Although indigenous communities are often neglected by the government, they have been struggling to make justice see their side. By changing certain laws, they could put an end to the stagnation of the Statute of the Indigenous People, that has been going on for 13 years. Consequently, they would finally make their voices heard.

Indigenous representatives claimed in Brasilia that the adoption of the Statute of the Peoples of the Indian precedes the adoption of the draft regulation of mining activity in its reserves.Recently, the Ministry of Justice guided the Chamber of Deputies a proposal amending the draft law 1,610 on the activity of mining on indigenous lands. According to the mineral exploration project to be held only with the permission of the Indians.

The project also deals with environmental rules and also ensures the indigenous community have the right to share in the profits of extraction.

The Statute of the Peoples of the Indian is paralyzed to 13 years.

In times when hunger is killing people in Oressa, and a petition to declarate the right for food as a fundamental right is on hold in the Indian Supreme Court, the chief justice of the country says that these right and other are meaningless unless a new socio-economic order is implanted. This is one of the rights that are found in “limbo”.

Under the Constitution the Supreme Court and the High Courts ( those with jurisdiction in the States of India), can direct the government to apply those fundamental rights but not the directive principles. The latter ones are guidelines to the central government and state governments on doing the laws and policies. These can not be forced but are fundamental to the country governance.

The chief justice characterizes the fundamental rights as statics, and the directive principles as dynamics, and the last ones can improve the provision of rights.

There is a new trend in the Indian courts: they are constantly invoking the directive principles to interpretate the fundamental rights. And the dynamic directive principles are being used to fertilize the static provision of fundamental rights.

However, due to poverty, ignorance and illiteracy, the access to justice in the weaker parts of the population is still illusory.

The Supreme Court realizes that something that holds her back is the lack of access to justice to the regular man.On that matter the Supreme court has freed itself from the traditional thought and made innovations in the use of judicial power in other to make it true.

Where those changes enough? And what about social justice??

Brazil has its own Children and Adolescent Statute, in other to protect the integrity of the ones in that age category. In its content there is a determination about the right to have vacancies in cities public day care centers, but the the  government of Rio de Janeiro is not obeying it.

So now the city hall is being sued by the Public Ministry (literal translation of Ministério Público) and a judge already conceded a preliminary motion to obligate the city to make the enrollment of those children who did not get a vacancy.

Based on more than a hundred complaints, the Public Defense ( literal translation of Defensoria Publica) is preparing a lawsuit of public civic action.

The problem is not only about vacancy, the city hall has been promising for years to expand its day care network but it is far away from being resolved. There are also logistic problems due to financial difficulties.

So is it possible for the coty hall to lose?Or will the lawsuitget lost in the middle of loads of other lawsuits?

Will justice be achieved?

The castes system was abolished from Indian legislation a while ago, but the discrimination persists. Dalit families are the last ones in the hierarchy, foreknown as “untouchables” they are the ones who work in the worst job positions.

The Supreme Court intervened in this situation and gave hope to those people to the enforcement of an Act designed to stop the manual scavenging and to rehabilitate the people doing that work. Said Act is the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, from 1993. On the surface it seemed that the government made an effort that gave real hope. It promised to eradicate the practice subjected only to the Dalits, and consequently the restoration of dignity to the individual, as defined in their Constitution Preamble.

It was necessary to have a law to abolish the manual scavenging by declaring it an offence, and ban the construction on the latrines. The obligation was to convert the dry latrines into water-seal ones, with flush power.

The problem is: law makers never seem to take into thought that symbolism is not substance, and that laws are easily ignored if it is not very well seeded in people’s minds. Indeed, after the Act was done, the number of scavengers increased. The Dalit people are trapped in a vortex of severe social and economical exploitation.

There was a hearing of a public interest petition that showed practice had not demised, and still happened even in public sector. Then the petitioners decided to sought for their rights, under article 17 (the right against untouchability), and the ones in Articles 14, 19 and 21, of equality, freedom, and protection of life and personal liberty. They urged the Supreme Court to issue directions to the Union of India and the other states with time boundaries, for them to take the effective path to eliminate the manual scavenging simultaneously with a plan to rehabilitate the citizens who had that job.

