{"id":4785,"date":"2015-05-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.conectas.org.inf.br\/wp\/noticias\/ongoing-violation\/"},"modified":"2018-01-29T19:27:50","modified_gmt":"2018-01-29T19:27:50","slug":"ongoing-violation","status":"publish","type":"noticia","link":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/noticias\/ongoing-violation\/","title":"Ongoing violation","content":"

May 2006. The evening was drawing to a close in the neighborhood of Parque Bristol, in the southside of the city of S\u00e3o Paulo, when the two brothers Edivaldo and Eduardo were chatting to their friends F\u00e1bio, Fernando and Israel outside their house. Both the capital and other cities in the state of S\u00e3o Paulo were experiencing a rapid escalation of violence, triggered by a series of attacks by the criminal gang known as PCC (First Capital Command) on public buildings and security forces, followed by reprisals by the police and death squads.<\/p>\n

The five young men from Parque Bristol were suddenly thrust into the middle of this war.\u00a0They were 21 to 25 years old. From a moving car, masked men opened fire against the group of friends, killing three, Edivaldo, Eduardo and Israel. Their names were added to the long list of civilians, mostly men (96%) younger than 35 years old (80%) with no criminal record, who were killed between May 12 and 21 that year in the state of S\u00e3o Paulo.<\/p>\n

According to research<\/u><\/a> conducted by the Laboratory for the Analysis of Violence of the Rio de Janeiro State University at the request of Conectas, at least 505 civilians were killed over the course of those 10 days. The number of dead government agents totaled 59.<\/p>\n

Nine years after what have become known as the Crimes of May, families are still waiting for justice. Like so many other inquiries opened at the time, the case of Edivaldo, Eduardo and Israel\u00a0was quickly shelved without the perpetrators being identified. In a sign of complicity given the lack of effort by the police to find the killers, the Prosecution Service requested that the case be shelved in November 2008.<\/p>\n

On account of the inaction by the S\u00e3o Paulo state justice system, the case was referred to the IACHR<\/u><\/a> (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the OAS), where it has been pending since 2009. The victims are also awaiting a response from the Office of the Attorney General on the request for the federalization of the investigation<\/u><\/a> made by Conectas in the same year.<\/p>\n