Violence Against Human Rights Defenders
Many human rights defenders who have arisen to oppose human rights violations and their families and friends suffer violence and persecution across Brazil. Telephone death threats are prominent and often followed through by ambush or assassination.
Government officials, attorneys, union leaders and even religious leaders have often been targeted, as with Antonio Fernandez Saenz affair. The danger of human rights defense entered the world press with the murder of Dorothy Stang in 2005, and Chico Mendes in 1988.
Read more about this topic: Human Rights In Brazil
Famous quotes containing the words violence, human, rights and/or defenders:
“The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, but violence takes lives away.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 11:30.
“One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot be hostile to man.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“I wish to reiterate all the reasons which [my predecessor] has presented in favor of the policy of maintaining a strong navy as the best conservator of our peace with other nations and the best means of securing respect for the assertion of our rights of the defense of our interests, and the exercise of our influence in international matters.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“The nation which forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)