{"id":3384,"date":"2014-01-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.conectas.org.inf.br\/wp\/noticias\/maranhao-in-the-international-media\/"},"modified":"2017-12-09T18:24:05","modified_gmt":"2017-12-09T18:24:05","slug":"maranhao-in-the-international-media","status":"publish","type":"noticia","link":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/noticias\/maranhao-in-the-international-media\/","title":"Maranh\u00e3o in the international media","content":"

Given the repercussions of the case, Conectas has launched an offensive on national and international public opinion to warn of the situation in Pedrinhas and throughout the entire Brazilian prison system.<\/p>\n

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In an article published on January 8 by the Brazilian website of the Spanish newspaper El Pa\u00eds that was picked up by dozens of publications around the world, the executive director of Conectas, Lucia Nader, said that while responsibility for the crimes in Pedrinhas lies with the public authorities, they were made possible because a large part of society tolerates the inhumane treatment of prisoners in Brazil.<\/p>\n

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The U.S. newspaper The New York Times also cited Conectas in its edition yesterday. \u201cThe tragedy in Pedrinhas was foretold and could be repeated at any time in other complexes facing the same problems,\u201d the newspaper quoted Lucia Nader, executive director of Conectas, as saying.<\/p>\n

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According to Nader, the Brazilian prison system is \u201cunacceptable, illegal and inefficient\u201d. She said that \u201cwe have created a powder keg, by viewing prison as the primary means of curbing violence when, in practice, it only causes violence to rise\u201d.<\/p>\n

See the articles in full below:<\/p>\n

 
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El Pa\u00eds :: We are all accomplices<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Lucia Nader and Marcos Fuchs<\/p>\n

The tragedy at the Pedrinhas prison, in the state of Maranh\u00e3o, where 62 inmates have been brutally killed since the start of 2013, is the result of an operation that is coldly calculated and backed by a public opinion that, perversely, believes in a prison system that is unacceptable, illegal and inefficient.<\/p>\n

The blame for these tragedies lies with the public authorities: governors, judges and prosecutors. But we are all accomplices, since we are either unwilling or unable to change a system that maintains intact, with archeological rigor, the same methods and the same conditions that existed in the dungeons of the Dark Ages.<\/p>\n

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In Pedrinhas, one of the victims was held down and, still alive, watched as his leg was dissected, before he died, while the whole scene was recorded on a mobile phone. Another was stabbed multiple times with the skewer. Three were decapitated. What they all had in common was the fact that they were caged, in the custody of the state government of Maranh\u00e3o, under the pretext of being rehabilitated. The facility has the capacity for 1,700 prisoners, but it holds 2,500.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time that public opinion has been shocked by events such as these. Five years ago, Conectas showed diplomats from around the world, at the United Nations in Geneva, photos of prisons in the state of Esp\u00edrito Santo, where human bodies were found dismembered in dirty laundry trolleys. In the horrific situation in Esp\u00edrito Santo, prisoners were held in metal shipping containers under the hot sun. When the doors were opened, several prisoners collapsed, unconscious, outside.<\/p>\n

Tragedies like these are repeated seasonally in Brazil. They are like the summer rainstorms that, every year, right on schedule, unleash a force of nature that causes thousands of deaths in a foreseeable tsunami. Gradually, these catastrophes are incorporated into the Brazilian calendar, like Carnival or soccer tournaments.<\/p>\n

All this is possible only because there is public support. In a country where the majority of the 548,000 prisoners are black or dark-skinned and from the poor urban outskirts, the middle class and elites are unconcerned that their fellow citizens are caged, literally defecating on top of one other. Many who shrug off these violations have the magical idea that prisoners are given a one-way ticket to a distant universe. They ought to understand that prisons in Brazil are absolutely inefficient. They operate like a revolving door, with recidivism rates higher than 60%, during which time inmates are recruited by organized criminal gangs and suffer all manner of brutality before returning to the streets.<\/p>\n

The Brazilian obsession with imprisonment and prisoner mistreatment beats world records. Over the past 20 years, the country has seen a 380% increase in the number of prisoners.<\/p>\n

We have built an illegal prison system. In it, we systematically violate laws and constitutional guarantees. It is a vicious cycle, where everyone loses. The investigation process is paltry \u2013 less than 8% of murders are investigated. As a result, the main motive for imprisonment \u2013 nearly 40% of prisoners are pre-trial detainees \u2013 is suspicion, almost always directed at young blacks from the urban outskirts. This, unsurprisingly, is the same profile as those who have no access to justice, since they cannot afford a lawyer and depend on a public defender who, in the state of S\u00e3o Paulo, will also be handling another 8,000 to 10,000 similar cases. This number illustrates that not even Brazil\u2019s richest state is immune to the flaws in the country\u2019s prison system. Eighty people are imprisoned in S\u00e3o Paulo every day, and the state has not even created a State-Level Mechanism to Combat and Prevent Torture, which would demonstrate the commitment assumed by the Brazilian government seven years ago in the UN.<\/p>\n

The argument that we cannot build a society based on inhuman values is, on its face, irrefutable. However, if there are still sadists who support these horrors, they need to know that the construction of a prison system like this will, in a short space of time, end up creating a society that is increasingly more brutal, inhuman and irreconcilable.<\/p>\n

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Read the original article here<\/u><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 
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The Economist :: Welcome to the middle ages<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Por Jan Piotrowski<\/p>\n

FLIP-FLOPPED feet saunter across a wet concrete floor. With each step, the water reddens until the camera comes to rest on the bodies of three prisoners. Severed heads lie on top of two of the corpses. The video was filmed in Pedrinhas, the biggest prison complex in the northern state of Maranh\u00e3o, and published on January 7th by Folha de S\u00e3o Paulo<\/em>, a newspaper. The footage has woken up many Brazilians to the hellishness of their prisons.<\/p>\n

At least 218 inmates have been murdered since January 2013 in 24 of Brazil\u2019s 27 states. (The other three do not disclose figures.) Dozens more have died in suspicious circumstances. Severe overcrowding is the root of the problem. In the past 20 years Brazil\u2019s population has grown by 30%, while that of its prisons and police cells has almost quintupled, to 550,000\u2014the fourth-highest in the world, behind the United States, China and Russia. 
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