Brazil lived four years of silencing and abuses by the public power, denounces minister at the UN

2023-04-20 22:07:56

Published in: 20/04/2023 – 22:07Modified in: 20/04/2023 – 22:10

The last four years have been one of silencing civil society in the area of ​​human rights. The complaint was made this Thursday (20) in Geneva by the Brazilian Minister of Human Rights and Citizenship, Silvio Almeida, who again criticized the Bolsonaro government’s management in this area. During two days, he and other Brazilian representatives answered more than 50 questions from UN experts during the 76th Session of the United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT/UN).

Valerie Way, correspondent of RFI in Switzerland

“A civil society suffered a silencing process in the participation of public policies nactions in recent years, especially in the area of ​​human rights”, said Almeida, reaffirming the position in favor of reestablishing dialogue in global level in order to strengthen the fight against torture in Brazil.

On Wednesday, in a speech at the UN, the minister said that the moment is “reconstruction of human rights policy” it’s from maintain an honest and constructive dialogue with a TEN. “In recent years, we have had a president of the Rsociety that worshiped torturers and encouraged all sorts of abuses by public power, particularly those who hold a monopoly on the use of force, against the population itself”, he stated.

The questions to the representatives of Brazil were asked por international independent experts, having with the base the report sent to the UN by the Bolsonaro government, more than twenty years after the presentation ofthe first document. This report, according to Almeida, “does not honestly reflect the reality of the practice of torture in our country”. Presented by the previous government in 2020, without considering the period of administration of Bolsonaro himself, the report, according to the minister, is partial and “silent on the challenges of combating torture in Brazil”.

Topics raised during the session covered historical issues such as race, police violence, torture, memory politics, truth, justice and non-repetition. The tone of the responses, according to the minister, was very much on top of what is intended to be done in the future. “I think it’s looking forward. Given the problems we have, what is the government willing to do for us to move forward”, he said, stating that the government also intends to make a great articulation with the justice system to respond to the problem of the “Brazilian prison system”. .

Brazil holds a lot and badly, according to minister

According to Almeida, “we’ve been building torture factories for many years now, factories producing people who have no horizons, no future. We arrest a lot, we arrest badly, from the point of view of the way we treat and trivialize imprisonment in Brazil. So, I think all of that will have to be seen. There is also a racial aspect that is very evident”, said the minister, who had already spoken about this topic in Geneva last month.

“Institutional violence in Brazil, particularly against the black and peripheral population, is the result of a long history of successive violations, which go back to the colonial enterprise and the dehumanization of enslaved people in our country. It doesn’t hurt to remember that Brazil was the last country in the world to abolish slavery. Even today, the black population, which constitutes more than half of our population, is the main victim of police violence, summary executions, over-incarceration and torture.”, he stated.

But according to him, it is being inaugurated “a new chapter in national history and, as a first step towards healing our wounds, it is necessary to recognize the challenges before us”.

In the speech given at the UN, Almeida defended that the system brazilian prisonque has as a preferential target the poor population and nWILD, must be reviewed and humanized. “TheWe have made efforts to establish the so-called ‘Mandela Project’with the aim of advancing in the face of systematic human rights violations in the Brazilian prison system“, he said. The project aims to defend the rights of population deprived of liberty with regard to due process of law, combating torture and promoting extrication policies.

Another topic that concerns, according to the minister, is related to the children and adolescents in situations of deprivation of liberty. “Brazilian society cannot simply ‘to give up’ of these young people and condemn them to stigmatization and lack of prospects“, he insisted.

“We are far from ideal, but we intend to move forward”

The minister was willing to make good use of the recommendations I sawwere from the experts to strengthen within Brazil or commitment to the fight against torture.He stated that the Committee’s questions were well prepared, asked by people who, in fact, “did study the human rights situation in Brazil”.

“Events like this give us the opportunity to look at ourselves in the mirror, improve our human rights policy and recognize the problem we have”, praised Almeida.

To the press, he said that Lula da Silva’s government is advancing in the area and has real concerns. “We are very far from ideal, but we intend to move forward”, he assessed, before criticizing again the period of “profound retrogression, in which the advances that were taking slow steps were the object of an attack and a deliberate deterioration of the state mechanisms of preventing and combating torture”.