Friday, April 8

School shooting in Brazil? Crimes against Brazilian children have a history of it's own

It seems that only a crime that has an equivalent in America and other countries gets the attention of the world. Do you want to know about violence against children in Brazil? Google it and you will not find updates to what was being revealed in 2004 and 2008 but this is one of the answers:
"Alot of children have run away from homes in favelas because of unfair treatment or abuse or drug influence by parents and have gone to the streets to beg. Statistics show that 17 million children ages 5-18 live on the streets withen these two cities! These children beg daily and live on rags in the streets. They live in constant fear on the daily bases of death squads // brutality // rape // violence or being forced into prostitution."
"Death Squads are people whose jobs are to kill the poor or troubled including these children and eliminate them from major cities or favelas. They kill random people they see and there goal is to get rid of the poverty stroken people because they believe itll make there nation strive. And they are certified officers so it is not illegal for "them to do there work.
This is a serious problem in brazil and we need your help now!!!! These are not at the news and do not inaugurate history. But Brazilian violence against it's children makes much more than 11 deaths a day. Sometimes the world cares:
"During the meeting there was a telephone link up with the US Congress as Congressmen Trent Franks and Joe Pitts simultaneously launched the web site on Capitol Hill. Congressman Franks movingly said that “every life is precious and needs to be recorded.” Congressman Pitts called for renewed efforts by government officials and non-governmental organisations to work together to help street children.” The Jubilee Room was dominated by two photographs – one of a cardboard box on a Rio beach, in which could be seen the small feet of a murdered street child – discarded like flotsam and jetsam. Another photograph showed the simple cross outside the church of Our Lady of Cadelaria where 8 street children were brutally mowed down by Brazilian police. British and American parliamentarians decided to join forces to highlight the killing of an average of 4 – 5 children in Brazil’s favelas every day. Jubilee Campaign, who issued my report on the plight of street children in February (www.jubileecampaign.co.uk) organised both the gathering of information and the launch of this new web site. Their formidable efforts and the work of the parliamentary street children committee has been driving on awareness and action. Two of the most moving contributions came from Luke Dowdney who, earlier in the day had received an MBE from the Queen in recognition of the work he has done in Brazil with Viva Rio. Author of one of the most important books highlighting the scale of the violence and deaths, Luke has also established sports projects for street children. He was joined by Daniel Saunders, who was born in Sao Paulo and abandoned at birth. Adopted by a British family, he has lived on the streets and talked with first hand knowledge of the dangers facing street children. The meeting learnt that the police no longer shoot children in public –they have learnt that bad publicity is not good for tourism. But, hidden away in the sprawling favelas of Brazil’s major cities, children are on the front-line of an urban war between rival drug gangs. An expert from Brazil’s National Movement of Street Children says that between 4 and 5 adolescents are murdered daily; that every 12 minutes a child is beaten; that 4.5 million children under 12 are working; and that 500,000 children are engaged in domestic labour. In 40% of crimes children are the victims. The massive proliferation of small arms is a central cause. One of the movement’s activists told me, ‘It is easier for a child to get a gun than to get a bus-pass.’ In Brazil, these are the weapons of mass destruction and you don’t need inspectors to find them – they are everywhere." Wallace Soares Dias, 13, was executed with five gunshots to the chest just the day before our meeting took place at Westminster. He was killed in front of a municipal school in Rio de Janeiro’s Vila Isabel neighbourhood. The killer is a not yet identified boy of approximately 15 years of age who escaped riding a bicycle. According to the victim’s father, a friend with whom Wallace had fought recently ordered the killing. According to police from the Sixth Battalion of the Rio Military Police (Tijuca), Wallace was murdered by drug traffickers from the Morro dos Macacos complex of favelas, who belong to a rival faction from that of the Morro da Mangueira, where Wallace lived. read the whole press release. here the site."
Strangely enough little is being said the last four years and the abuses and crimes against children are once again not being revealed. This study published in 2010 about children prostitution in Brazil. All of a sudden all the problems Brazil had are no longer being reported and the propaganda that Brazil is a paradise is everywhere. It is astonishing but this is the only way that Brazil can be recognized as Latin America's leading Nation and become a permanent member of the UN Security Council an aspiration that is not hidden and has been reported many time as in a campaign. This is the price: Brazilian citizens, worse if they are poor, black and dear Lord! both, don't count, they don't exist unless they give a good image of the country. We don't count, I don't count.
Neither this 10 years-old boy, Poderosinho, who is the alleged leader of a drug ring in São Paulo.