BY KEVIN G. HALL
 Herald World Staff

 RIO DE JANEIRO -- The savage killing of Edson Neris da Silva, allegedly attacked
 by a gang of skinheads as he and a friend left a bar in Sao Paulo's gay district,
 has shocked Brazil, a country that considers itself sexually liberal.

 Police said the quiet 35-year-old dog trainer was beaten with brass knuckles and
 chains and left to die in Sao Paulo's Plaza of the Republic on Feb. 6.

 Like the 1998 beating death of gay college student Matthew Shepard in Laramie,
 Wyo., Neris da Silva's murder has triggered soul-searching among Brazilians. The
 country's reputation for easygoing acceptance is one reason that it's a global
 tourist mecca for gay travelers.

 But advocacy groups say 169 gays, lesbians and transvestites were murdered
 because of their sexual orientation in Brazil last year and that crime against
 sexual minorities is increasing. Two transvestites were murdered separately in
 Sao Paulo last weekend, with little notice by the news media.

 PROTESTS PROMISED

 Neris da Silva's death attracted little notice at first, but word began spreading last
 week. Politicians and advocacy groups held a candlelight memorial Saturday
 night, and on Monday gay rights groups began what they say will be frequent
 protests in Rio and Sao Paulo.

 ``With these, we are trying to pressure the authorities so that this is not a
 forgotten affair,'' said Elias Lilikan, president of the Diversity Association, a gay
 rights group based in Sao Paulo.

 Another rights group, Grupo Gay da Bahia, in Brazil's northeast, maintains a
 count of what it says are murders motivated by sexual orientation. It estimates
 that 1,830 gays, lesbians and transvestites have been killed in Brazil since 1963,
 with last year's 169 murders a record.

 Neris da Silva's killing may become more than a statistic. As with U.S. legislative
 efforts after Shepard's murder, gay rights groups hope to tap public outrage to win
 stricter penalties for crimes targeting sexual minorities.

 LAWS ALREADY EXIST

 Brazil has broad discrimination laws that include sexual minorities, but some
 advocacy groups want more severe penalties for hate crimes against gays.

 Advocates' talks had been under way in Brasilia with the Secretariat of Human
 Rights, part of Brazil's Justice Department; they are expected to take on a new
 urgency when they resume next month.

 Lilikan, a prominent gay rights leader who heads a gay studies center at the
 University of Sao Paulo, said there have been at least two legislative proposals for
 new hate-crime laws in Sao Paulo state since Neris da Silva's death.

 Brazilian authorities, perhaps sensing that the crime would have national impact,
 moved quickly to go after the carecas  (skinheads, from the Portuguese word for
 bald). Three hours after the attack on Neris da Silva and his friend, who escaped
 the assailants, police swooped down on a bar a mile from the site of the beating
 and arrested nearly two dozen members of the group Carecas do ABC. Eighteen
 people have been charged in the case.

 LEADER IN NEO-NAZIS

 The U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League, which fights anti-Semitism, estimated
 last year that Brazil had at least 1,500 skinheads and ranked sixth in the world,
 tied with Britain, in numbers of members of neo-Nazi hate groups.

 Some prominent politicians vow the skinheads will be prosecuted as an example.

 ``It will serve as a demonstration that the citizenry and the government will not
 tolerate this sort of stuff,'' said Marta Suplicy, a former federal lawmaker who
 sponsored much of Brazil's anti-discrimination legislation and is now a leading
 contender in Sao Paulo's mayoral race. ``I think today the Brazilian culture has
 grown and we face these problems head-on.''

 Suplicy said she thinks Brazil doesn't need new hate-crime laws, just better
 enforcement of existing statutes against discrimination, including using provisions
 for tougher penalties when a crime against a minority is premeditated.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald