Violence in Brazil: deadlier than war in Syria

Krishna Jaramillo December 19, 2017

240 2 minutes read

Brazil, the most powerful South American country, is going through acute scourges of racism, homophobia and sexual abuse. A recent documentary published by the local media 'O Globo', revealed with alarming figures that the violence in the country exceeds the fatalities that the war in Syria has left so far.

The 14-minutes documentary called ‘A Guerra Do Brasil’ -'The War of Brazil'- discloses that between 2001 and 2015 more than 786,000 people were killed violently in this nation. The cipher is the equivalent to the population of cities such as Frankfurt, Seville, Seattle, and Athens. In Brazil, every 10 minutes a person is killed and the majority of the victims are young afrodescendants.

In 2014, Brazil reached a total of 60,000 homicides, figure that by then was higher than all murders occurred in South America combined, and it was higher than deaths counted in the 28 countries of the European Union. As the documentary explains, this scourge should not be excused by the number of people living in the southern nation, as other countries such as India, China and the United States, with a greater number of inhabitants, present a lower number of murders due to common violence.

Other details discovered by the audiovisual production show that half of the fatalities occurred in the last 15 years. Victims were people under age, being 29 years old the maximum age rank. According to the data, 9 out of 10 murdered are men, most of these Afro-Americans. More than 1,300 babies under 1-year-old died being victims of the violence, as well as 48,400 elderly people who died under the same circumstances.

'A Guerra Do Brasil' also compares deaths caused by the Middle East conflict, against those of this South American nation. The comparison indicates that despite Syria and Iraq for several years have suffered a war that has unleashed, chaos, chemical attacks, invasions, bombings and entire cities dominated by terrorist groups, in Brazil, even without an ongoing war, more fatalities are recorded.

Iraq:
Between 2003 and 2017 = 268,000 deaths

Syria:
Between 2011 and 2017 = 330,000 deaths

Brazil:
Between 2001 and 2015 = 786,000 deaths

What is causing the rise of violence?

Director of Brazilian Forum of Public Security, Renato Sergio de Lima, warned during a recent presentation of statistics on violence in Brazil, that criminal situation in the country leaves the same number of victims "as if Brazil suffered an atomic bomb attack per year."

According to experts, this scourge is fueled by the inefficiency of four governments that have been unable to solve the violence situation. Thus, the absence of the State is reflected in impunity during trials. Also, there are other situations that aggravate Brazil’s situation. For example, the lost bullets that kill innocent people during confrontations between police and drug traffickers. Even more, some laws increase the violent problematic. For instance, the Congress recently approved a law which prevents Civil Justice from investigating Armed Forces actions when there had been civilian fatalities.

Brazil´s reality is heartbreaking, in this powered country every day 143 people die after being shoot during common violence disputes. This number is equivalent to a person dying every 10 minutes, because of a scourge that has become trivial, normal and ignored by the nation.