Brazil: repression stops 500th anniversary protests

By Maria Osava

Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, Apr. 22 (IPS)-- Police used force and blockaded roadways Saturday in Brazil’s northeastern state of Bahia to contain protests during the official quincentennial ceremonies, which were led by president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and his Portuguese counterpart, Jorge Sampaio.

The ceremony was held in the city of Porto Seguro, where the Portuguese Conquistadors landed on April 22, 1500. Nearly 5,000 police officers surrounded the city, preventing access to the site, even for tourists.

Some 1,000 indigenous peoples, students, peasants and Afro-Brazilian activists who gathered in Santa Cruz de Cabralia, 23 km from Porto Seguro, were attacked in the morning hours by police who fired rubber bullets, sprayed tear gas and beat demonstrators with their batons.

This repression resulted in at least six people injured and the arrests of 141 more, who police then encircled in a town plaza as they stood in the rain. Helicopters with armed personnel aboard served as backup for the operation.

Carlos Frederico Mares, president of the government’s National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI), was also beaten by the police as he tried to prevent the attacks, as was a photographer for the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper.

Later, some 3,000 people, including opposition parliamentarians who met in Cabralia, found the road to Porto Seguro blocked. They had intended to go there to protest the official ceremonies celebrating the 500-year anniversary because all social movements had been excluded.

More than 2,000 of the protesters had participated in the National Conference of Indigenous Peoples and Organizations of Brazil, held last Tuesday through Friday at Coroa Vermelha, a beach community near Cabralia and Porto Seguro.

The police actions prevented a delegation of 23 indigenous leaders from reaching Porto Seguro, where they had hoped to present Cardoso with the declaration approved at last week’s conference.

The resolutions contained in the document include 20 demands for implementing the native peoples’ rights recognized in Brazil’s Constitution, such as the demarcation and protection of their lands.

The Landless Movement (Movimento dos Sem Terra--MST), which had at least 2,000 activists on another road leading into Porto Seguro, were not able to reach the historic city either. The MST protesters could not get past the six roadblocks the police had set up, which also prevented tourists from getting to the site.

Cardoso, who the night before had referred to the MST as fascist because it had threatened to disrupt the official celebrations, acknowledged in his speech Saturday that social wounds form part of the heritage of these 500 years.

The president also recognized the legitimacy of the protests and demands of indigenous peoples, blacks and landless peasants, saying that Brazil’s oligarchic and slave past had made the nation’s society one of the most unjust in the world.

He promised the indigenous peoples the government would continue with projects to demarcate their land, a belated compensation for the painful birth of the Brazilian nation, making reference to the massacres that reduced the native population from approximately five million in 1500 to just 350,000 today.

For the peasants, he pointed to the advances already made in agrarian reform, though the MST says it is not enough. Cardoso admitted that the concentration of land ownership continues to exclude millions of Brazilians from the benefits of development.

Democracy, said Cardoso, is the road that will lead to the universality of rights and of the concrete conditions for the full exercise of citizenship.

He said the time has come for Brazil to put an end to social exclusion, given the level of development the nation has achieved. Poverty is no longer a justification for the misery of its people.

Portugal’s president Sampaio stated he was honored to take part in the festivities and expressed the willingness of his country to develop closer ties with Brazil and to help build tighter relations between the European Union and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), of which Brazil is the largest member.

"We are responsible for the present, not the past," stated Sampaio, in response to potential criticisms of the Portuguese colonization, the major factor in the plight of Brazil’s indigenous peoples, who were nearly exterminated.

The Portuguese president emphasized the enormous possibilities for a future of cooperation between the two countries.

Meanwhile, with the city surrounded by police and the heightened tension as they faced the risk of mass protests, the official celebration of Brazil’s quincentennial was limited to officials and special guests, without popular participation.

Other commemorative acts, as well as protests, took place in several cities throughout the nation, including concerts and the planting of 200,000 palo-brasil trees at schools in all municipalities. The tree is a national symbol and gave the inspiration for the country’s name.

