Live
Audio Only
The number of massacres in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has doubled since military intervention was launched on February 16, according to a new report by the Intervention Observatory at Candido Mendes University.
RELATED:
After Rio, Brazil’s Temer Weighs Military ‘Coup’ Intervention in More States
Published on Thursday, the study – 'Aimlessly: No Program, No Results, No Direction' – also shows that, despite federal troops patrolling the streets of Rio, the number of shootouts has also significantly increased.
Silvia Ramos, coordinator at the Intervention Observatory, said the intervention was a political decision "that spawned new problems with the presence of soldiers in the political life of Brazilians, who were hurled into the center of a scenery without solving the problem of insecurity in Rio."
The data highlighted in the report "is sufficient enough for us to understand that no security policy will produce acceptable results if it's not based on reducing gunfights, deaths and the circulation of firearms," Ramos said. "This begins with the police themselves, who shouldn't come in the favela attacking residents."
Ramos cited the recent case of officers from the Pacification Police Unit who physically assaulted and cut the hair of a 23-year-old trans-woman in the favela complex of Babilonia/Chapeu Mangus, describing them as having "reached the lowest degree of chaos."
On February 16, the federal government dispatched the army to assume full control of police forces in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The move was in response to increased violence, which has "virtually taken over," according to senate-imposed President Michel Temer.
Approximately 3,200 soldiers are now patrolling public streets in predominantly poor, working-class neighborhoods.
Former President Dilma Rousseff characterized the intervention as a means to create an enemy, which "in Brazil's case, is poor Black people who live in periphery neighborhoods... It's not white people who live in Ipanema nor in Leblon."
Newsletter