The issues were directed and years later the Controller and Auditor-General (CAG) concluded that they didn’t succeed. There was a serious difficulty in realizing if the person freed of the job was actually rehabilitated. For the CAG the biggest problem is a consequence of the non employment of the Act.

Government bodies and states lied, did not changed their latrines and everything stood still. And the difficulties are even bigger because the Dalits are used to suffer in silence, and the upper castes do not recognize what kind of difference is sealed in the “castes system contract”.

For us in Brazil, or in western culture countries it is easy to condemn the higher castes of India, but there is a question that is obvious: When people walk by a slum (favela) or a low cost household, or any situation of economical difference that influences in social difference and don’t do anything, isn’t it conveying with the same idea of “social difference” as the castes society presents??

If that is true, we are even more doomed, because that system is part of their culture and has seeds in a long ago past, and religion. Does that legitimate the indifference? Could that be a better answer to our disgust before that reality?

And what legitimate our indifference? Five hundred years of racial discrimination? Three hundred years of slavery system? How can we answer the disgusts that our reality provides??

Rizwanur is muslin, in a lower-middle-class. Priyanka is draughts of a rich and powerful Hindu family.

These characteristics can already reflect the situation: they were not from the same caste, and did not share the same community and social-economical backgrounds.

They got married, and Rizwanur paid with his life for doing so. The public debate concluded that he was discriminated against religious and class terms.

            The problem is: Justice takes too long to be delivered.

And the intolerance is way too deep-rooted within parts of the society. Including the police which is believed to be covering up to a hate crime.

Even though he average citizen is used to look at those matters with cynicism and resignation because of the complicity of the police with the rich, the active role of civic sector organizations and NGOs are coming in support of the victim’s family and is in search for answers. There is a big difference now: the request is done civically, showing a welcome change from the usual extremes of rioting and apathy.

On the other side of the history, Pryianka has become the poster girl for women discriminations. She will have to live with the reality that she lost her husband, that she may be also responsible for his death, all of this because she married someone not in her parents approval and societal conservative, based in castes, approval. She was supposed to sacrifice her love to save her beloved man, obey her parents, and the rules, compromise herself, in other to continue making her role, the representation of the family “honor”.

In 2005, some hope is provided, by the Protection of Women Against Domestic Violence Act, so they can seek for justice. But the seek of justice for women requires much more than just a change in law, it is necessary a change in the values that build the households in India, so that woman can live their own lives without being condemned.

To do this it is necessary for the government to do 3 things: 1) change the education of the idea in schools and colleges, as well as creating awareness campaigns, 2) Give women the information about her own rights, 3) encourage changes in the media to emphasize the gender justice.

In this case the repercussion of the case my make changes, and make people think of the reality. But what are the other differences in Brazil and South Africa that are so intrinsic to the population’s culture that people don’t even stop to think of them? How can those be changes? And which are they?

In 1980, a Legal Aid Committee was founded in India, consequence of the perception of the unavailability of justice for all, due to the disabilities of the legal system, where results of justice can take way too long to give any kind of results for the financial load of money necessary to maintain it.

The system had statutory sanction in 1987 when the Legal Services Authorities Act was promulgated.

In 2002 an amend was approved, which gave authority to provide the free legal aid with competence to the weakened parts of the society, the so called vulnerable groups. In those there are: women which whichever annual income, children, industrial workers, laborers, members of scheduled castes and tribes, handicapped persons, victims of riots and calamities, and men with annual income under Rs. 50.000 ( something around 2000 dollars).

In India anything to be accepted for free is considered something inferior but the Authorities are trying to ensure the proper use of the funds, and the Legal Services Aid (LSA) in New Delhi is focusing on using Non-governmental organizations, the media, and the government to promote the use of LSA. They are also visiting slums and colonies to motivate the usage.

In most of the states the LSA is already placed, and more around 40.000 or 20.000 people in the North-east, Jannu and Kashmir already were beneficiated. Those had access to justice through a lawyer, but on the other hand the legal process in India is very slow. But this is not a matter of the LSA, they want to provide competent lawyers in other to give to the ones in need the possibility to have one representation to their claim. The LSA is not going to figure out how to resolve the problem of the legal justice in the country, where more then 75% of the jailed still wait for trial.

