The former public defender suspected of practicing racial slur against two delivery men in Niterói, in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro, was summoned to testify at the police station this Friday afternoon (13). The 59-year-old woman is awaited by police for the third time. On the other two occasions when she was expected, she did not attend.
THE CNN , delegate Carlos César Santos informed that, if she is absent, the investigation will be concluded without the deposition. The penalty for racial slur ranges from one to three years in prison.
The woman already has at least six police records. In 2001, for bodily injury and embarrassment; in 2013, there were two for injury and one for bodily harm. The following year, 2014, two more for injury and, in 2017, there was one more record of injury.
The case in Niterói began with a video made by one of the victims, which went viral on social media. In it, the retired public defender calls one of the delivery men a “monkey”. According to reports, the offense happened after she asked the man to remove the delivery van from the front of her garage.
According to the victims, the delivery man informed that he would wait for the other employee to remove the vehicle, as he did not have a driver’s license. According to Joab Gama de Souza, the lawyer responsible for defending the victims, after the offenses, the woman threw objects in the direction of the delivery men.
The Civil Police reported that they heard the testimony of the victims and analyzed the videos from the security cameras of the condominium, in addition to the video made by one of the delivery men.
The Public Defender’s Office of Rio de Janeiro reported that “it is absolutely against any form of discrimination”. THE CNN failed to contact the retired defender’s defense.
Racism in the country
This May 13th, the abolition of slavery in Brazil completes 134 years. Every year, hundreds of black and brown Brazilians continue to suffer prejudice, with racist insults and insults.
In 2021, 1,181 human rights violations were recorded against black and brown people, motivated by the victim’s race or color, according to data available on the website of the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights. From the beginning of this year until the 6th of May, 374 more were registered.
For the executive coordinator of the Initiative for the Right to Memory and Racial Justice (IDMJR), Fransérgio Goulart, racism cannot be seen as a problem only for the black population.
“As long as white people don’t first realize that they are part of the problem, recognize themselves as a race and that this race is endowed with privileges, we will not advance. Whoever does this type of racist offense is exercising this privilege, which is not just economic, and which makes the person feel superior,” says Goulart.
“It’s what many people and part of the black movement have been saying, that if we can’t raise the debate on the privileges of whiteness, we won’t be able to face racism”, he defends.
Data from the federal government also show that the number of violations is growing among people with lower incomes. In a year, from May of last year to the present, black and brown people who earn up to 1 minimum wage were almost 19 times more victims of prejudice than those who earn between 5 and 15 minimum wages.
While the poorest suffered 302 violations, those with the highest income added up to 16 cases. Those earning more than 15 salaries were victims on only 6 occasions in those 12 months.
Source: CNN Brasil
