Brazil: Leave or be killed

May 2008 (Amnesty International The Wire) - Women living in Brazil’s shanty towns struggle to survive against a backdrop of gang and police violence, discrimination and state neglect. Across the country, in thousands of favelas and marginalized communities, millions of Brazilians live under the control of criminal gangs. The absence of the state has created a vacuum which has allowed these gangs to dominate every aspect of life.

In May 2006, Amnesty International delegates visited a project working with teenage girls in the neighbourhood of Santo Amaro, one of the most violent in Recife. A number of 13 and 14-year-old girls and some of their parents talked about life in their communities. One girl said, “people leave rather than be killed. If you report it, you’ll die”. Such is the power of the gangs that the girls could not link up with a similar project nearby because that meant crossing into another gang’s territory where they risked being attacked. Above all, they felt that the police had no presence in the community: “police only come to collect the bodies”.

Policing of favelas consists mainly of containing crime within communities. The presence of the police generally takes the form of invading groups exchanging fire with criminals and terrorizing residents. Rarely, if ever, do they bring long-term sustained protection. Although women may not be the main targets of police operations, the effects of such violence on their lives is both profound and, until recently, largely ignored. Women are threatened and attacked when they try to protect male relatives.

They experience verbal and even sexual abuse at the hands of the police and they are injured and killed in the crossfire. In March 2007, Alana Ezequiel was shot dead, just one week before her 13th birthday. She was killed by a stray bullet during a shootout between police and drug traffickers in the Morro do Macaco community in Rio de Janeiro.

Shootouts between gangs and police during militarized policing operations cost thousands of lives. They also result in long-term closures of schools, businesses and health clinics which have a huge impact on women, reinforcing patterns of social exclusion. In Jardim Ângela, São Paulo, Amnesty International was told that women about to give birth had to be taken to hospital by community police officers because no other transport was available.

Only a small percentage of Brazil’s prison population are women, but their numbers are rising. Recent studies have revealed the intolerable conditions and discrimination they experience. Women are being subjected to physical and psychological abuse – and in some cases rape; the denial of the right to minimum adequate access to health is widespread.

The state has failed these women on many levels. Above all it has allowed human rights violations to go unpunished and so helped entrench patterns of abuse. Despite the scale of the problems faced by women trying to survive in communities wracked by crime and corruption with little or no support from the state, their experiences have remained largely hidden. But initiatives by women at risk and other human rights defenders have led to the development of a new form of activism and empowerment. A vibrant women’s movement is ensuring that women’s stories are at last starting to be heard.

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