We share here an article from cebraspo that they also published in English.
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The counter-insurgency policy of the Brazilian State left another trail of terror and blood, this time on the Vila Cruzeiro favela, on Rio de Janeiro city north side. Following a logic of control over the life and death of the poor, mostly black population of the favela, 23 people were slaughtered in a joint operation of the BOPE (Special Operations Battallion of the Riode Janeiro state Military Police) and the Federal Highway Police (PRF), terrorizing the favela population for more than 12 hours. There are reports amongst the people of the favela that more than 30 dead bodies were found in nearby forested area, with signs of torture and stabbing.
(those reports can be read on the A Nova Democracia newspaper in the following link: https://anovademocracia.com.br/noticias/17559-massacre-da-penha-no-rio-torturas-tiro-contra-moradores-e-execucoes-macabrash)
An year after the biggest mass slaughter in the history of Rio, on the Jacarezinho favela, the behavior of the repressive forces of the state continues to be teathrical, following a reactionary logic of high numbers of deaths by the police “refined” by a lot of cruelty and cowardice.
On the year of 2021 alone, more than 1356 people were killed by police forces, according to oficial reccords. Between january and april of this year there were more than 16 mass slaughters and 85 deaths (source: Grupo de Estudos Novos Ilegalismos – GENI/ Fluminense Federal University). Besides the astouding numbers of fatal victims and all the impacts of these deaths on the families and people from their communities, the all round impact of these military incoursions and operations on the people of the favelas, the interruption of their daily lives, the impossibility of going to their workplaces, the closing of schools, childcare facilities and health care services, etc should also be pointed out.
In Vila Cruzeiro, as well as in all these recent mass slaughters, the police forces quickly treated the people who were murdered as suspected criminals, bandits, and similar adjectives as a way to justify the barbarity they had just done. The Brazilian State follows these guidelines to discredit them massacres as executions commited by agents of the state, justifying them as an answer to the agression of criminals, under the right of legitmate self-defense by the police officers.
In the end, the police officers investigate, judge, write the sentences and execute them freely on their own terms. Should those forces by permitted to have such power? Were the victims judged? Were those cases following the due legal proccess? Was their sentencing final, with all forms of appeal exhausted? How can the police be able to affirm that the people killed were criminals of all sorts?
Routinely, during those massacres, the police officers wave these powers in mockery of the very own burgeois laws that should rule over them! And the last act of this circle of barbarity is the total lack of punishment to the crimes of the State done against poor people in Rio de Janeiro and in the rest of the country.
The same line is followed by the press monopoly and their journalists who criminalize poverty and the black and poor youth, searching to justify those massacres. How is it possible for the press monopoly to justify the 25 deaths in the Vila Cruzeiro favela? Calling such action of genocide against our people as “a well planned operation”?
Their objective is to justify the murders and perpetrate the impunity of those involved. The laws of the State and their representatives, the press monopoly and the agents of the penal system, attorneys and judges, are also responsible for this genocide, specially the one against the youth, and should be judged for the crime of genocide, murder and crimes against the people.
The same Rede Globo that currently dictates the “progressive” agenda for their own purposes, has been building since the late 80s a war-like enviroment against the people of the favelas, associating criminality with poverty, justifying any and all barbarism enacted under the guise of the so-called public safety.
This sequence of genocide occurs in total contradiction with the current “plan for the reduction of police letality” under the high court of the country, the Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF). More of a limited plan for protocol revision, even for one following the laws of the so-called Democratic Rule of Law, a political sistem that never fully existed for the favelas and suburbs of Rio de Janeiro.
It is well know that the actions of the State cannot be justified by combat against drug and weapons traffick, for they do not even hit the surface of this very profitable activity, one that quickly reverses the eventual loss of profits and sustains the life of many different sectors of our society, like politicians, the bourgeoisie, big land owners, the police, and even the Military, that has already had members involved in international drug dealing transporting kilos of cocaine inside a presidential airplane.
So for what do these massacres against the people of the favelas and suburbs serve? To terrorize the people, to maintain them under constant rule of fear for they do not, one day, rebel against the routine attacks against their civi rights and their living conditions that get more precarious alongside the development of the unsolvable economic crisis of our country.
All democrats, progressive organizations and true defenders of the people’s rights have to repudiate in a passionate way these massacres that are becoming a permanent policy of the goverment of Rio de Janeiro state, and serve as a laboratory for the rest of the country. And more than ever we should defend the right of the people to organize and defend itself against all types of atrocities waged against them daily.
MILITARY POLICE OUT OF THE FAVELAS NOW!
DOWN WITH STATE TERRORISM!
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