Amnesty urges Brazil's Lula to tackle human rights
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BRASILIA, Brazil, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Amnesty International on Thursday urged President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to end what the group said was Brazil's historic failure to prevent human rights abuses that make it one of the world's most violent nations. Lula, a former political prisoner the watchdog group campaigned for in the 1980s, was elected on promises to reduce the economic inequality blamed for violence that caused shooting deaths to overtake traffic fatalities in the 1990s. On a fact-finding visit to Brazil, the head of London-based Amnesty urged Lula to make human rights a central part of his social agenda and ensure state governments, the judiciary and police respect them. "He assured us that public security and human rights are closely linked and that he would work to ensure that human rights are respected at the state level of public security," Amnesty's Secretary-General Irene Khan said after meeting Lula in the capital, Brasilia. There was no official government comment after the meeting. One of Amnesty's chief concerns is the hundreds of people killed by police, and hundreds of police slain by citizens, each year in cities like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Officers involved in the shooting deaths have said they were defending themselves or trying to subdue people resisting arrest. Human rights groups and family members of shooting victims have denounced many of the killings by police as extra-judicial executions, but few accusations have been proven. A problem Lula faces enforcing human rights is a public perception that such killings, often in and around urban slums, are not a social problem, but a private war between police and bandits, criminologists say. Brazil's Congress is currently debating legislation to make it more difficult to buy guns, in a move to reduce firearms deaths in Brazil. Amnesty asked Lula to join it in lobbying the United Nations for an arms trade treaty to control the sale and use of small arms that kill more than half a million people a year worldwide. "He said he would be ready to partner with Amnesty on this campaign," Khan said.
