Brasília, October 13, 2003 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - Minister Nilmário Miranda, of the Special Secretariat for Human Rights, categorized as incoherent the attitude of the president of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), minister Maurício Corrêa, who disagreed with an investigation of the Brazilian judicial system by the United Nations. The suggestion was made by the UN reporter on summary executions, Asma Jahangir, who spent 22 days visiting six states in Brazil to gather information on human rights violations in the country.

For the Minister of Human Rights, it is a notorious fact that in Brazil impunity is related to the performance of the Judiciary. Miranda considers the behavior of the president of the STF contradictory, since, when he was Minister of Justice, he signed international agreements in which Brazil obliged itself to receive inspection visits to verify whether the agreements were being implemented. "He (Corrêa) is politicizing the matter. If he stops to think a little, he will recall, unless it has slipped his mind, that he was there in Vienna, heading the Brazilian delegation at the Human Rights Conference," he observed.

According to Miranda, it's easy now for Corrêa to forget what he said and did in the past. Miranda made these declarations prior to a meeting in the Ministry of Justice with presidents of state legislative assembly human rights commissions. (DAS)