and its 14,000 agents gain new powers through regulations. Pinheiro even calls this reshuffle for the Highway Police Bolsonaro’s attempt to create his own praetorian guard. “This is extremely obscene,” he said.
According to him, this would be “the path of autocracy that the president dreams about”. Pinheiro warns of the risk that the police could be used to spark an insurgency or attempted coup. “Bolsonaro has great hope with 14,000 PR people,” he said.
Regional body condemns police brutality in Brazil
As the UN envoy passed through Brazil, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) released a statement this Wednesday, “condemning systematic police violence against people of African descent in Brazil.”
It also demands that the government “immediately, diligently and thoroughly investigate the events, punish those responsible, and pay full compensation to the victims and their families”.
Citing a study by the Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF), the organization found that of the 17,929 police operations conducted in favelas in Rio de Janeiro between 2007 and 2021, 593 resulted in massacres, resulting in 2,374 deaths, representing 41% of the total deaths from police actions. it does.
The Commission also warns of “multiple and aggravated discrimination that Afro-descendants may face when their racial ethnicity intersects with other factors such as disability, socioeconomic origin, among others.”
“IACHR reminds Brazil of its duty to ensure compliance with international standards regarding the use of force, based on the principles of legality, proportionality and absolute necessity, in order to reduce lethality and police brutality. Likewise, public safety measures should be taken against individuals or groups based on their ethnic-racial origin or other does not discriminate directly or indirectly under the terms of the Continental Convention Against Racism, Racial Discrimination and Related Intolerance.”
The Commission also called on Brazil to prevent and eliminate acts of institutional violence against the African population linked to patterns of racial discrimination. This will require reorganizing the protocols and guidelines of local, state and federal agencies, ensuring that racial profiling and other explicit or implied discriminatory practices are expressly prohibited and sanctioned. “It is also regarding timely and comprehensive compensation for victims, including effective remedies, satisfaction measures, guarantees of non-repetition, and reparations,” he added.
source: Noticias
