In the first day of the new year, a big riot broke out in a prison in the central state Goias. A big number of prisoners entered to an other wing of the prison, where it then came to clashes with other prisoners. According to the official numbers of the Brazilian state nine people where killed and 14 others were injured. The prisoners started the riot by setting fire inside the prison, the prisoners created a chaotic situation, which they used to free themselves. Over one hundred people could escape this way, the police could catch some of them in the next couple of hours, but over 80 are still on the run.
The Brazilian state, and the bourgeois newspapers try to play down this riots just as clashes between violent gangs, but conceal the fact of the massive repression of the Brazilian state against the oppressed people. Brazil is the state with the third highest prison population worldwide, only the USA and then China are in front of them. The situation for the inmates is disastrous, democratic rights for prisoners are not given, the prisons are heavily overcrowded and the hygienic situation is very bad.
Also the official numbers give a very clear picture of the repression by the brazilian state. In Brazil the number of inprisoned people rised from the year 2000 where 232000 people were in jail to the year 2014 where already were 622000 in jail, to 2017 the number increased up to 657000. It won't be the last riot like this in 2018, it is just a locial consecense, there were repression exists, there will always be resistance. It's right to rebel