Brazil vows to combat violence in big cities
The waves of gang crime which have spread fear among millions of ordinary people across Brazil's main cities are to face a major crackdown by the authorities, the country's government said Wednesday.
"We are planning an increase of resources for public security because of the priority that the president established," the government's chief cabinet minister, Dilma Roussef, told reporters here.
He promised that the federal government will spare more money to curb the spread of gang violence, but refused to reveal the size of the budget. "I can't yet say what the size of this increase will be," he said.
For the past year, gang violence has become a national issue in Brazil, and has left 19 people dead, including two policemen in Rio. Some major states such as Rio, Sao Paulo, Espirito Santo and Minas Gerais are demanding increased aid and police force support from the federal government to help combat the violence.
"This is a nationwide problem," Espirito Santo State Governor Paulo Hartung said on Wednesday. "Crime and violence have grown because of this game in which a governor blames the president and vice versa, the mayor and the judiciary say it's not (their) problem, and the Congress says the laws are fine," Hartung told Radio Nacional.
Hartung held a meeting on the matter on Tuesday with the governors of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais where they decided to demand more support from the federal government in fighting the violence.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who started his second four-year term on Jan. 1, once said public security would be his priority and described the violence in Rio as "terrorist acts." The president vowed to deal with the violence using "the strong hand of the Brazilian state."
(Published by Xinhua, January 11, 2007)