To get access to the service it’s necessary to go in a LSA centre, to fill a form that is going to be studied by lawyers and counselors and then one lawyer will take care of the case. The first try will be to get an agreement between both parts, if that is not possible, then the LSA will take care of the expenses with the lawyer, with the court and other miscellaneous ones.

In Brazil there is a government body called the Public Defense ( literal translation of Defensoria Pública), available to all citizens and covered by the duties paid by the population. In the article 134 of the Federal Constitution of 1988 ( Brazil has had numerous different constitutions, this one is the last and current one) it is defined to be legal assistance integral and free to those who prove resources insufficiency (translated from the constitution).

The keyword is integral. Before this word was added the legal assistance did not compromise with the social reality of the individual in need. This one only helped in courts, now the integral one will give the orientation to those necessitated, diminishing the distance between Justice and people, and demystifying the Law figure and also makes the population alienation about its citizenship smaller.

In both cases changes towards the access of justice were shown but the questions are: Does these changes make real difference to the people?

Does the enormous amount of people in vulnerable situation make it to the LSA centers to fill the forms? And for the Brazilians, does the denomination in the Constitution guarantees access to justice for those who can not read or never even had access to the constitution itself?

Representatives of several civil rights and human rights NGOs urged the State government to properly publicise and seek public views on the draft amendment bill to Karnataka Police Act, before tabling it in the legislature. They had gathered at a workshop on “Better Policing: A Distant Dream or Impending Reality,” organised by Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) and Coalition of Karnataka NGOs for Better Policing at National Law School of India University in Bangalore on Saturday. They discussed about violation of civil rights by police and advocated a comprehensive reformation of the Police Act to make police, people-friendly and accountable, in the light of 2006 Supreme Court (SC) directives. Shobha Sharma of CHRI’s Access to Justice division said, the Karnataka Police Act, 1963 was based on Indian Police Act, 1861, a colonial legislation redundant in modern democratic scenario. It needs to be reformed as sought by several expert committed with the human rights. Inside the workshop, the discussions are heated. Prof Hasan Mansur of PUCL said, “people should question arbitrary laws” adding that any law does not become sacrosanct just because it is enacted by the legislature. Right to life and life with dignity are sacred, which the laws should not take away, he said while regretting that police in India continued to encroach on citizens’ rights, similar to pre-independence days. “There is nothing like people’s power to make the police behave,” he said stressing the importance of public awareness. (India, DH News Service,Bangalore)

In South Africa, it is estimated that at least 500000 women and children are forced every year to have unwanted sexual intercourse with cruel and sadistic men who treat them as objects to be abused and discarded. This places a terrible emotional burden on our nation. NGOs estimate that one in two South African women is likely to be raped, and that 75% of rapes of women and children are gang rapes. Most rapes go unreported, and only 7% of reported rapes result in conviction. So when the law says the minimum mandatory sentence for those who commit multiple rapes, or rape a minor, is life in jail unless there are compelling mitigating factors, we expect our judges to do their bit. In 2003 another judge, Judge AJ Visser, sentenced a man to eight years, with four years suspended, for raping a 14- year-old girl twice. The judge said the victim, “being the pretty girl she is, might have brought out the animal in the accused spontaneously”. This shows scant understanding of the fact that no man has the right to force himself on anyone, regardless of whether she is pretty. The judges should also be called before the Judicial Services Commission to explain their remarks.

19 people were murdered, 69 people were hurt. Fact: Eldorado dos Carajás massacre. Cause of death: they were shot at close range in their backs or heads and with hits of a hatchet. Motive: they were members of the Movimento dos Sem Terra (people without land), and when trying to occupy a farm were surprised by the police with violence. 12 years later, a group of 19 survivors and relatives of the victims of the massacre are receiving indemnification for damages and deaths. The indemnification was ordered by justice and it will range from U$ 17.000,00 to U$$ 48.000,00. In fact, they will receive a public title called precatorio, for Brazilian law concerning public budget only allows its payment in 2009. The value of the payments varies depending on the severity of the case. Many people remain with bullets on their bodies, for it is impossible to remove them. But all agree that the indemnification is a good thing. But, receiving it 12 years later, the opportunity for some treatments for physical damages are no longer available. And the orphans who need to be supported in all these years? To make matters worse, the offenders are being prosecuted at liberty. Is this an example of justice? I don´t think so.