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:
“Men who want to support women in our struggle for freedom and justice should understand that it is not terrifically important to us that they learn to cry; it is important to us that they stop the crimes of violence against us.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)
“In my practice I’ve seen how people have allowed their humanity to drain away. Only it happens slowly instead of all at once. I didn’t seem to mind.... All of us, a little bit. We harden our hearts. Grow callous. Only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is to us, how dear.”
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“It is difficult for me to imagine the same dedication to women’s rights on the part of the kind of man who lives in partnership with someone he likes and respects, and the kind of man who considers breast-augmentation surgery self-improvement.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“The nation which forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)