Latin
America:
Prison
Sentence
for
Dying
Woman,
79,
Sparks
International
Appeal
12/9/05
A 79-year-old Brazilian woman with terminal cancer who weighs 88 pounds has been sentenced to four years in prison, sparking an international campaign to set her free. Iolanda Figeuiral was convicted Tuesday of drug trafficking after 17 grams of crack cocaine were found in the house she shares with her adult son, who was also charged. Figeuiral and her son, Carlos Almeida, cannot be bailed out on appeal because under Brazilian law the crime is considered "hideous." The case was first taken up by former Rio de Janeiro Judge Maria Luisa Karam, who penned an open letter to Brazilian authorities seeking freedom for the woman. "Keeping in jail a person under such conditions immediately reveals senselessness and, therefore, unfairness, and also reveals a violation of fundamental rights as proclaimed in the universal declarations and in the Brazilian Constitution," wrote Karam. "No law could justify the senselessness, the unfairness and the violation of fundamental rights that are clearly revealed in the detention of a 79 year old person, suffering of cancer in a terminal phase and weighting less than 40 kilos." But Karam also took the opportunity to lambaste Brazilian drug laws for requiring imprisonment during criminal proceedings, and the United Nations drug conventions that "impose the criminalization of actions related to production, distribution and consumption of psychoactive substances and raw materials for their production." (Karam was one of a small number of Latin American judges and political figures who attended the Buenos Aires hemispheric anti-prohibitionist conference in September.) "We trust that Brazilian judicial authorities will put an end to the senseless, unfair and serious violation of fundamental rights enjoyed by Mrs. Iolanda Figueiral," wrote Karam. "And we hope that the irreparable pain that is imposed to her at least may help the Government and the Parliament of Brazil to measure the harms caused by the worthless politics of criminalization, to review the laws that are opposite to the universal declarations of human and civil rights and to the Brazilian Constitution, and to mobilize themselves to make the United Nations start a process of reform of their conventions in order to establish a system of legal control and regulation of production, distribution and consumption of all psychoactive substances and raw materials for their production." Winning freedom for the dying woman is a cause now taken up by ENCOD, the European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies, which is asking readers to both spread the word and write to Brazilian authorities to seek her release. "Authorities in countries like Brazil tend to be sensitive to protest signals coming from abroad," ENCOD notes. Click here to read and sign the letter.
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