What began as a bus fare protest in the city of São Paulo blossomed into a national movement against poor public services, state institutions and police brutality. Police violence spiked one year ago, on June 13, after demonstrators blocked a major thoroughfare and were confronted by thousands of policemen. Rubber bullets flew, the streets took fire, and images of a restless Brazil flooded the international media. The governor of the state of São Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin, who is responsible for overseeing police forces, said at that time that the people on the street were “a pretty small group of vandals, practising criminal acts”.
A year later, little has been done to quell the discontent of Brazilians. This year alone, anti-World Cup movements in São Paulo, Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro have brought thousands to the streets, seen hundreds of protesters detained and generated hundreds of complaints of abuses committed by the police. But the official response remains hostile.
When it was first announced, in 2007, that Brazil had won the bid for the World Cup, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva smiled alongside national soccer coach Dunga, and promised that Brazil would happily assume all the responsibilities that hosting the World Cup entailed. Dilma Rousseff, Lula’s chief of staff who went on to become president in 2011, gladly took the baton from him. Turning a blind eye to delays, excessive spending and social unrest, Rousseff has repeatedly declared the World Cup to be the pride of Brazil and the “cup of all cups”.
The authorities have reaffirmed their commitment to making the World Cup an overwhelming success in terms of diplomacy and hospitality. In their excitement, however, they have failed to uphold one of their most fundamental duties to Brazilian society: the protection and promotion of basic human rights. During the past few months, the congress has debated at least 16 legislative bills that aimed to criminalise protesters and classify protests as acts of “terrorism” that could “incite terror or panic”. In a democracy, such measures can quickly slide into repression.
On 31 March, Brazil marked the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the military dictatorship that ushered in more than two decades of human rights abuses. It has been 30 years since the country began the transition towards a representative democracy, but major state institutions have yet to go through a process of full democratisation. The most important question that faces the country now is: how far has Brazil really come in strengthening its democracy?
The Brazilian military police, a legacy from the dictatorship, has been a long-standing target of international and domestic concern. It is estimated that the Brazilian police killed nearly 2,000 people in 2013 alone. A recent study by the Federal University of São Carlos found that 61% of those killed by the military police in São Paulo were black, and 97% were men, and 77% between the ages of 15 and 29.
While Brazil has established itself as the seventh largest economy in the world, its human rights situation has been swept under the carpet. Despite major achievements in the fight against poverty, the reality clearly departs from the dominant public discourse of prosperity and democratisation, and 25 years after Brazil’s first free elections, the country is still a long way from where it hoped to be.
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