In the following we are publishing a translation of an article from the newspaper "A Nova Democracia" from Brazil, dated May 29, on the murder of 55 prisoners in the state of Amazonas.
On Sunday, May 26, 55 inmates were murdered in various prisons in the state of Amazonas, one of the worst slaughters of recent years in Brazil.
Less than two years after another massacre, it happened in the same state. The defenders of privatization as a mean against any evil must be told that the management of the penal administration in Amazon was taken over by the company Umanizzare. Under her responsibility, 4000 Brazilian Real (about 900 €) are spent per month per inmate, while the national average is 2000 Brazilian Real.
Like in a horror movie, the local government rented a refrigerated truck to store the bodies while the families waited, desperate and indignant, for the delivery of their relatives, at the door of the prison. It is another state crime against the people which are gathering in this country day by day.
What do the "authorities" of this republic say? Most simply say nothing, being silent, being an accomplice of barbarism. Others repeat the words of Raul Jungmann, former Minister of Public Security in Temer, who describes prisons as the office of "organized crime", a metaphysical phrase that says everything and nothing. Today the largest crimes against the people and the nation are organized and carried out by the old reactionary state. Most of them with the approval of the legislature.
Because it can only be understood as a crimie of the politics, which is to be observed in this country, it has produced massive and selective detention under scandalous conditions; massive: cause of the 4% average per year of prisoners, while the population is growing at a rate below 1%; (more than half of the prisoners are between 18 and 29 years old), blacks (64%) and non-school children (89% did not complete basic education and only 1% have graduated). Today, Brazil has more than 700,000 prisoners and only 368,000 places, leading to a scenario of overcrowding that has already reached critical mass. In this environment, pawn victims, as occurred in Amazon, are not "unpredictable," as Sergio Moro said in Portugal, but predictable and almost inevitable.
Let's compare the data of the prisoners with those of the unemployed and murdered: we will see that they almost overlap. The unemployed and murdered are predominantly black people, residents of peripheral areas, with little or no education. There is perhaps only one significant difference: while among the victims of violent death in Brazil, the vast majority are young men (in the range of 15 to 24 years, 91% of those killed are men), the majority of the population of the unemployed are female (59 %). It should be noted that the vast majority of prison inmates in absolute terms consists of 95% men, whereas female incarceration is growing at much higher rates (growth of 700% between 2000 and 2018). In fact, there are prisons in which the social ills meet and intertwine. Prisons are not a hole separate from the consciousness of society, but a place where all the elements that compose it are grouped together.
The statistics indeed show a tragedy of biblical proportions that is going on in this country. It is on a practical level, concrete, the torment of the order of decay, the poorest of the people drowning in the swamp of poverty, and will do this ever more, until this order is finally overturned. As bloody as the revolutionary path may be, it can not cost more than this "Roman peace".
There are "occasional democrats", especially among the press monopolies, who are now in opposition and find surprises in the fact that the poor are killed and imprisoned in Brazil. These same "decent liberals" have been feeding the bloody and repressive ways against the people for years, creating hysteria among the classes, and now it is frightening that the repressive agents who have exercised their dictatorship have become thinkers and leaders. This is the same old dilemma of imperialism: the defense of the imperialist regime can only be reconciled with the relentless oppression and smashing of the army of "workers", especially if they decide to revolt Rulers, from which the people are excluded, unless the candidates of parliament are referred to a crime.
