Violence in small-town Brazil worse than Rio- study
27 Feb 2007 20:28:00 GMT Source: Reuters
By Guido Nejamkis BRASILIA, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Violence in crime-ridden Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo has grabbed media headlines in recent months but Brazil's smaller cities and towns are even more dangerous, a study showed on Tuesday. Murder rates in several small municipalities by far exceeded those of Brazil's mega-cities, according to a study sponsored by the Organization of Iberoamerican States for Education, Science and Culture (OIS). "The same climate of violence of the big cities is taking hold of the interior," said Daniel Gonzalez, director of the OIS in Brazil. Colniza, a town of 12,400 inhabitants in the central-western state of Mato Grosso, is the "homicide capital of Brazil" with an annual murder rate of 165 for each 100,000 residents. Rio de Janeiro has a homicide rate of around 40 per 100,000 inhabitants. The main reason for high murder rates in these often distant towns was the absence of the state, according to the study prepared for the ministry of health. "These cities are no-man's land, with huge conflicts over land, Indians, and deforestation," Julio Jacobo Waiselfisz, author of the report, told Reuters. "(They are) remote areas, with difficult access, lacking public authorities and policies," he said. Brazil has the world's fourth highest homicide rate after Colombia, Russia and Venezuela, a separate 2006 OIS report showed. In 2004, 48,345 people were murdered in Brazil but Waiselfisz says that rate could be 15 percent higher due to unreported homicides. Recife, a seaside city increasingly popular among southern European tourists, had the highest murder rate among Brazil's 27 state capitals, the study showed. Murder rates in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo have fallen marginally in recent years but common criminals as well as drug gangs continue to terrorize residents in both cities. A three year-old girl in Sao Paulo was shot dead on Monday in the arms of her grandfather, when assailants fired a gun at his son. In Rio on Tuesday, three French aid workers were stabbed to death in their apartment building. Health Minister Agenor Alvares said the situation was "alarming and worrying" and that the report's findings would help shape public policies.
