Tarcísio's São Paulo is our model of human rights violations.

The U.S. State Department report pointing to human rights violations in Brazil is ideological, even pathetic, when it views them within the context of freedom of expression and political persecution. It represents an undisguised endorsement of the narrative of the national coup plotters, desperate at the imminent condemnation of their leader. No surprise there.

If the material were directed exclusively at the actions of the São Paulo police, under the command of the Bolsonaro-supporting governor Tarcísio de Freitas, its emphasis would be correct. The murders committed by Tarcísio's police are in the report, as they are in an old complaint to the International Criminal Court, but they should not be lumped together with the same package of fake news directed at the Brazilian judiciary, because they are real.

The year 2024 saw a cumulative total of 737 homicides committed by police officers in São Paulo, both on and off duty, representing a 60,2% increase over 2023 and an 86% increase compared to 2022. More than 60% of these deaths were of Black people.

According to the Brazilian Public Security Forum, the increase in lethality is linked to a harsher security policy, obviously with a decrease in controls on the use of force. In 2023, there were cuts of approximately R$ 37,3 million in the police body camera program and a freeze on funding for combating violence against women. 

The infamous Operations Shield and Summer, in the Baixada Santista region, left at least 84 dead, leading to complaints to the UN and other international organizations, such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the OAS. 

To superimpose a fictitious restriction on freedom of expression onto the cruel reality imposed by the São Paulo police on the black and poor population is part of the Bolsonaro strategy bought by the United States under Donald Trump. Distorting facts, inverting logic, creating a parallel world are practices orchestrated by the global right that are already well-known and duly exposed. The problem is that the civilized world has not yet found a way to defeat them, because they are led by the greatest military power on the planet, which blackmails and threatens everyone.