Jair Bolsonaro says criminals will ‘die like cockroaches’ when he passes new laws allowing cops to shoot suspects on sight without fear of prosecution
- Bolsonaro said officers should be decorated not prosecuted for firing guns
- In an interview Monday he said police faced an ‘unequal’ battle against crooks
- Campaigners say his fiery rhetoric allows for police brutality and abuses
- Hundreds of suspects have died at the hands of the police so far this year
Brazil’s right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro has said criminals will ‘die in the streets like cockroaches’ under his new laws.
In an interview on Monday, Bolsonaro spoke of his hopes that lawmakers would approve his plans to expand Brazil’s criminal code to loosen the legal shackles on his police force.
The president said: ‘These guys [criminals] are going to die in the streets like cockroaches [if the police cover is approved] – and that’s how it should be.’
Bolsonaro said the ‘unequal’ battle against crime is hindered by policemen being prosecuted for shooting gangsters rather than given medals.
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro during a ceremony to launch the program ‘Doctors in Brazil’ at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia last week
Campaigners believe his proposed legal changes could bring mass power abuse and terror to the streets of the South American country.
Dubbed the ‘Trump of the Tropics’, Bolsonaro rose to power last year on the back of a tough-on-crime campaign stance.
However, critics say his latest comments are gravely concerning even by his own inflammatory standards.
Ariel de Castro Alves, a lawyer from Sao Paulo, told the Guardian: ‘We’ve had 414 killings committed by military police in São Paulo [in the first half of 2019] – that is the highest number since 2003 … He is encouraging police violence and ends up serving as a kind of instigator of brutality.’
Meanwhile Robert Muggah, head of the Igarape Institute, told the paper a similar wave of brutality was seen in Rio de Janeiro where 434 were slaughtered in the first quarter of the year.
‘This is the highest number recorded in over two decades,’ he told the Guardian.
In the first six months of the year the police were reportedly responsible for one death every five hours in Rio.
However, the military police in Rio told Globo their actions have helped to bring homicide rates down to their lowest levels in decades.
In addition, Rio’s Public Security Institute found that record numbers of firearms had been seized from would-be criminals in the first quarter of this year.
The country has been plagued by a string of mass-murder prison riots. The latest came last Monday at the Altamira prison in the north of the country.
Policemen are seen during a riot in a prison in Brazilian state of Amazonas in Manaus, Brazil May 26, 2019
Fifty-eight people were decapitated or suffocated in an inferno, while another four were strangled in the aftermath as authorities began shifting inmates.
No country has suffered more homicides in recent years and only two nations – the United States and China – have more people behind bars.
‘Our concern and our priority are good people,’ Bolsonaro said on Twitter while campaigning last year. ‘I’ve always said it: I prefer a prison full of criminals than a cemetery full of innocents. If space is missing, we build more!’