{"id":3003,"date":"2013-10-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.conectas.org.inf.br\/wp\/noticias\/governor-alckmin-refuses-to-meet-with-un-representative\/"},"modified":"2013-10-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-01T00:00:00","slug":"governor-alckmin-refuses-to-meet-with-un-representative","status":"publish","type":"noticia","link":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/noticias\/governor-alckmin-refuses-to-meet-with-un-representative\/","title":"Governor Alckmin refuses to meet with UN representative","content":"

September 4, 2013<\/p>\n

Three weeks ago, video evidence of torture against minors at the Funda\u00e7\u00e3o Casa youth reform center in S\u00e3o Paulo, broadcast on the widely-viewed television show Fant\u00e1stico<\/a>, exposed a serious situation, but one all too familiar to human rights organizations: the constant violations that occur in detention centers across Brazil. At the time, S\u00e3o Paulo Governor Geraldo Alckmin said he was prepared to install cameras inside prisons to curb torture.<\/p>\n

However, the governor\u2019s concern comes across as empty rhetoric when one considers that a bill to create a State-Level Torture Prevention Mechanism, in the molds of the law signed by President Dilma Rousseff in August, has been stalled in the S\u00e3o Paulo State Justice Department for more than a year. The lack of interest in the bill, prepared over the course of a year of meetings with civil society organizations (including Conectas), became even more evident last week, when Alckmin refused to meet Emilio Gin\u00e9s, a member of the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT), who was in Brazil.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is vital for S\u00e3o Paulo to create a torture prevention mechanism as quickly as possible,\u201d Gin\u00e9s told Conectas. \u201cIt is an instrument of collaboration with the authorities. It is not reactive or complaint-based. It is about dialogue to resolve a common problem.\u201d According to Rafael Cust\u00f3dio, coordinator of the Justice Program at Conectas, \u201cthe lack of political will to discuss such a delicate matter with international actors is regrettable, even more so when we know that this is a daily practice in the state\u2019s prisons,\u201d adding that \u201cwe do not understand the reason for the refusal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stalled<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2012, organizations such as Conectas, the Catholic Church\u2019s Pastoral Carcer\u00e1ria prison care service, the Public Defender\u2019s Office, the Regional Psychology Council, Action by Christians Against Torture (ACAT) and the Pr\u00e1xis Human Rights Institute mobilized around the Working Group established by the S\u00e3o Paulo State Department Justice and Defense of Citizenship to improve the draft of the bill presented to the state in 2011.<\/p>\n

The meetings, however, were abandoned by the government in March after a report by the State Attorney General\u2019s Office asserting that the creation of the National Mechanism should precede the creation of the State Mechanism. Despite ignoring examples such as the state of Rio de Janeiro, which has had its own mechanism since 2010, the S\u00e3o Paulo State Justice Department accepted the report\u2019s argument and halted all attempts by the organizations to resume dialogue.<\/p>\n

In early August, when President Rousseff signed Law 12,847 that establishes the National System to Prevent and Combat Torture, the S\u00e3o Paulo government ran out of excuses. Revealing that the problem is primarily political, and not technical, Alckmin ignored the open letter sent shortly afterwards by 34 organizations and 16 individuals requesting the bill to be submitted to the State Legislative Assembly. The organizations are still awaiting a response.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

What the law says<\/strong><\/p>\n

The main clause of article 24 of the S\u00e3o Paulo State Constitution <\/a>asserts that \u201cthe initiative of supplementary and ordinary laws is within the competence of any member or committee of the Legislative Assembly, the State Governor, the Court of Appeals, the State Attorney General and the citizens, in the manner and in the cases provided for in this Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paragraph two of the same article establishes the exclusive competence of the governor to submit bills involving (i) the creation and extinction of public positions, functions or jobs in the direct administration and in public organizations, as well as the fixing of the respective remuneration; and (ii) the creation and extinction of State Departments and public administration bodies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn other words, it is not an option for the governor to submit such a bill, but a duty,\u201d said Vivian Calderoni, a lawyer at Conectas. \u201cOtherwise, the state of S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 which concentrates more than a third of the country\u2019s prison population and has the most adolescents serving time in reform centers \u2013 will not have a mechanism to prevent the kind of torture that has shocked the population in recent weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

 
\n<\/p>\n

\n

+Special<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Rousseff signs law to combat torture<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Conectas commends the approval of the National Mechanism, but calls for commitment and transparency in setting up the new body<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>

<\/div>","excerpt":"

Em\u00edlio Gin\u00e9s, member of the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture, wanted to discuss the establishment of a state-level prevention mechanism<\/p>\n","author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"tema":[],"class_list":["post-3003","noticia","type-noticia","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":{"links_para_referencia":null,"author":null,"subtitle-pt":null},"yoast":{"focuskw":"","title":"","metadesc":"","linkdex":"","metakeywords":"","meta-robots-noindex":"","meta-robots-nofollow":"","meta-robots-adv":"","canonical":"","redirect":"","opengraph-title":"","opengraph-description":"","opengraph-image":"","twitter-title":"","twitter-description":"","twitter-image":""},"featured_image":[],"terms":{"acoes_categorias":[],"acoes_tags":[],"category":[],"post_tag":[]},"author_name":"Leonardo Medeiros","author_nicename":"leonardo-medeiros","protected":false,"langs":{"en":"governor-alckmin-refuses-to-meet-with-un-representative","br":"governor-alckmin-refuses-to-meet-with-un-representative"},"permalink":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/noticias\/governor-alckmin-refuses-to-meet-with-un-representative\/","relative_url":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/noticias\/governor-alckmin-refuses-to-meet-with-un-representative\/","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noticias\/3003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noticias"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/noticia"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3003"},{"taxonomy":"tema","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tema?post=3003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}