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Homeless people bludgeoned to death in Brazil

Standing in front of this city's Roman Catholic cathedral, Isaias Francisco da Silva shuffles his feet, glances around and says: "Sure I am frightened. Wouldn't you be?"

Silva, who earns money by selling discarded aluminum cans to recycling centers, is scared he may be among the next victims of assailants who have recently taken to the streets of South America's biggest city, beating to death homeless men and women.

"For more than three years I slept on the streets surrounded by my friends and no one ever bothered us," Silva said. "Now we don't know if we will wake up the next morning."

On Aug. 19 and 22, assailants armed with iron bars or wooden clubs bludgeoned 15 homeless people as they slept near the cathedral. Five men and one woman died; the others were seriously injured.

While some members of the task force created to investigate the killings suspect the attacks were a settling of accounts among the homeless, several groups -- including clergymen, human rights activists and even federal government authorities -- suggest that neo-Nazi hate groups are to blame.

"The killings were an act of genocide motivated by hate and committed by people with a perverse sense of social cleansing -- of ridding society of individuals they consider undesirable," said Hedio Silva, president of the Human Rights Commission of the Brazilian Bar Association's Sao Paulo chapter.

At a candlelight vigil for the victims on Monday night, the Reverend Jose Domingos Braghetto, who works with the poor, said the killers were "members of neo-Nazi and fascist skinhead groups that think the best way to combat poverty is to kill the poor."

Brazilian neo-Nazis are strongest in this industrial city of 17 million, where they greet each other with stiff-armed fascist salutes and frequently target homosexuals, Jews, blacks and migrants.

"Judging from the cruelty involved in these killings and from the fact that the victims were all defenseless, I would say there is a possibility that neo-Nazi groups are responsible," said National Human Rights Secretary Nilmario Miranda.

He added that he could not discard the possibility that the killings were ordered by local shop owners who hired the killers for a "social cleansing job."

The murders were reminiscent of an earlier brutal killing of homeless people.

In 1993, vigilante groups attacked a group of 50 homeless people in downtown Rio de Janeiro, killing eight. Six men -- all of them police officers moonlighting as private security guards -- were arrested. Three of the men were convicted of murder.

"I would not be surprised if off-duty policemen were, in one way or the other involved in the killing of the Sao Paulo homeless," said the Reverend Julio Lancellotti, director of a Roman Catholic church group that cares for the homeless.

But Hedio Silva, of the bar association, said he thought police involvement was unlikely.

"Whenever policemen are involved in an extermination group they use firearms to kill, not pieces of iron or wooden clubs," he said.
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