Human Rights Watch 2011 Report – Brazil

More required reading at FIFA HQ

The following are extracts from the Human Rights Watch 2011 World Report that pertain to the 2014 host of the FIFA World Cup, Brazil. The full HRW report on Brazil can be read here.

“Most of Brazil's metropolitan areas are plagued by widespread violence perpetrated by criminal gangs and abusive police. Violence especially impacts low-income communities. There are more than 40,000 intentional homicides in Brazil every year. In Rio de Janeiro hundreds of low-income communities are occupied and controlled by drug gangs, who routinely engage in violent crime and extortion.”

“Police abuse, including extrajudicial execution, is a chronic problem. According to official data, police were responsible for 505 killings in the state of Rio de Janeiro alone in the first six months of 2010. This amounts to roughly three police killings per day, or at least one police killing for every six ‘regular’ intentional homicides.”

Quote of the Week - Arch Puddington, Freedom House

"Questions about freedom? Sorry, can't hear ya!"

"It is often observed that a government that mistreats its people also fears its people. But authoritarian regimes will have a much freer hand to silence their domestic critics if there is no resistance from the outside world. Indeed, if the world’s democracies fail to unite and speak out in defense of their own values, despots will continue to gain momentum." Arch Puddington (great name, it has to be said), Director of Research at Washington, DC-based Freedom House, upon publication of the body's report published Thursday outlining decreased levels of freedom for the fifth successive year in the world's nations.

The organisation also highlighted Russia as one of "the world’s most powerful authoritarian regimes [acting] with increased brazenness in 2010.  Russia’s leadership showed blatant disregard for judicial independence in its handling of, among other cases, the sentencing of regime critic and former oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky after a trial that was widely considered fraudulent." Not to mention ongoing unsolved attacks and assassinations targeting investigative journalists and human rights advocates, and almost total state control of the media.

Rio Gets Ready For Slum Clearance

Fair Play for the favelas?

German weekly Die Zeit reports from Rio de Janeiro on the likely measures the city will take to clean up its favelas – the slum areas notorious for poverty, drugs and gang warfare – ahead of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.  

Ricardo Teixeira, FIFA Executive Committee member, head of the Brazilian Football Association, and a man accused last month by the BBC’s Panorama of taking bribes during the 1990s while awarding TV contracts for the rights to the World Cup, promises that the “necessary normality will rule” by the time of the 2013 Confederations Cup, and the competition itself the following year.

How will the government bring about this necessary normality? “Pacification measures,” reports Die Zeit, and quotes a frank local tourist guide, Sergio Castro, as outlining the coming crackdown:

Press Freedom League Table - Brazil Moves Up, Qatar and Russia Lying Low

Reporters Without Borders has published its Press Freedom Index for 2010, and it's not particularly  happy reading for journalists working in FIFA's World Cup host countries. 

Best of the bunch is Brazil, up 12 places to 58th on the index, thanks to some "favourable legislative changes", says the organisation. Qatar has slipped down the charts to 121st place, from an already unimpressive 94th in 2009, but at least it's two places above Zimbabwe. "Russia," RWB points out, "which had a particularly deadly preceding year, is still poorly placed at 140th." On the plus side, it's at least ahead of former Communist allies Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea (last place but one, ahead of Eritrea). 

Perhaps if global warming ramps the Qatari summer temperatures up to 150 degrees, then one uncontested Dear Leader (President Sepp) might turn to another President For Life, Kim Jong-Il, with a view to relocating the championship in Pyongyang. No danger there of journalists asking awkward questions.