Hundreds of people were killed by police and death squads in circumstances suggesting extrajudicial executions. Several people, including one prisoner of conscience, were detained or sentenced in absentiafor their activities in campaigning for land reform. Torture was reported to be widespread in police stations, and conditions in police stations and prisons remained harsh.
In May, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso launched Brazil's National Human Rights Program, which included measures which, if implemented, could reduce impunity for human rights violations. However, by the end of the year, Congress had passed only one significant legislative reform from the Program. Jurisdiction for intentional homicide by on-duty military police was transferred from military to civilian courts, although the military police retained responsibility for investigating these crimes and determining intentionality. Subsequently, several high-profile human rights cases were transferred from military to civilian courts.
In July, the un Human Rights Committee examined Brazil's first report on implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Committee expressed concern that ''members of the security forces implicated in gross human rights violations enjoy a high level of impunity that is incompatible with the Covenant'' and that ''measures taken to ensure the implementation of Covenant rights in all parts of the federation remain ineffective and inadequate''. The Committee strongly recommended that ''all complaints of misconduct by members of the security forces be investigated by an independent body and not by the security forces themselves''.
In August, Brazil ratified the Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights to Abolish the Death Penalty.
Hundreds of people were killed by police and death squads in circumstances suggesting extrajudicial executions. In April, military police surrounded a group of 1,500 peasants connected to the Landless Rural Workers Movement (mst) who were demonstrating for land reform by blockading a road in Eldorado de Carajás, Pará state. Police fired on the crowd and demonstrators, who responded by throwing staves and stones. After the initial confrontation, military police apparently targeted individuals for extrajudicial execution. Nineteen peasants were killed and over 60 wounded. Autopsy reports indicated that 12 had been shot in the head, two at close range, and that seven died from lacerations, indicating that they had been struck with their own farm implements after being overpowered. Official investigations revealed that military police destroyed evidence, obstructing the investigation. In June, all 155 military police who participated in the operation were charged with homicide, but not suspended from duty. Little attempt was made to identify those responsible for individual extrajudicial executions, or to protect witnesses. State compensation for the victims' families was approved.
There were other violent incidents in Pará state. Gilvam Alves da Silva was one of four squatter peasants abducted on 20 August from the São Francisco estate, near Marabá, and interrogated by armed men about a land occupation there. The next day the four men were shot in the head and left for dead outside the estate. Gilvam Alves da Silva survived by pretending to be dead. The other three were believed to have been killed although their bodies were not recovered. Amnesty International was concerned at a pattern of impunity in such killings of landless peasants by gunmen reportedly hired by local landowners.
In September, Neire Reijane dos Santos Guimarães, a women's rights activist investigating census fraud in Mãe do Rio, Pará state, was shot dead in her home. She and her husband, a former member of the state legislature, had received death threats related to their political activity in the region.
In July, military police extrajudicially executed Raimundo Brandão and seriously wounded Augustinho Brandão and Nicolau Brandão – all three Shanenawá Indians – in Feijó, Acre, after they embraced a non-indigenous child known to them. Amnesty International sought government action to halt violent attacks on indigenous communities, after a decree (1775/96) in January changed procedures for demarcating indigenous land. In November, 76 Kitathaurlu Indians were tied up and beaten by armed trespassers illegally logging and mining on the Sararé reserve in Mato Grosso, with the acquiescence of local politicians. Although alerted to the armed incursion in March, the federal authorities only took action to protect the indigenous group in December. In November, three Yanomami Indians were reported killed by miners in Roraima state. The authorities had cut their protection for the Yanomami in March. Although an operation to remove miners illegally prospecting in the Yanomami indigenous reserve was approved, it was not implemented during the year. In December, five miners were sentenced in absentia to 20 years' imprisonment each on a charge of genocide for the killing of at least 12 Yanomami Indians in July 1993 (see Amnesty International Report 1994).
Police-backed death squads continued to act with impunity in many states. Federal Police agents were sent to Acre in July, after public prosecutors alleged that the state police Special Operations Team was acting as an extermination squad and had extrajudicially executed scores of criminal suspects. In June, an associate of a man suspected of murdering a military policeman had his limbs and genitals severed and his eyes gouged out before being killed; his son was burned to death. In Amazonas, over 25 killings and ''disappearances'' of criminal suspects between January and May were attributed to a death squad, known as ''The Firm'', made up of police and former police operating in the state capital, Manaus.
In October, Francisco Gilson Nogueira de Carvalho, a human rights lawyer working with the Centre for Human Rights and Collective Memory (cdmp), was shot dead outside his home in a suburb of Natal, capital of Rio Grande do Norte state. Since May 1995, he had been assisting a special commission of state prosecutors investigating killings of criminal suspects attributed to a death squad known as the ''Golden Boys'' operating within the state civil police (see Amnesty International Report 1996). Prior to his killing, federal police protection had been suspended. Other members of the cdmp, six state prosecutors and a police investigator were allegedly named on a ''death list''.
