A scene from the film City of God © Miramax FilmsWARNING: This article contains graphic and violent material and may shock.

The Brazilian film CITY OF GOD was nominated for an Academy Award and has been hailed as a classic of world cinema. The film’s violent though realistic portrayal of life inside a favela isn’t a Hollywood concoction as David Alton’s gripping and harrowing report reveals.

In July 1993, six police officers opened fire on a group of street children who were sleeping in doorways opposite the Candelaria church in Rio de Janeiro. This single event woke the world up to the horrifying reality of the routine killing of children on the streets of Brazil. Many assumed that those days had been consigned to the pages of history. They have not.

"A child's chance of dying in Rio is 8 to 9 times greater than in the Middle East."

David Alton with Aurelina whose son was shot dead
During my recent visit to Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Recife and Olinda, I discovered with dismay and anger that the carnage continues. Secretive death squads and corrupt policemen and officials continue to collaborate or acquiesce in the quiet assassination of Brazil’s young people. The scale of the killing is almost unbelievable. It flourishes in a climate of fear, silence and official collusion. The streets literally run red with young Brazilian blood.

In the north-eastern city of Recife, the echoes of past battles against slavery, poverty and injustice still linger on. For not far from the world heritage sites are favelas and slums that bring shame on us all. In these shantytowns, assassins roam freely with impunity and who, for as little as £2, will kill a child or adolescent who has fallen foul of the gangsters and the drug barons.

I was deeply moved to hear Aurelina’s tragic story at one of the centres we visited. Her 25-year-old son, Roberto Trinity de Concecicaon, died in her arms on the street after being mowed down in a shooting. Roberto was shot in the back in a case of mistaken identity. Aurelina, told me, "We are overwhelmed by all this violence, but Brazilian society regards killing as normal. Some people believe that, if the children are on the streets, it serves them right if they are killed. We are trying to confront and fight this line of thinking."

"It is easier for a child to get a gun that to get a bus-pass."

Tellingly, she demanded to know why firearms should be freely available: "Children who can't even get food to eat can get a gun. 74% of the killings are by gun. I never saw a gun in my life and now they are everywhere." She described how two more young people, aged 20 and 21, who passed through their centre, had been killed in the previous week. One was another case of mistaken identity: "They took him from his mother’s arms and killed him." The other had been a drug user who hadn’t paid his bill. She wanted to know where was the international pressure to end the bloodbath. Pointedly, she said that, "While the killers are free, it is society that is in prison."


A child's chance of dying in Rio is 8-9 times greater
than in the Middle EastRoberto died just one year ago and unlike most people, who are cowed into silence by a fear of brutal retaliation, the people of Peixinhos rallied to support Aurelina de Concecicaon as she organized a public procession of crosses and candles. In all, there were eighty crosses each bearing the name of men, women and children who had been killed over the previous two years. Repeat: eighty people from one small community in just two years.

Alessandro Gama, Co-ordinator of Brazil’s National Movement of Street Children, says that between 4 and 5 adolescents are murdered daily; that every 12 minutes a child is beaten; that 4.5 million children under 12 are working; and that 500,000 children are engaged in domestic labour. In 40% of crimes, children are the victims. He confirmed that the massive proliferation of small arms is a central cause. One of the movement’s activists told me, "It is easier for a child to get a gun than to get a bus-pass."

Alongside the greater accessibility to guns, what has changed since the 1990ís and deepened the crisis, is the burgeoning of a pervasive drug culture. Today, Brazil ranks only after the USA as the second biggest consumer of cocaine. In Rio’s 680 favelas where about 25% of the city ís, 12 million people live, this has led to the emergence of no-go areas controlled by rival gangs such as Red Command and Third Command, who organize and arm the children. Children as young as four have guns and are used as "little planes" to use the jargon of the street- trafficking drugs and messages between sellers and buyers. Although there has been no formal declaration of war, the children caught up in the escalating violence are child soldiers by any other name.

A young Englishman, Luke Downey, supported by Save The Children, has graphically documented the changing shape of the favelas in his book "Children of the Drug Trade." Chillingly he adds that a child's chance of dying here is "eight to nine times greater than in the Middle East."

In Recife we heard more accounts of drug related killings but saw again the same pattern of compassionate care and a determination to resist the escalating violence. A project worker who we met told us that last year ten of the 94 children who she works with were killed: 4 girls, aged 14 to 16 and 6 boys, aged 16 to 18. The project worker told me, "The law of silence is the law. Nobody saw, nobody says, nobody does anything."

Last year, a young retarded boy who had been sniffing glue was shot by a random bullet by police, who were indiscriminately shooting as they pursued a robber. The police then falsely accused the boy of starting the shooting. When the workers went to the hospital to protest, the police told them: "Shut your mouth or else we will silence you." Today, that boy still languishes in prison and his mother has said she dare not pursue her son’s case because she is petrified of retaliation.

Yet if all this is grotesque, what we learnt about the fate of children in a district known as Inferninha (little hell) reads like pages straight from Dante. It is a place where the living might well envy the dead. Inferninha is the area of Recife where child prostitution is concentrated. Here, at least 40 children are known to be working as prostitutes with more than 60 at weekends. Some of the boys and girls are as young as ten, and some have been sent there by their parents to supplement their income. When I asked whether the police simply closed their eyes to this I received the reply: "No, they go to the bars every Tuesday for their share of the takings."

We heard the appalling story of one young woman who had become a prostitute and was taken into this living hell by four men. They gang-raped her. When they were finished, they killed her, gouging out her eyes, ripping out her heart and throwing her, like detritus, into the sea. Is there no barbarity of which man is not capable?
Fortunately, we also found individuals prepared to shine a light. Elsewhere in Recife we visited other remarkable projects which were pioneered by an Irish priest, Fr Anthony Terry who has spent more than four decades of his life working with the Brazilian dispossessed.

