{"id":25351,"date":"2015-11-17T13:18:59","date_gmt":"2015-11-17T16:18:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=25351"},"modified":"2015-12-26T17:44:11","modified_gmt":"2015-12-26T20:44:11","slug":"popular-committee-holds-debate-on-militarization-racism-and-the-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=25351","title":{"rendered":"Popular Committee Holds Debate on Militarization, Racism and the Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas\"\"<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Last Wednesday, November 11, a debate on militarization, exclusion, racism and the Olympics<\/a> was held in the Cinel\u00e2ndia<\/a> square, in front of Rio’s City Council, a historic space for protest<\/a> and political activism in Rio de Janeiro. Organized by the Popular Committee on the World Cup and Olympics<\/a>, the event brought together different social movements and NGOs concerned with police violence<\/a> and abuses against the city’s poorer residents, and particularly against black citizens.<\/p>\n

The aim of the debate was to generate a space to reflect on how the issues of militarization, increasing segregation<\/a> and\u00a0racism<\/a>\u00a0in the city of Rio de Janeiro are central\u00a0to\u00a0the city model being implemented by Rio\u2019s economic and political elites. The Committee argues that the city of mega-events<\/a> and mega-projects, of spectacle and speculation is dependent on the systematic repression and containment of poorer citizens for the sake of real estate speculation<\/a> and capital accumulation. “To reclaim the city for its people” is the\u00a0central aim of the Committee and the main reason the event was held in a central public square.<\/p>\n

The open-air debate was complemented by\u00a0a photographic exhibition by Luiz Baltar<\/a>.\u00a0The photos show moments of police violence and peaceful resistance<\/a> in Rio\u2019s favelas.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a><\/p>\n

The debate opened with a brief presentation by Hertz Leal from the Committee who then\u00a0passed the microphone to Monique Cruz from the Rio de Janeiro\u00a0Youth Forum<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Resident of the\u00a0Manguinhos<\/a>\u00a0favela,\u00a0Cruz described all the different types of control, humiliation and vexation that favela residents live with every day at hands of the Military Police<\/a>. She told of how\u00a0youth\u00a0are\u00a0restricted from moving around streets and favela spaces where they have grown up, police assaulting\u00a0children at school for displaying “uncivil behavior,” invading the privacy of favela residents’ and their homes, and confiscating the\u00a0equipment of community-based media outlets.<\/p>\n

Cruz also emphasized how \u201cespecially the black youth<\/a> are seen as enemies that need to be eliminated,\u201d and are systematically killed<\/a>\u00a0with the pretext of being a threat to police. She denounced the corruption of both the police and the judiciary, for manipulating homicide court cases and sentencing them as acts of legitimate police self-defense, as in\u00a0the recent case of the death\u00a0of Eduardo de Jesus<\/a>, a 10-year-old who was shot dead in front of his house in Complexo do Alem\u00e3o<\/a>. Monique argued that this is an aggression to the memory of the victims and their parents, mentioning the struggle of mothers like Ana Paula Oliveira<\/a>\u00a0whose son Jonatha was shot and killed by police in Manguinhos in May last year. On a final note, Cruz added that the legal system and mass media<\/a>\u00a0reinforce the racist and exclusionary state machinery.<\/p>\n

The second speaker, Deley de Acar\u00ed<\/a>, a poet and one of Rio’s long-time\u00a0community organizers<\/a> from the Acari<\/a> favela in Rio’s North Zone, described\u00a0the only legacy for Rio\u2019s favelas as\u00a0that of an increased militarization with\u00a0a dramatic increase in public investment on security. He contrasted this with the budgetary cuts on other urgent needs\u00a0such as education<\/a> and sanitation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Maria de Lourdes from the United Movement of Street Vendors<\/a> drew the attention of the debate towards the Municipal Guard, denouncing violence against street vendors, a common profession among low-income Rio residents. Though street vendors<\/a> have been fighting for years to regularize their jobs, attempting to pass a new law in the state legislative assembly, everyday aggressions against\u00a0them\u00a0have only increased in the context of mega-events.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

The final speaker as the event extended into the evening was Maren Mantovani, an activist from the\u00a0Olympics Without Apartheid<\/a>\u00a0campaign calling for\u00a0the Rio 2016 Organizing Committee to cancel its contract with the Israeli security company\u00a0International Security and Defense Systems<\/a>. Mantovani, a\u00a0pro-Palestine activist, explained how the strategies and armament that Rio de Janeiro\u2019s Military Police are employing\u00a0are\u00a0imported\u00a0from the Israeli army. She drew parallels between\u00a0how Palestinians and favela residents\u00a0are treated by security forces, being impeded of free circulation and fatally shot under the official pretext of police or military not being sufficiently trained. Montovani highlighted that the military is very well prepared and trained to kill and shoot right at the hearts and the heads of civilians, both in Rio\u2019s favelas and in the Palestinian territories. \u00a0Montovani also talked about the anti-terrorism law<\/a>\u00a0passed in August: \u201cBrazilian members of the government returned from a trip to Israel and designed an anti-terrorist law to secure the World Cup and Olympic Games. They learned there, [in Israel].\u201d<\/p>\n

After a few interventions from the audience, the speakers made their last calls for civil society<\/a> mobilization against the private interests and companies that profit from the militarization of the city. Finally, the Committee proclaimed its full commitment to act as a network and catalyst for social mobilizations that aim at regaining the\u00a0right to the city<\/a> understood as full participation<\/a>\u00a0in city life by the majority that is being excluded to date. \u201cI\u2019m not excluded from building, I\u2019m not excluded from working. The exclusion we talk about is that of access,\u201d Monique Cruz claimed.
\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas Last Wednesday, November 11, a debate on militarization, exclusion, racism and the Olympics was held in the Cinel\u00e2ndia square, in front of Rio’s City Council, a historic space for protest and […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":25352,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1736,1290,1333,336,1329],"tags":[555,517,1163,190,32,506,878,637,1259,918,5,17,18,809,270,845,957,30,167],"writer":[1786],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-25351","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-1736","8":"category-civilsociety","9":"category-event-reports","10":"category-violations","11":"category-by-international-observers","12":"tag-acari","13":"tag-cinelandia","14":"tag-civil-society","15":"tag-comite-popular","16":"tag-complexo-do-alemao","17":"tag-exclusion","18":"tag-international-comparison","19":"tag-manguinhos","20":"tag-mega-events","21":"tag-military-police","22":"tag-olympics","23":"tag-police-brutality","24":"tag-protest","25":"tag-public-security","26":"tag-resistance","27":"tag-rio-de-janeiro-youth-forum","28":"tag-street-vendors","29":"tag-urban-violence","30":"tag-world-cup","31":"writer-marta-ill-raga"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25351"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=25351"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=25351"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=25351"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=25351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}