In Rio de Janeiro, the number of fatal shootings of criminal suspects rose sharply following a November 1995 state Decree offering large pay rises to police agents involved in acts of ''bravery and fearlessness''. The Secretary of Public Security for Rio de Janeiro made repeated public statements endorsing a ''shoot first, ask questions later'' policy. Although the Rio de Janeiro authorities claimed that fatal shootings occurred only during armed confrontations, in some cases the circumstances suggested that victims had been extrajudicially executed. In January, Edval Silva and Fábio Gonçalvez Cavalcanti were killed in the shanty town of Vigário Geral. According to eye-witnesses, three hooded men shot Edval Silva dead. They then tortured Fábio Gonçalvez Cavalcanti, pulling out some of his teeth with pliers, before shooting him in the face and throwing him onto a railway line. The authorities claimed that both youths had been killed by military police in a confrontation and no further investigation was undertaken.
Gunmen charged with, or convicted of, killings of rural trade unionists continued to escape from custody, apparently with police acquiescence. In July and November, however, a father and son, convicted in 1991 of the assassination of rubber tappers trade union leader Francisco (Chico) Mendes, in 1988 (see Amnesty International Report 1989), were recaptured, having escaped from custody in 1993. In September, two men were convicted of the assassination in 1985 of Nativo de Natividade de Oliveira, a rural workers' trade union president, in Carmo do Rio Verde, Goiás state (see Amnesty International Report 1986).
Three trials were held in Rio de Janeiro in connection with the Candelária massacre of July 1993 (see Amnesty International Report 1994) in which seven street children and one youth were killed. In April and November, two military policemen were sentenced to 309 and 261 years' imprisonment (the first sentence was reduced to 89 years on appeal). In December, a civilian, a military policeman and a military police officer were acquitted. There was concern that all the evidence about the massacre may not have emerged during these trials.
In September, the bodies of the victims of the Vigário Geral massacre, in which 21 shanty town residents were killed in September 1993 (see Amnesty International Report 1994), were exhumed after it was discovered that not all bullets had been removed from their bodies as evidence at the time of the original autopsies. Forty-five military police continued to face charges in connection with the massacre.
In October, charges were brought by a civilian court against 22 Rondônia state military police for involvement in the killing of 10 peasants in Corumbiara in August 1995 (see Amnesty International Report 1996). An eleventh peasant, Darli Martins Pereira, last seen in military police custody in August 1995, remained ''disappeared''.
Land reform activists continued to be arrested and charged with ''forming a criminal band''. Diolinda Alves de Souza (see Amnesty International Report 1996), Felinto Procópio, Laércio Barbosa and Claudemiro Marques – all members of the mst – were detained from 25 January to 12 March on a charge of ''forming a criminal band'' for supporting land occupations in São Paulo state. Diolinda Alves de Souza was a prisoner of conscience. The federal Higher Court of Justice ordered their release, ruling that the charge of ''forming a criminal band'' was not appropriate for activities related to land occupations and campaigning for agrarian reform. Nevertheless, such charges continued to be brought against agrarian reform campaigners. In July, a Franciscan priest, Frei Anastácio Ribeiro (see Amnesty International Report 1996) was sentenced to four years and 10 months' imprisonment, together with six other members of the Church Land Commission, for campaigning for agrarian reform in the state of Paraíba. The sentences against all seven were overturned on appeal in October.
Reports of torture in police custody were widespread and conditions of detention remained harsh in police stations and prisons. Several thousand convicted prisoners continued to be held with remand prisoners in police stations because of prison overcrowding. In January, several detainees were beaten while suspended by the knees and wrists from an iron bar at the Robbery and Theft Police Station in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul. They were then returned to severely overcrowded cells and received no medical attention for their injuries.
In August, José Wilson Pinheiro da Silva lost an eye as a result of beatings by military police while being taken to the Fifth police district in Fortaleza, Ceará. According to the police Ombudsman in São Paulo state, reports of torture increased in São Paulo during the second half of the year. In August, nine youths were held incommunicado and tortured for several weeks on suspicion of involvement in killing two people in a bar in São Paulo. They were released without charge. In July, the Federal Congress voted compensation for the family of José Ivanildo Sampaio Souza who died after being tortured in federal police custody in Ceará state in October 1995 (see Amnesty International Report 1996).
A Special Commission on Disappearances, inaugurated in January, awarded compensation to the families of 136 people who the authorities acknowledged had died after ''disappearing'' in custody during the period of military rule in the 1970s (see Amnesty International Report 1996). The Commission also examined 150 cases of deaths at the hands of the security forces during this period and decided that 107 incidents had taken place in official custody and were the responsibility of the state, and that relatives should be duly compensated.
Amnesty International sought full investigations into cases of human rights violations. The organization conducted an on-site investigation of the Eldorado de Carajás massacre, sent observers to the first trial related to the Candelária massacre, and held meetings with the government to present its recommendations for a National Action Plan on Human Rights. During the year, the organization published several reports, including Brazil: Human rights violations and the health professions, which called for better medical documentation of human rights abuses, and for the independence of forensic services from the police.
In July, the organization submitted its concerns on human rights violations in Brazil to the un Human Rights Committee.

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