U.S. highlights police violence and attacks on indigenous people and minorities in Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Arbitrary killings by police, violence against indigenous people, minorities, activists, or the LGBT community, and widespread acts of corruption are some of the attacks on human rights detected in Brazil, according to a report released yesterday by the United States.

In the part of the text dedicated to Brazil, U.S. officials highlighted the “impunity and lack of accountability of security forces,” as well as ineffective judicial processes that delay justice for both perpetrators of crimes and victims.

“There have been several reports that state police have committed unlawful killings. In some cases, the police employed indiscriminate force. (…) Among those killed are criminal suspects, civilians, and drug traffickers who commit acts of violence against the police. Consequently, the extent of the unlawful killings by the police was difficult to determine. The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office investigates whether the killings by security forces are justifiable,” the text indicates.

The report, which also denounced cases of torture and sexual assault, focused on the city of Rio de Janeiro, where most of the deaths occurred “while the police carried out operations against drug gangs in more than 1,000 favelas where 1.3 million people live.”

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have long questioned whether all the fatalities at the police’s hands actually resisted arrest, as reported by officers, and have claimed that police often employ unnecessary force.

“According to some civil society organizations, police violence victims across the country were mostly young Afro-Brazilian men. The Brazilian Forum on Public Security reported that almost 75% of people killed by police in 2019 were black,” the U.S. document stresses.

“Impunity for security forces is a problem. Police officers were often responsible for investigating accusations of torture and excessive use of force by other officers, although independent investigations have increased,” it adds.

Verbal and physical attacks on politicians and candidates are also common in Brazil, as are assassinations of social, human rights, and environmental activists. This situation led the NGO ‘Global Witness’ to classify the South American country as “extremely lethal” for activists.

Other problems denounced by the State Department report are the attacks on native peoples perpetrated by illegal gold miners trying to extract gold from indigenous lands.

“NGOs have alleged that the lack of regulation and impunity in cases of illegal land invasions have resulted in the illegal exploitation of natural resources. (…) Illegal land invasions often resulted in violence and even death,” the report points out, highlighting 113 murders of indigenous people in 2019.

The LGBT community is seen by the report as a victim of various forms of violence in Brazil.

“According to the National Association of Transvestites and Transsexuals of Brazil, in partnership with the Brazilian Institute for Trans Education, 124 transgender men and women were killed in 2019. Police arrested suspects in only 9% of the cases. According to some civil society leaders, the underreporting of crimes is glaring,” the document says.

According to LGBT leaders, the Covid-19 pandemic severely limited this population’s access to public health resources, and many citizens “were in abusive domestic situations with unsupportive families.”

U.S. officials also denounced “numerous reports of corruption at various levels of government” and delays in prosecutions of people accused of corruption, often due to constitutional protections against elected politicians. “This often results in impunity for those responsible,” it reinforced.

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