E/CN.4/2006/16/Add.3 page 12 35. Following the increase in killings of young Blacks in Bahia (631 in the first eight months of 2005, 19 per cent more than in 2004), the “React or you will die” campaign was launched in May 2005 by MNU. Blacks, who have been persecuted and eliminated for centuries, feel that an extermination policy is still in place, otherwise so many murders would not have occurred without a strong reaction by the Government and a strong sanction by the judiciary. 36. The population of African descent does not feel protected by public authorities. Young Blacks are persistently taken for drug dealers and criminals: they are constant victims of racial profiling and discrimination. Many testimonies related that the police enter the houses of black families and end up killing someone. Other Blacks are killed in police stations. MNU is requesting a commission of inquiry on the extermination squads in the State of Bahia, and elsewhere. 37. Black women are also subjected to violence. Living in poor areas with very low revenues, they are the victims of drug dealers and domestic violence. They do not denounce their husband, out of fear of violent reactions: some have been burnt or shot by their husbands. Black women are also subjected to violence and exploitation as domestic workers: one fifth of them work as domestic workers, without the protection of labour laws, are underpaid and have no right to social security or other basic rights. Seventeen per cent of them are not paid. Generally in the labour market, black women are paid 40 per cent of a white man’s salary for the same work. Also, around 30 per cent of black women have been subjected to sterilization following a governmental policy. Some mothers live without knowing the fate of their children, as in the case of the mothers of the 11 adolescents from Favela Acari who disappeared in 1993: a military police officer is suspected of having killed them and although some evidence was found, the investigations got nowhere. Some mothers learned that their children had been killed, but no justice was rendered. 38. Half of the black population lives in poverty without access to health services. The mortality rate is much higher for the Blacks than for the Whites, as is life expectancy: 67.87 for Blacks and 73.99 for Whites. In the favelas, where 90 per cent of the inhabitants are black, the conditions of life are very poor and degrading, with very limited health services and a lack of teachers. After nursery classes, in the absence of schools, many children get involved with drug dealers in drug trafficking. The level of illiteracy is unacceptably high. The general feeling is that they have no hope of getting a decent education, good schools are unaffordable for them, and there is no chance of later going to university. They are in the hands of the drug dealers and the police do not protect them, but on the contrary, kill them. 39. The Special Rapporteur heard testimonies of assault or insult, such as “the place for a Black is in a cage”, being denounced but getting nowhere, since the police do not qualify these as cases of racism, or in the rare cases when accepted, that qualification is sometimes overturned by the prosecutor. As a result, there is total impunity for racism, notwithstanding the legislation in force. In addition, Blacks are criminalized. Communities believe that institutional violence, institutional racism and the criminalization of Blacks aim at guaranteeing the privileges of the white elite, to continue to exploit the working force of the Black. 40. Black homosexuals suffer from double discrimination, because of their colour and sexual orientation. Also, within the black community, homosexuality is seen as debilitating, as an outrage to the established social order and the image of the black man who is supposed to be