Hundreds of prisoners broke out of four Brazilian jails on Monday, the day before their day-release privileges were due to be suspended over the coronavirus outbreak, Sao Paulo state prison authorities and local media reported.
Amnesty International has documented grave violations of human rights in 2019 in 24 countries across the Americas. Examples of the major human rights events analyzed include:
Demonstrators in Mexico City, outraged by the horrific murder of a 25-year-old woman, sprayed graffiti on the presidential palace and disrupted President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's daily press conference.
A suspect in the 2018 assassination of an outspoken Afro-Brazilian member of Rio de Janeiro's city council was shot dead on Sunday after he fired on police sent to arrest him, Brazilian authorities said.
A man died of carbon monoxide poisoning after a supermarket was torched in Chile's capital Santiago on Friday, bringing the death toll from a resurgence in violent unrest rose to three. A mob looted and then set fire to the supermarket in southern Santiago in the early hours of Friday.
A septuagenarian tourist to Rio de Janeiro is in critical condition from a gunshot wound after mistakenly entering one of the city's favelas. Police said in a statement that they rescued two Swiss tourists injured in a mugging on Sunday night.
The Permanent Council of the Organization of American States, OAS, has called on Bolivian authorities to urgently call elections, an immediate cease of violence, and the search for dialogue.
Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and the opposition leader Pablo Casado visited Barcelona on Monday to meet police struggling with Catalan separatist violence in a crisis that could be a game-changer in next month's general election.
A Russian participant in the World Tango Championships in Buenos Aires has been disqualified for violence towards his partner, the organizers said on Wednesday. The incident happened after the duo, a husband and wife, took part in the semi-final of the competition on Tuesday in the Argentine capital.
President Jair Bolsonaro argued for his signature policy of relaxing gun control measures, saying they will not stop mass shootings such as those that left 31 dead in the US over the weekend. “Disarming people isn't going to keep that from happening,” Bolsonaro said.