Brasília - In a note to the press, the Minister of Justice, Márcio Thomaz Bastos lamented and repudiated the attacks committed last Thursday (19) against 10 street dwellers in the center of São Paulo. Four of them are dead, and six are seriously injured.

"The Union, the State, and the Municipality will not weigh efforts to elucidate this crime, discover the perpetrators, and bring them to Justice."

Bastos classified the act against the street dwellers as brutal and intolerable. For the Minister, the incident is an offense to the Brazilian State, "defender of the principle of human dignity and responsible for the promotion of the general welfare, without prejudice due to origin, race, gender, color, or any other kinds of discrimination."

Agência Brasil
Reporter: Juliana Cézar
Translator: David Silberstein
08/23/2004