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:
“Much is made of the accelerating brutality of young people’s crimes, but rarely does our concern for dangerous children translate into concern for children in danger. We fail to make the connection between the use of force on children themselves, and violent antisocial behavior, or the connection between watching father batter mother and the child deducing a link between violence and masculinity.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“The household is a school of power. There, within the door, learn the tragi-comedy of human life.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks,
And given my treasures and my rights of thee
To thick-eyed musing and cursed melancholy?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The nation which forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)