At Galapao De Santo Amaro, a training centre called the Hope and Life Centre has been developed that provides everything from courses in the stunningly energetic and athletic traditional Brazilian dance and music to computer literacy. The latter have proved so popular that 4,800 sessions have been held over the past year alone and more than 500 children are currently registered. However, we discovered Fr Anthony’s work is now threatened because the landlord has put the building up for sale. Without the building, the work will be lost.

Jubilee has committed to raising at least £40,000 to save the project. A British businessman has agreed to match any funds raised in order to purchase the entire building and provide a permanent centre for 1000 children and double the current capacity. Santo Amarm is situated on the edge of one of Recife’s biggest favelas and as the most violent area in the city. Last year, sixteen young people were shot, or died, as a result of either non-payment to pushers nr from overdoses. The youngest urchin was ten years old. One of the workers at Santo Amaro, has seen his three brothers killed and the young woman who trains the dancers recently saw her brother gunned down.

We also went into the favelas of Rio and had a chance to hear some first hand accounts of the consequences of this undeclared war. The people who live in this particular district are descendants of the slaves who settled on Rio’s hillsides after emancipation in the nineteenth century. Many of them are black.


Brazillian memorial to 8 street children killed by
death quads in CandelariaRodrigo told me that he had come here, as a 10-year-old, from the countryside. He had no education and remains illiterate. He made a living carting water up the hill and by feeding the pigs. Later he got a job carrying boxes of beer. He married and together they had several children. Approached by one of the drug gangs he became a dealer and spent four and a half years in prison, where he told me "you're alive and dead at the same time."

One of Rio’s most powerful figures, Senhor Luiz Conde, Rio’s former mayor who now serves as deputy Governor in the state of Rio, repeats the tired formulary that "There is a school place available for every child," and admits that, "The prisons are very bad, a nasty inheritance of the past."

Conde exudes an air of complacency and irritation, passing responsibility to other arms of government or to the failure of "society as a whole" to tackle the problem. Throwaway lines like, "There are more non-governmental organizations than street children" and "It’s easier to arrest Saddam Hussein than to arrest a drugs baron" say more about their author than his targets.

Rio has no integrated or co-ordinated strategy for eradicating its reputation as human charnel house; a city whose streets are an abattoir, awash with the blood of its young people.

In a surreal, Kafkaesque remark, Conde’s opposite number at the city hall, Senhor Antonio Vales, Rio’s deputy mayor, told me that "violence is not under the jurisdiction of the city." In the grandeur of what was once the sumptuous British Embassy in Rio, Vales said that he couldn’t comment on any of the fundamental issues because they were "too sensitive" and that there was little point them talking to the military police because, "Those talks are not very fruitful."

These are not bad men but nor are they brave.

Probably the best hope for breaking this inertia and for imposing a nationwide strategy in Brazil’s 26 states remains President Lula Da Silva, who was elected with 61% of the vote and became President in a wave of optimism in January 2003. Lula has himself, and very unusually for Brazil, risen from deep poverty and obscurity; but already there are inevitable disappointed voices asking where is the change. If Lula cannot make the arms of government respond to this crisis he will deservedly lose his reputation at home and abroad.

It would be unfair if this account did not refer to the positive and hopeful initiatives that should provide men like Conde and Vales with a blue-print for concerted action. They could do worse than to heed the calls of Jubilee’s partner in Rio, Sao Martinho, who advocate the need for an integrated programme of action and who run the Princess Diana Home for Girls in Rio. This work is literally restoring the broken lives of girls who have been the victims of Brazil’s failure to protect its most vulnerable. It is perhaps for this reason that the project has been visited by the late Princess Diana, John Major, the former British Prime Minister, and most recently by Cherie Booth QC.


A young child's dead body is found dumped on a beach.Dom Helda Camara, the Archbishop of Recife and Olinda, who died in 1999 was renowned for his outspoken opposition to the violence of the authorities and was a champion of the dispossessed. Dom Helda famously said that when he provided relief for the poor they called him a saint, but when he identified the causes of Brazil’s acute poverty he was branded a communist.

One boy's story powerfully exemplified why Dom Helda’s prophetic words are still relevant today. This boy told me how his father had thrown him into a bath to try and drown him, because he had been unable to walk. Eventually he had gained his mobility and the first thing he did with it was to run away.

As the young man told me his story, there was no trace of self-pity but a realization that the opportunity they now had gave hope for the future.

Brazil craves to be recognised as Latin America’s leading nation. It says that it would like to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council but if it cannot comply with basic treaty undertakings (let alone enforcing it's own model legislation of child protection) it's reputation will be seriously compromised.

At the heart of the problem is a climate of fear and an unwillingness to speak out for fear of revenge. In Sao Paulo, Waldenia Paulino, a Children’s Commissioner denounced the police officers who accosted a courting couple, raped the girl, and then shot her boyfriend. Faced with death threats, Paulino has had to seek sanctuary outside the country.

Shining a light on this darkness has become a near impossibility. When a brave journalist, Tim Lopez, who worked for Global Television Network, broadcast a report 18 months ago he quickly disappeared, was tortured and then shot dead.

It is hard for an outsider to fully comprehend how little value is attached to the sanctity of human life in the drug running favelas in Brazil. Yet I saw countless examples of Brazilians and others who have plunged themselves into practical projects to offer relief and help to the children of the favelas and the streets.

There are no easy answers but the Jesuit Provincial in Rio, Fr Francisco Ivern SJ, was right to insist that, "Education is the only way for the children of the favelas to reach a better way of life." These children are the future of Brazil and without them Brazil has no future.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (David Alton) is one of the founders of Jubilee Campaign and was founding chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on street children