- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Uruguay

In Reply to: brazil posted by Gee on August 27, 1999 at 11:23:00:

let me interhject the following. It's well known that the Brazilian police have adopted the policy of pre-emptive punishment, i.e. the street kids are going to be criminals anyway, so let's kill them before they get the chance to actually commit their crime. I think the whole idea of writing off a class of people as potential criminals, and not recognizing that people often turn criminal because of their surroundings, is very dangerous. Shopkeepers have been known to hire police to eliminate kids who loiter in their neighborhood. Lethal force has become a commodity over there.

On a similar note, back when a former American mayor ran the Uruguayan secret police, helping them to crush teh Communist insurgency, he was notorious for picking beggars at random off the street,m who he knew were not guilty of anything, and torturing them to death as "guinea pigs" to demonstrate the finer points of torture. Another way of dealing with teh homeless, I suppose. see William Blum's book "Killing Hope".

Follow Ups:

None.