Keystone-SDA
Favelas in Rio de Janeiro experienced scenes of war on Tuesday, with the deaths of at least 64 people in the deadliest police operation in the history of the Brazilian city. She targeted one of Brazil’s drug trafficking gangs.
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(Keystone-ATS) Robust raids by the police are, despite their contested effectiveness, frequent in Rio. They particularly target favelas, poor and densely populated neighborhoods, often under the yoke of drug traffickers.
But Tuesday’s operation, by its scale and violence, created a shock, even to the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, which said it was “horrified” and called for “rapid investigations”.
The right-wing governor of Rio state, Claudio Castro, announced that “60 criminals” had been “neutralized”. Four police officers were also killed, a source within his services told AFP.
Intense shooting, barricades, fires: the operation, mobilizing 2,500 agents, focused on two sets of favelas in the north of Rio, Complexo da Penha and Complexo do Alemao, located near the international airport.
“Everyone is terrified”
At the Getulio Vargas hospital, from where bursts of gunfire could be heard not far away, an uninterrupted procession of vehicles deposited in front of the entrance corpses and bullet wounds, police officers, suspected offenders or simple residents, noted an AFP photographer.
In Vila Cruzeiro, a favela in Complexo da Penha, heavily armed police guarded around twenty young men who had been arrested. Huddled together, they sat on the ground with their heads bowed, bare feet and bare chests.
“Everyone is terrified,” the head of a social project who is in remote contact with residents of Complexo da Penha told AFP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Until now, the deadliest police operation in Rio, a city of more than 6 million inhabitants, took place during the Covid-19 pandemic, in 2021, when 28 people died in a single day in the Jacarezinho favela.
The governor also announced the arrest Tuesday of “81 criminals,” as well as the seizure of 75 assault rifles and “a huge quantity of drugs.”
«Chaos»
“More than 200,000 residents remain affected by the closure of schools and health units with suspended services,” said the legislative assembly of the state of Rio. “There are no buses. We are stuck in the middle of chaos,” Regina Pinheiro, a 70-year-old retiree who was trying to return home, told AFP.
A common strategy for gangs during clashes with the police, “more than fifty buses were used as barricades,” said the Rio bus companies union.
The operation aims to “fight the territorial expansion of the Comando Vermelho” (red commando), one of the main criminal factions in Brazil, established in several states of the country, the government of the state of Rio specified on the social network X.
Police mobilized two helicopters, 32 armored vehicles and “twelve demolition vehicles” used to destroy barricades. Governor Claudio Castro posted a video on X of a drone launching a projectile from the cloudy sky.
“This is how the Rio police are received by criminals: with bombs launched by drones,” commented this ally of former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, denouncing “narcoterrorism”.
“License to kill”
Specialists and organizations defending fundamental rights criticize the strategy of the security forces, deeming it ineffective against criminal organizations.
“A police operation that results in the death of more than 60 residents and police officers is a huge tragedy,” said César Munoz, director of the NGO Human Rights Watch in Brazil. He called for investigations to be opened into “every death”.
“Claudio Castro’s policies treat the favelas as enemy territories, where the license to kill reigns,” accused left-wing MP Henrique Vieira.
The human rights commission of Rio’s legislative assembly announced that it would demand “explanations of the circumstances of the action, which once again transformed Rio’s favelas into a theater of war and barbarity,” according to Dani Monteiro, president of the commission.
In 2024, around 700 people will die during law enforcement interventions in Rio, or almost two per day.
