Brazil Human Rights
Human Rights Concerns
- Police killings
- Death squads
- Torture and ill-treatment
- Land and indigenous rights
Despite government proposals for reform including a number of initiatives by the federal government's Special Secretariat of Human Rights, levels of human rights violations in Brazil continued to be extremely high. There were consistent reports from around the country of corrupt, violent and discriminatory policing. In shanty towns policing operations were usually seen as invasive and repressive. Military and civil police often contributed to violence and crime in poor and marginalized areas, which remained focal points for extreme levels of armed violence, often related to drug trafficking.
Across the country, "death squads" continued to participate in the extra judicial executions of criminal suspects in situations sometimes described as "social cleansing" as well as in the context of organized crime, often with the direct involvement of former and active police officers.
The number of land activists and union leaders threatened and killed remained a serious concern. Indigenous peoples continued to face threats, attacks and violent evictions in their struggle for land rights. Failures to ensure their entitlement to their lands left them vulnerable to attacks and land invasions by illegal settlers, loggers and diamond miners among others.
According to reports, the problem of slave labor continued to grow. However, the government brought in important legislation that allowed for the confiscation of lands where slave or indentured labor was used. State officials and human rights activists working to combat the problem were threatened, attacked and killed.
Read the report
"Picking up the Pieces: Women's Experience of Urban Violence in Brazil" (PDF)
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