February, 2003
In the last 10 years, 300,000 people have been killed in Brazil, largely as a result of urban violence and the proliferation of guns in the country. While 24 men are killed for every one woman, every death leaves a grieving mother, wife, sister, girlfriend or friend. Now the women of Brazil are uniting to try to put an end to the terrifying escalation of violence and gun crime.
On Mother's Day, 13 May 2001, the Brazilian non-governmental organization (NGO) Viva Rio launched a campaign under the slogan "Arma Ní£o! Ela Ou Eu." ("Choose gun-free! It's your weapon or me."). Their aim was to bring together women from all sections of Brazilian society to force the men of Brazil to give up their guns. At the launch, attended by actresses, journalists, artists, mothers who had lost their children and wives who had lost their husbands, white flowers were distributed together with pamphlets explaining that owning a gun does not guarantee the protection of your family, but rather puts them at greater risk.
Urban violence in Brazil is endemic, and there is no doubt that Brazilian society lives in fear. Those living in poor urban communities are trapped in a no-man's land between the violence of criminal gangs, who commit serious crimes including torture and killings, and that of the state response to them. The police forces are underfunded, poorly equipped and trained, and resort to brutal, ad hoc solutions and human rights violations in the absence of a coherent approach to public security issues. AI has begun researching the links between urban violence and human rights violations and in December last year, a representative of Viva Rio, an important partner for AI, visited AI's International Secretariat to talk about their campaigns against this spiralling violence, especially those involving women.
Viva Rio, one of Brazil's largest NGOs, was created in 1993 in response to two appalling massacres of unarmed civilians by military policemen. Seven street children and one young adult were killed at the Candelária Church, Rio de Janeiro, in July, and a month later, 21 people were shot dead by a group of hooded gunmen who spent two hours shooting indiscriminately at residents in the Vigário Geral shanty town. AI has campaigned and lobbied about these massacres ever since, with some success.
Viva Rio is working with the poorest communities of Rio de Janeiro to find practical local solutions to the problems of gun crime. Initiatives include working with the local police to set up a system for storing and recording guns that are seized, with the aim of tracing the source of the guns and ensuring that they are not reintroduced into the community, and pilot projects of community policing. In these projects the police and community representatives agreed on three key points: not to involve children with guns; not to have guns or drugs in the open; and to put an end to police corruption. In the first such initiative the chief police officer sacked over half his staff because of bribery and corruption. This initiated the long and complex process of building police credibility in the community.
In June 2001, Viva Rio, the International Action Network on Small Arms and other local NGOs collaborated with the state government of Rio de Janeiro and the military to destroy 100,000 weapons which had been seized by the police. The weapons were heaped into a 400-square-metre pile and bulldozed in front of a crowd of tens of thousands. The event took the record for the largest weapons stockpile to be destroyed anywhere in the world on a single day. A further 10,000 weapons were destroyed on 9 July 2002 and Viva Rio has campaigned to have 9 July made Small Arms Destruction Day throughout the world.
More Information on Small Arms and Light Weapons
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