FAR-RIGHT Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro came under fire on Wednesday after taunting UN human rights commissioner Michelle Bachelet over her and her parents’ torture by Chile’s Pinochet dictatorship in the 1970s.

Mr Bolsonaro hit out after Ms Bachelet criticised rising killings by police in Brazil and warned of a “shrinking” space for democracy.

He responded saying: “She is defending the human rights of vagabonds. Senhora Michelle Bachelet, if Pinochet’s people had not defeated the left in ’73 — among them your father — Chile would be a Cuba today.”

The former army captain has frequently expressed admiration for dictators, including Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, who came to power in 1973 in a US-backed coup against Chile’s democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende.

This ushered in two decades of a dictatorship during which tens of thousands were disappeared and killed.

Ms Bachelet’s father Alberto, an air force general, was jailed and tortured for opposing the coup. He died of a heart attack in prison. Ms Bachelet and her mother, Angela Jeria, were also held in jail.

More than 400 were killed by police in Sao Paulo state in the first half of this year, while 881 were killed by police in Rio de Janeiro state over the same period.

Speaking last month, Mr Bolsonaro said he hoped new laws making it easier for police to kill would mean criminals would “die in the street like cockroaches.”

The progress Group of Puebla said the response to the comments showed Mr Bolsonaro was rejected by “the civilised world,” making him a “lonely and despicable political outcast.”

“Bolsonaro, an obvious defender of dictatorships, torture and the extermination of democratic opponents, described by him as vagabonds, has a deep contempt for human rights, democracy, the environment and the whole sustainable development agenda promoted by the UN and the international community,” the group said in a statement.