E/CN.4/2001/66/Add.2 page 47 139. In Belo Horizonte, State of Minas Gerais, a special human rights division has been created within the Public Prosecutor’s Office to prosecute human rights violations. At the time of the visit of the Special Rapporteur, this division, staffed with one human rights prosecutor, had received more than 600 accusations of ill-treatment, bodily injury and torture and had prosecuted some 2,000 police officers for human rights violations. Prosecutors also visited various places of detention, including police lock-ups, on an unannounced basis. Authorities were blamed by civil society for not providing sufficient resources to public prosecutors to prosecute torture cases. 140. It was often feared by interlocutors from civil society that because he/she is appointed by the governors, the head of the Public Prosecutor’s Offices may not always be genuinely independent from the political power. Furthermore, in several instances, the attention of the Special Rapporteur was drawn to the fact that the fight against criminality was often the priority of the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Relatively few resources, both personnel and financial, are allocated to public prosecutors’ divisions dealing with human rights. 141. Finally, the Federal Prosecutor for the Rights of Citizens informed the Special Rapporteur that, even though her Office had the right to investigate any alleged violations of human rights by federal, state or municipal agents, including by receiving information from any sources, it was in practice very difficult to gather information and testimonies on incidents of torture due, inter alia, to the slow pace of justice, the fear of reprisals, in particular owing to the lack of immediate, durable and effective protection of victims,68 witnesses and their relatives, an insufficient number of qualified personnel, the existence of a separate justice system for military personnel, and the difficulty of obtaining evidence from forensic experts, in particular because of their subordinate relationship to the public security authorities. 2. Corregedorias 142. State police departments have established an internal affairs division (corregedoria) which is responsible for initial administrative investigations of police misconduct. Ordinarily, there are two corregedorias, one for the civil police and one for the military police. However, in the State of Pernambuco, there was a unified corregedoria for both police services (which are unified under the State Secretariat for Social Defence), headed by a former prosecutor, in order, according to the State Secretary for Social Defence, to ensure its independence from the police. According to the information received from corregedors, while they have the power to propose the dismissal of police officers, only the governor can decide to dismiss them. Other forms of disciplinary sanctions include reprimands or suspensions. According to the information received by the Special Rapporteur, one of the common administrative sanctions is the transfer of the guilty officer to another police station, especially one in a more remote area. This is believed to accentuate police brutality in the countryside and to reinforce impunity in regions already far away from close monitoring by ouvidorias and the more active urban civil society. In January 2000, the State Secretariat for Public Security of São Paulo reportedly presented a proposal, supported by the National Forum of the Police Ombudsmen, to the Parliament for a constitutional reform which would create a unified and autonomous corregedoria with a view to guaranteeing external control over the police.