AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT 2016/17

In July the Attorney General requested that
the investigation into the killing of 12 people
by the police in February 2015 in Cabula,
Bahia state, be transferred to a federal
authority.
On 6 November, five men, who had
disappeared on 21 October after being
approached by law enforcement officials,
were found dead in Mogi das Cruzes, São
Paulo. The bodies showed signs of
executions and initial investigations by
authorities indicated the involvement of
municipal guards.
On 17 November, four young men were
shot dead by the military police unit ROTA in
Jabaquara, São Paulo.
ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCES
On 1 February, 12 military police officers
were found guilty and sentenced for the
crimes of torture followed by death,
procedural fraud and “occultation of a
corpse” in the case of the enforced
disappearance of Amarildo de Souza in Rio
de Janeiro.
In April, police investigations named 23
military police officers as suspects in the
enforced disappearance of 16-year-old Davi
Fiuza in the city of Salvador, Bahia state, in
October 2014. However, the case failed to
reach the Public Prosecutor’s Office and
none of the accused had faced trial by the
end of 2016.
PRISON CONDITIONS
Prisons remained severely overcrowded, with
reports of torture and other ill-treatment.
According to the Ministry of Justice, by the
end of 2015 the prison system had a
population of more than 620,000, although
the overall capacity was around 370,000
people.
Prison riots took place throughout the
country. In October, 10 men were beheaded
or burned alive in a prison in Roraima state
and eight men died of asphyxiation in a cell
during a prison fire in Rondônia state.
On 8 March the UN Special Rapporteur on
torture reported, among other things, poor
living conditions and the regular occurrence
of torture and other ill-treatment of inmates
by police and prison guards in Brazil.
In September a court of appeals declared
null a trial and sentences against 74 police
officers for a massacre in Carandiru prison in
1992; 111 men had been killed by the police
in the massacre.
FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY
The year was marked by a number of largely
peaceful protests throughout the country on
issues such as the impeachment process,
education reform, violence against women,
negative impacts of the 2016 Olympic Games
and reduction of public spending in health
care and education. The police response was
frequently violent, leading to excessive and
unnecessary use of force.
Students peacefully occupied up to 1,000
public schools in the country to question the
education reform and investment cuts
proposed by the government. In June, police
in the city of Rio de Janeiro used
unnecessary and excessive force to break up
a peaceful protest by students in the
Secretary of Education headquarters.
The police used unnecessary force in
several states to disperse demonstrations
against the new government and the
proposed constitutional amendment (PEC
241/55) that would restrict public spending.
In São Paulo, a student lost the vision in her
left eye after the police launched a stun
grenade that exploded near her.
In January, Rafael Braga Vieira, a man
who had been detained after a protest in Rio
de Janeiro in 2013, was again detained on
trumped-up charges of drug trafficking.
On 10 August a state court failed to
acknowledge the state’s responsibility for the
loss of vision in one eye of Sergio Silva after
he was hit by a device shot by police during a
2013 protest in São Paulo. The court
considered that, by being at the protest, he
had implicitly accepted the risk of being
injured by the police.
In March the Anti-terrorism Law
(13.260/2016) was approved in Congress
and sanctioned by the President. The law
was widely criticized for its vague language
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