9
in Brazil. That is, in proportion, there are a “much larger number of prisoners in São
Paulo” than in the “rest of Brazil”.26 This is yet worsened by the fight against organized
crime, aggravated by the authorities’ lack of control over detainees, who are
abandoned to their own fate, which is reflected by the numerous mutinies that took
place simultaneously in the state of São Paulo in May 2006 (as this Order recalls in
Having Seen clause No. 6).
21.
Such lack of control gives rise to organized crime within the detention facilities,
affecting their population as a whole, leading to high levels of chronic violence and
significantly increasing the number of potential victims. It is the entire social fabric that
is threatened by this state of societal decomposition, highlighting the truly erga omnes
character of a State's obligation to protect all individuals under its jurisdiction. In a
context like that of this case, it is not just the rights of persons deprived of liberty that
are at stake but, ultimately, the rights of all persons under the State's jurisdiction.
Thus, the wide scope of such erga omnes protection obligations becomes of utmost
importance, all the more so in a situation of compelling urgency such as this.
VI.
The Inter-American Court’s Autonomous
Governing Provisional Measures
Legal
Framework
22.
As regards the beneficiaries of the Provisional Measures of protection adopted
by this Court in the instant case, by complying with such measures, the State shall be
redeeming a minimal part of its onerous social debt, inasmuch as it will be granting
protection to the detainees in the Araraquara penitentiary who were transferred to
other detention facilities, where they are now living, or surviving, in a complete state
of vulnerability. In the public hearing held before this Court the day before yesterday,
the representatives of the beneficiaries of these Provisional Measures of protection
called attention to the lack of a true criminal justice, inasmuch as the detainees'
recovery is currently being replaced by a distorted policy of confinement in inhuman
conditions.27
23.
In effect, this problem affects detainees in all of Latin-America and
the World as well as in Brazil. This long-standing problem is regretfully chronic, and its
reversion represents a permanent challenge for the international protection of human
rights. In this regard, the remarkable writer F. M. Dostoyevsky has left, as early as
mid-nineteenth century, the legacy of his Memoirs from the House of the Dead
(1862).28 The ingenuous supporters of the “progress” of civilizations have nothing to
boast about regarding to the treatment —that is, the indescribable sacrifices— afforded
26
.
IACHR, Transcript of the Public Hearing, op. cit. infra No. (17), p. 37 (internal circulation).
27
.
IACHR, Transcript of Public Hearing of September 28, 2006 on the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights' Request for Provisional Measures of Protection in Favor of Persons Imprisoned in the
Penitentiary “Dr. Sebastião Martins Silveira" in Araraquara, San Pablo, San José de Costa Rica, IACHR, 2006,
p. 35 (internal circulation).
28
.
F. Dostoyevsky, Souvenirs de la maison des morts, Paris, Gallimard, 1997 [reed.], pp. 41-443.
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