In Porto Alegre, in the south, protesters destroyed an outdoor clock, a symbol of the controversial celebration because it had indicated the days left before April 22.
For the indigenous peoples from all Brazilian regions who met in Coroa Vermelha, the 500 years constitute a history of infamy and humiliation, of invasions of their lands, slavery and death.

Their principal demands, including the legal demarcation of their territories by the end of this year, the recovery of lands occupied by invading migrants and the halting of mega-projects --such as hydroelectric dams-- that affect their regions, are based on articles of the Constitution, say indigenous leaders.

They want the Statute of Indigenous peoples to be approved, a measure that recognizes their rights as a distinct society. It has been held up in Brazil’s Congress since 1991. The leaders also demand that justice be served on those responsible for the ongoing violent crimes against their peoples.

The declaration also calls for an indigenous educational system, one that uses their native languages and transmits their cultures, as well as the creation of an assistance organization linked to the nation’s Executive branch that includes the participation of leaders elected by the native peoples themselves.

The document addressed to the president pays homage to the native peoples who resisted white domination throughout the last 500 years and proclaims the commitment to continue fighting so that future indigenous generations are free in a free country.

Police chief's tactics no surprise, say activists

By Christine Geovanis

Washington, DC, Apr. 19-- Washington DC Metro police chief Charles Ramsey developed --and refined-- his approach to suppressing political dissent four years ago, at the 1996 Chicago Democratic Convention, according to Chicago opponents of police brutality. And they charge that it’s predictable that the DC police engaged in some of the same kind of heavy-handed and illegal activity during last weekend's demonstrations against the IMF and World Bank.

"The paramilitary-styled police strikes against organizing centers and demonstrators in Washington DC are the same sort of attack strategy Ramsey used four years ago to shut down public protest at the DNC," says Chicago activist Dick Reilly of Neighbors Against Police Brutality. "We consistently saw this kind of crap from him when he was deputy commander of the Chicago police department --and predictably, we saw it again during the anti-World Bank/IMF demonstrations."

Reilly, who worked as a medical volunteer in Washington last weekend, reports that medics treated scores of people seriously injured by police, including one press photographer who sustained head injuries in a beating and another Agence France reporter who was pepper sprayed. Medics also report that dozens of demonstrators were sprayed, beaten and abused in unprovoked police attacks on the streets. "Disruption, attacks on gathering spaces, harassment, preemptive arrests, street closures, beatings, the illegal abridgment of constitutional rights --this is classic police policy for Ramsey," says Reilly. "And predictably, we saw plenty of heavy-handed police activity –including the use of disabling chemical agents and maximum force– during the demonstrations Sunday and Monday, as well. The problem Ramsey and his masters had this weekend is that those strategies just don't work against dissent staged by autonomous, solidly organized affinity groups."

Ramsey was a key architect of the 1996 'protest pit' strategy in Chicago, which relied on deploying cops in riot gear, police horses, heavy equipment and barricades to block all access points to the DNC convention center. The strategy included confining demonstrators to several fenced-in parking lots six blocks from the site --effectively shutting out alternative voices during the convention. In addition, Ramsey shaped DNC police strategy on the streets, which included police spying, illegal raids on gathering sites, routine harassment and arrest of suspected protesters in public spaces, destruction of activists' video and film, and a consistent refusal to grant march permits --forcing protesters to the courts to fight for the right to peacefully assemble.

At the time, Ramsey and the Chicago police justified the strategy by arguing it ensured 'public safety' --and would help prevent a repeat of the debacle 28 years earlier, when police rioted during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The strategy earned Ramsey accolades from both the Clinton administration and local media. But while the Chicago police won praise from the mainstream press for their 'restraint' in 1996, the courts have consistently ruled that they illegally abridged activists' right to protest --months after police had successfully shut down marches and demonstrations. In addition, Ramsey drew fire in Chicago for his involvement in CAPS --the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy–- a program he promoted widely and eloquently as a method to 'unite' police and civilians in strategies to fight crime. But the program had already begun to draw fire from police accountability activists before Ramsey left Chicago to assume his current post as DC Metro police chief.

