Brazil taken before Inter-American Court for police violence twenty years ago

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Inter-American Court of Human Rights will assess a complaint brought against Brazil for police violence. The case refers to the murder of rural worker Antonio Tavares Pereira and the injuries suffered by 185 other workers belonging to the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), by state police officers repressing a march for agrarian reform on May 2nd, 2000, in the state of Paraná.

The violation is unrelated to the current government. But it will now fall to the Executive to defend itself. The decision comes on the eve of an attempt by the government to show the world that it is fulfilling its commitments to human rights. On Monday, February 22th, Ministers Ernesto Araújo and Damares Alves will appear before the UN Human Rights Council to argue for the national policy on fundamental rights.

The case denounced, conducted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, is first and foremost an example of “impunity” in the face of a “context of violence linked to the demands for agrarian reform in Brazil.”

In its report on the substance, the Commission established that the Brazilian state failed to provide an explanation that would enable it to consider that Pereira’s death was the result of the legitimate use of force.

“On the contrary,” the commission says. According to it, “the shot that led to the death came from a state police officer, the officer did not act in self-defense but rather to intimidate protesters, and the shot was fired when the victim was unarmed.”

“These factors, considered together, are enough to establish that the shot fired by the state police officer had no legitimate purpose, nor was it appropriate, necessary and proportionate,” the human rights body states.

Considering that the injuries caused to the other 185 victims were the result of shots fired by the same state police officers that stopped buses bound for the city of Curitiba, the Commission considered that the earlier analysis on the impropriety of the shooting that caused Antonio Tavares Pereira’s death and the excessive use of force is also applicable to the state’s international responsibility for such injuries.

The Commission also established that the authorities had been advised of the protests that would be conducted by the MST rural workers. “The authorities knew that a march and a popular protest were imminent on the day of the events, and rather than taking measures to protect the protesters, they alerted the state police to prevent protesters from exercising their rights of assembly, freedom of expression and movement,” the body stated.

Conclusions

The Commission, therefore, concluded that the “intervention of the state criminal justice system was a factor of impunity for victims to receive effective redress, and that this jurisdiction violated the right to an impartial authority to seek justice for a human rights violation.”

Another major factor was the conclusion that the violation “was not redressed in the ordinary courts, given that the criminal case for the crime of murder was dismissed on the grounds of the military justice system’s decision.”

“With respect to the 185 injured victims, the Commission found that the State did not act with due diligence to investigate the injuries and identify the injured,” it insisted.

The Commission thus decided that the Brazilian State is responsible for violating the right to life, personal integrity, freedom of thought and expression, right to assembly, right of movement, and judicial guarantees.

Recommendations to Brazil

Based on its conclusions, the Commission recommends the following measures to the Brazilian State

1. Provide full compensation to the direct victims in the case and to the next of kin of Antonio Tavares Pereira: his wife Maria Sebastiana Barbosa Pereira and his children, Ana Lúcia Barbosa Pereira, Ana Cláudia Barbosa Pereira, Samuel Paulo Barbosa Pereira and Ana Ruth Barbosa Pereira, through monetary compensation and reparations measures covering the material and moral damages caused as a consequence of the violations described in the Substance Report.

2. Provide the physical and mental health measures necessary for the rehabilitation of the 185 direct victims in the case and the next of kin of Antonio Tavares Pereira, if they so desire and with their consent.

3. Conduct a diligent, impartial and effective investigation, within a reasonable time, in order to fully clarify the facts and impose the corresponding sanctions for the human rights violations set forth in the report.

4. Provide training measures for security forces acting in the context of demonstrations and protests. This training should be of a permanent nature and include human rights curricula that, in particular, incorporate the standards of this report, so that they may be aware of the principles of exceptionality, necessity and proportionality with which the use of force must comply.

Source: UOL