Brazil wants to give free or cut-price 2014 World Cup tickets to people who hand in guns and use destroyed weapons to make goalposts

This article is more than 8 years old

This article is more than 8 years old

Football's governing body, Fifa, is studying plans to hand out free or cut-price World Cup tickets to football fans who surrender guns to the Brazilian government.

Brazil's justice ministry submitted the plans for the 2014 event last month as part of a new disarmament drive in the South American country.

According to reports in the Brazilian media, the government's suggestions also include swapping official footballs and shirts signed by World Cup teams for weapons handed in to authorities.

Another proposal, part of a new "World Cup law" currently being debated by lawmakers in the capital, Brasilia, would see destroyed guns used to make goalposts that would be used during the World Cup in Brazil, and at other Fifa competitions around the globe.

Renan Filho, an MP from the Brazilian Democratic Movement party, has called for the Brazilian World Cup to adopt the theme: "For a world without guns."

"We must consider the social legacy in defence of peace," he told a congressional hearing last month. "In [South] Africa the theme was the fight against Aids. Here we must spread the culture of peace and disarmament. We are still the country that most kills with firearms."

In an interview with the Globo Esporte website, Cilma Azevedo, a representative of the Desarma Brasil campaign, said football's popularity meant it was a key platform for Brazil's anti-gun movement.

"Death rates from firearms are very high and we see football as something that can mobilise people [against this]," she said.

During a recent visit to Brazil, Fifa's secretary general, Jérôme Valcke, provoked the ire of some campaigners when responding to questions about the disarmament drive.

"I think that unfortunately there are so many guns in Brazil that we wouldn't have a sufficient number of tickets," he told reporters in the capital Brasilia.

Brazil's latest disarmament campaign began in May, one month after a former student stormed his old primary school in Rio de Janeiro and shot 12 pupils.

Since then more than 20,000 guns have been handed in as part of an ongoing amnesty. But serious challenges remain, not least entrenched police corruption.

This week police in Rio launched a major operation against arms-trafficking, arresting 18 people, including 13 police officers, who were accused of selling guns and drugs back to gangsters from Jacarezinho, a sprawling favela in the city's north zone.

According to a study released on Wednesday, Brazil's homicide rates have risen 124% over the past three decades. The annual "map of violence" produced by the Instituto Sangari registered at least 1 million murders between 1980 and 2010.