Freedom of information in practice
See the five most emblematic FOI requests made by Conectas
On May 16, five years will have passed since the enactment of the Freedom of Information Law. Historic in Brazil, the law was an important step for the transparency of various spheres of the public administration and it reinforced the guarantee of freedom of information already provided for in the Constitution.
Conectas believes in the importance of the law as a mechanism of social control and it has used it frequently since day one. See below the five most emblematic FOI requests made by the organization:
Publication of the reports of the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture
In May 2012 and January 2017, Conectas successfully got the Brazilian government to publish the reports produced by the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT). The documents were written by United Nations experts after making on-site inspections of Brazilian prisons. In these reports, the experts listed a series of recommendations for Brazil related to violence in the prison system. Their publication has been fundamental for us to monitor the adoption of the recommendations by the government.
Data on the seizure of illegal items during abusive searches
In 2014, research conducted by the Criminal Justice Network, a group of which Conectas is a member, found that only 3 in every 10,000 people who visited their relatives in prison were found carrying contraband items. There were no cases of attempts to smuggle in weapons. The results disprove the primary justification of the State that manual inspections are the only effective way to prevent the entry of drugs, guns and mobile phone chips into prisons. Using official documents from the São Paulo State Prison Administration Department, the study informed the national campaign “For an End to Abusive Searches” that called for the approval of Bill No. 7764/2014.
Read more here.
FOI request on the Military Police and street demonstrations
The case of police repression against demonstrators on June 13, 2013 was a turning point that caused thousands of people to take to the streets of São Paulo to protest the increase in public transport fares. Conectas and the Sou da Paz Institute sent the SSP (São Paulo State Public Security Department) eight questions on the police action at the demonstration with the intention of discovering where the order for the repression came from and how it was passed down through the chain of command. They also asked about the amount and type of ammunition used (rubber bullets and tear gas), the number of victims identified and, finally, what official rules are in place for police action at protests. Despite a series of appeals submitted by the organizations following the denials by the SSP “in the name of public security”, the questions remain unanswered. The case, however, demonstrated the lack of data production by the police on the matter and the lack of transparency of public security agencies. Moreover, the request prompted the Human Rights Center of the São Paulo Public Defenders Office, Conectas and Article 19 to file a court case requesting a new code of conduct for the police at street demonstrations.
Read more here.
BNDES financing for a highway in Bolivia
On March 31, 2015, Conectas requested from the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) documents relating to the financial support of the institution for the construction of the Villa Tunari – San Ignacio de Moxos highway, the result of a bilateral agreement between Brazil and Bolivia signed in August 2009, in the amount of 332 million dollars. The project, which consisted of laying 273 km of highway linking the Department of Cochabamba, in central Bolivia, to the Department of Beni, in the north of the country, cutting through TIPNIS (Isibóro Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park), had widespread public repercussions. After months of denials by the bank and appeals to its president, Conectas finally obtained the documents from the BNDES on this international investment, including contracts, social and environmental risk assessments and independent auditors’ reports. This information was instrumental to discover which social and environmental risk assessment mechanisms are used by the bank in international investments and to help investigate alleged irregularities and suspected corruption in the environmental licensing process of the project. The information obtained through this FOI request allowed us, together with Global Witness (United Kingdom) and Cedla (Bolivia), to send a complaint to the BNDES Ombudsman’s Office listing the shortcomings of the bank’s social and environmental impact assessment process and recommendations for its improvement.
Read more here.
Telegrams instructing Brazil how to vote in the UN
The content of the diplomatic telegrams provided to Conectas that were exchanged between the Brazilian embassy in Tehran, the Foreign Ministry in Brasília and the Brazilian mission to the UN in Geneva only tells the official version that the Iranian regime is complying with its human rights obligations. We did not have access to any telegrams that contained information taken into consideration by Brazil and that came from independent sources, such as the UN itself. Such information would give an alternative to the official narrative and should have been considered by the Brazilian Foreign Ministry before deciding to change its position and abstain on a vote in the UN Human Rights Council on the violations that occurred in Iran in 2015. The organization requested all the correspondence that contained information on the human rights situation in the country and that confirmed the alleged “renewed commitment of Iran to the human rights system” – the phrase used by Brazilian diplomacy to justify its abstention on the resolution to renew the mandate of the special rapporteur for Iran during the 28th session of the Human Rights Council. After numerous denials, the organization obtained partial access to the telegrams, which only contained information provided by the Iranian regime.
Read more here.
Click here to read the article published by Conectas, Article 19, Abraji and Transparency Brazil.
Click here for a list of all the requests made by Conectas using the Freedom of Information Law.