"CAPS is a joke --and Ramsey served as its number one comedian," says Gwen Hogan of Family of Victims, a Chicago community group that helps families whose loved ones have been murdered by police. "After CAPS was created, police murders went up, not down," charges Hogan. "And when you went to a CAPS meeting, the cops either ignored you, disrespected you, or tried to recruit you as an informer. Groups like the Chicago Alliance for Neighborhood Safety --which worked with the cops to create CAPS-- have been very critical of the program. It's been a total failure."
Chicago activists also believe that Ramsey's recruitment of Terry Gainer, a former director of the Illinois State Police whose family has close ties to the Chicago police, suggests that he's committed to importing Chicago's long history of police repression to Washington. Gainer currently serves as Ramsey’s deputy police chief, and he was a highly visible counterpart to Ramsey on the barricades and at press events in the last week.

But concerns about Gainer seemed to be realized this Monday, when WTOP-AM reported that he had told Black officers at the police barricades that protesters could try to ‘provoke’ them by invoking the "N-word" against them –a highly dubious assertion given the explicitly anti-racist platform of the protesters. Activists have suggested that Gainer, who is white, was employing classic race-baiting tactics with his own officers.

That’s not surprising, say Chicago observers, given that the Illinois State Police has been plagued with charges of racial profiling and targeting of minorities over the years, including under Gainer’s leadership. Last year the courts rebuffed ACLU charges of racial profiling against the state police, but lawyers have vowed to continue to document the problem and press the judiciary for redress.

Activists have also raised concerns about police intelligence work and disinformation tactics during the World Bank/IMF protests –including the wholesale denial that any incidents of police abuse occurred. Chicago observers note that during Ramsey’s tenure in Chicago, ‘counter-intelligence’ styled police tactics –known as COINTELPRO programs in federal law enforcement parlance– thrived in the city. Strategies employed by the police included political spying, extensive disinformation campaigns –often in collaboration with sympathetic local reporters– and the use of informants and police agents to act as agent provocateurs in targeted groups.

"Chicago police illegally spied on –and sometimes used agent provocateurs against-- thousands of political activists beginning in the 1960's, particularly non-Anglo groups like the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords," says Emile Schepers of the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill ofRights. "But they also spied on housewives, clergy --anyone identified as a political dissident. The Chicago Red Squad, as the project was called, was one of the largest local law enforcement counter-intelligence programs of its kind in the country –and police tactics were so abusive that ultimately the courts forced the city to sign a consent decree barring politically motivated police spying. Recent court cases suggest that these illegal practices have continued, but Ramsey eagerly joined other command level officers in lobbying to destroy the Red Squad Consent Decree that the courts used to outlaw these actions. That suggests that Ramsey has little respect for laws that protect constitutional rights –and based on Mr. Gainer’s provocative remarks to Black officers, it appears that he shares Mr. Ramsey’s basic philosophies."

Gwen Hogan is more blunt. "Ramsey's great at soundbites and loves the cameras," says Hogan. "But his root philosophy --use maximum force and deny everything, including basic rights --is rotten to the core. I feel sorry for DC residents. They got a raw deal when he was hired to run their police department."

Ramsey to advise Czechs on protesters
Apr. 22-- Washington, DC Police Chief Charles Ramsey will advise the Czech government on how to deal with protesters, according to the WB clipping service.
Ramsey, who handled actions against demonstrators during the recent spring meetings of the World Bank and the IMF Washington, will visit the Czech Republic to advise the Czech police, ahead of the two institutions' 2000 annual meetings scheduled for September in Prague, reports the Hospodarske Noviny (Czech Republic).

Source: Independent Media Center, Washington, DC: http://dc.indymedia.org