An escalation of violence at a prison in Maranhão in northeastern Brazil is drawing scrutiny from the government and international human rights groups.
Earlier this week, national news daily Folha de São Paulo posted gruesome video footage showing the remains of three decapitated corpses at the Pedrinhas prison in Maranhão. Fellow inmates had killed the men during a riot.
One prisoner can be heard saying "You need to adjust the focus," before the footage tracks over a floor slick with water and blood to a heap of beheaded bodies.
Folha said that the Union of Attendants to the Penitentiary System of the State of Maranhão gave them the video.
"The grisly crimes caught on camera are part of a broader problem of uncontrolled violence in Maranhão’s prisons," said Maria Laura Canineu, Brazil director at Human Rights Watch. "The state urgently needs to investigate these crimes, restore order in the prisons, and ensure the inmates’ safety."
Brazil’s government called a special meeting Thursday to address the events, and Justice Minister Eduardo Cardozo was sent later Thursday to state capital São Luis to meet with Governor Roseana Sarney.
- Violence in prisons common, and has spread outside the prison walls
The incident is not an isolated one: An investigation by Brazil’s National Council of Justice found that 60 inmates were killed in 2013 in Pedrinhas, and that violence is common throughout prisons in the state. Thirteen prisoners at Pedrinhas died during one uprising in October.
Investigators visited five institutions in the state, one of Brazil’s poorest, and found many of them to be practically controlled by criminal gangs, providing an "utter lack of security" for prisoners.
The report also found that wives and girlfriends visiting their partners in jail were being raped by other prisoners.
In late December, the violence spread outside of the jail. Maranhão’s military police took control of six prisons, amongst them Pedrinhas. As a reprisal, gangs linked to prisoners burned buses and attacked police stations. A six year-old girl was killed in one of the buses; others were seriously hurt.
Gang membership in Brazil’s prisons is common not only in Maranhão: most famously the First Capital Command (Primeiro Capital Command, PCC) has significant influence throughout São Paulo state and beyond. The PCC gained notoriety in 2006, when it is credited with orchestrating a wave of targeted violence outside jail using smuggled cellphones and pen-drives that left some 200 people dead.
In a short statement, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights alluded to its repeated criticisms of Brazil’s troubled penitentiary system.
"We regret having to, once again, express concern at the dire state of prisons in Brazil, and urge the authorities to take immediate action to restore order in Pedrinhas Prison and other prisons throughout the country, as well as to reduce overcrowding and provide dignified conditions for those deprived of liberty," the statement read.
Prison conditions in Brazil are notoriously bad, with severe overcrowding and poor hygiene standards. In late 2012, Justice Minister Eduardo Cardozo said he would "rather die" than spend time in a Brazilian jail, and called conditions in Brazilian prisons "mediaeval".
By Lucy Jordan - Anadolu Agency
