THE BRAZILLIAN FALSE DEMOCRACY: when human rights lawyers are under siege!

 

   Yesterday I saw in the papers that the Human Rights lawyer Thiago Melo had his phone tapped by the Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro. 

   This is a serious attack on democracy and the rule of law.

   There are no charges against him, he is just a lawyer who participated in the defense of some protesters arrested by the police. 

   The tap on the phone of a lawyer, motivated by the exercise of his function, is a breach of the privilege of confidentiality in the relationship between lawyers and clients, a fundamental principle for access to justice and the right to defense, without which no democracy is possible. 

   Since the protests that led millions to the streets in June 2013, we have witnessed a series of arbitrariness on the part of the police and judiciary of  Rio de Janeiro. 

  First, it was the generalized police violence, which further fueled the protests. 

  Then came the arrests without charges and without the right based advocacy, infiltration of agitators in rallies, forging charges (many of then proved to be false after pictures and videos circulated by the networks), siege of peaceful demonstrations, among others. 

   Since the completion of the World Cup the situation has worsened. 

   On behalf of the interests of the contractors, FIFA, and governments, it was built a scheme of unimaginable repression. 

   Now they began the persecution of lawyers, which is nothing more than the pursuit of the principle of the right to defense that any human being has. 

  During the year that we completed 50 years of civil-military coup in Brazil, we see that the dominant classes still fear the strength of the people on the streets, and do not hesitate to respond the struggles for rights with the sacrifice of the fragile democracy in which we live. 

  We reached the point of such absurdity, that the OAB-RJ ( The Order of the Brazillian Lawyers), together with several organizations, had to call an act in defense of democracy, and the rule of law. 

   Hundreds gathered. At night, hundreds more protested peacefully in the city center against these arbitrary acts. 

  They attacked Thiago because he practice the law and his activism has helped to unmask them and garantee the right to peacifully protest.

Video with the human rights lawyer Thiago Melo talking about irregular arrests of activists as an attack to democracy.

http://us.twitcasting.tv/olhodarua1/movie/82920586

 (My name is Anhangá Mirim. I took the original text wrote by Flavio Serafini, translated it, and edited it, for you to know every step of what is been done here to suffocate the popular movements).