{"id":4275,"date":"2014-10-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.conectas.org.inf.br\/wp\/noticias\/a-bullet-in-the-face-of-society\/"},"modified":"2017-12-09T18:33:35","modified_gmt":"2017-12-09T18:33:35","slug":"a-bullet-in-the-face-of-society","status":"publish","type":"noticia","link":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/noticias\/a-bullet-in-the-face-of-society\/","title":"A bullet in the face of society","content":"

\"\"The growing wave of police violence against press professionals at protests was the topic of a debate between journalists, lawyers and almost 60 students on Wednesday (October 15), at the Catholic University of S\u00e3o Paulo (PUC-SP).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In addition to the photographers S\u00e9rgio Silva and Alex Silveira, who were blinded by rubber bullets fired by the S\u00e3o Paulo Military Police while they were covering protests, representatives of the S\u00e3o Paulo Public Defender\u2019s Office, Conectas and Ponte also participated in the debate.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Silva and Silveira gave their accounts of how they lost their eyesight and expressed indignation over the recent ruling by the S\u00e3o Paulo courts that put the blame on Silveira for having been shot by the police.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The photographer was wounded during a teachers protest in 2000, when he worked for the newspaper Agora SP<\/em>. He filed a lawsuit claiming compensation from the State and won his case in a trial court. However, in September last year, the decision was overturned by an appeals court. It was decided that Silveira had put himself and remained in a situation of risk, and was solely responsible for the incident. The reporter and photographer, who had been fighting for 14 years since his injury in the courts for material and moral damages, had his requests denied and will also have to pay for the court costs.  <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a political decision,\u201d claimed Silveira. He said that the decision in the case will directly impact the judgment of other cases filed against the State by people wounded in demonstrations. \u201cAfter this decision, any citizen will be considered responsible if they are a victim of police violence,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The case of S\u00e9rgio Silva may be one of them. Struck by a rubber bullet while he was covering a protest against the increase in bus fares in S\u00e3o Paulo in 2012, the photographer is still awaiting the court decision.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they shot me, they could have shot a workman, a housewife or any other person who happened to be there right then,\u201d explained Silva. \u201cThe bullet was not aimed at me, but at society.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"Civil Public Action \u2013 Outside the law or \u2018delusional\u2019?<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

According to the public defender Rafael Lessa, from the Human Rights Center of the Public Defender\u2019s Office, the Military Police have not been complying with national and international standards that regulate the use of force and firearms by the police. \u201cThe police may fire below the waist and only when the person is armed. All national and international standards specify this,\u201d he stressed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He noted that the work of the Military Police is governed by specific rules that must be strictly observed. Conectas and the Human Rights Center of the S\u00e3o Paulo Public Defender\u2019s Office submitted to the S\u00e3o Paulo State Public Security Department (SSP), in August 2013, a series of recommendations<\/u><\/a> on how the police should act in these circumstances. No response was ever given.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In April 2014, the Office filed a Public Civil Action<\/u><\/a> against the SSP asking the courts to compel the State to adopt the measures in the document. The case is currently pending in the 10th Public Finance Court and, to date, Judge Valentino Aparecido de Andrade has not decided on the injunction requested by the Public Defender\u2019s Office. As a means of comparison, the injunction for the repossession of the S\u00e3o Jo\u00e3o building, in downtown S\u00e3o Paulo, was issued on the same day as the filing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

However, the State Attorney General\u2019s Office, the representative of the S\u00e3o Paulo government in the case, has already made a statement claiming that the lawsuit filed by the Public Defender\u2019s Office is \u201cdelusional\u201d and that society cannot try to control the police.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Conectas submitted an amicus curiae<\/u> brief – a presentation by an interested third party in a public interest case – clarifying the international standards on the use of force and demonstrating that the S\u00e3o Paulo Military Police is not complying with the standards that have existed since 1979 that were developed in the UN and the OAS.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the debate, Rafael Cust\u00f3dio, coordinator of the Justice program at Conectas, spoke about the need to reform the existing police model, which \u201cis not compatible with the democratic rule of law\u201d. Since the military police are, as the Constitution states, \u201cancillary forces of the Army\u201d, they are trained to treat civil society with violence and brutality. \u201cThe police are one of the few institutions that did not go through the transition to democracy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pressure cooker<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The state legislator Jo\u00e3o Paulo Nilo also took part in the debate to speak about Bill 647\/2013<\/u><\/a>, drafted by state legislator Francisco Campos Tito, which bans the use of 12 caliber rubber bullets by the S\u00e3o Paulo state public security agencies. Nilo expressed concern with the progress of the bill, given the new composition of the S\u00e3o Paulo state legislature after the elections.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThe solution is to keep up the pressure,\u201d said Liane Lira, of the mobilization network Minha Sampa. \u201cThe bill is currently in the Constitution, Justice and Drafting Commission of the state legislature. I suggest that everybody use the Pressure Cooker<\/u><\/a> tool to pressure the decision-makers to approve it.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A virtual mobilization application, the Pressure Cooker<\/u><\/a> sends emails directly to the legislators serving on the Commission calling for the ban on the abusive use of rubber bullets to be approved.<\/p>\n<\/div>

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

Debate addresses police violence against the press and controversial court ruling<\/p>\n","author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"tema":[],"class_list":["post-4275","noticia","type-noticia","status-publish","hentry","category-event-en"],"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":[{"term_id":61,"name":"Event","slug":"event-en","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":61,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":188,"filter":"raw","term_order":"0","permalink":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/category\/event-en\/","relative_link":"category\/event-en\/","langs":{"en":"event-en","br":"evento"}}],"post_tag":[]},"author_name":"Leonardo Medeiros","author_nicename":"leonardo-medeiros","protected":false,"langs":{"en":"a-bullet-in-the-face-of-society","br":"a-bullet-in-the-face-of-society"},"permalink":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/noticias\/a-bullet-in-the-face-of-society\/","relative_url":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/noticias\/a-bullet-in-the-face-of-society\/","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noticias\/4275","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=4275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4275"},{"taxonomy":"tema","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tema?post=4275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}