{"id":26556,"date":"2016-01-29T12:51:51","date_gmt":"2016-01-29T15:51:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=26556"},"modified":"2016-01-29T12:51:51","modified_gmt":"2016-01-29T15:51:51","slug":"city-of-god-protests-and-calls-for-end-to-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=26556","title":{"rendered":"City of God Protests and Calls for End to Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

For the original article in Portuguese by Juliana Portella\u00a0published in Viva Favela click here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

City of God<\/a> was the second community<\/a> in Rio de Janeiro to receive a\u00a0Pacifying Police Unit (UPP)<\/a>,\u00a0in 2009<\/a>, and today counts 343 permanent police that attend to its more than 2km extension and\u00a047,000 residents, across 18 territories. As in other parts of the city, the UPP project is problematic<\/a>. According to\u00a0resident accounts, in the lead-up to Christmas, when residents strolled the streets more often and children were on vacation, a group of militia<\/a> arrived in the favela and opened fire. Four people were hit and one adolescent and a child died<\/a>. The crime interrupted the festive Christmas atmosphere\u00a0in the community.<\/p>\n

Wagner Novais, a filmmaker and community resident, thinks that the pacification project is not\u00a0about peace. \u201cI want to see schools, health<\/a>, transportation<\/a> and education<\/a> because there are\u00a0already too many police. What is lacking is dignity. It\u2019s been years since\u00a0the State Government\u00a0began building\u00a0a middle school. They’ve invested R$6 million and it’s still not ready,\u201d revindicates\u00a0Wagner, who believes\u00a0public security<\/a> can be guaranteed by means that are not repressive.<\/p>\n

No one can take any more<\/h3>\n

The incident that killed\u00a0Marcos Vinicius dos Santos, 11, and Breno da Silva Gomes, 14, and left Jaoquim C\u00e2ndido and a woman who does not want to be identified injured, served\u00a0as a catalyst\u00a0that sent residents to the street calling\u00a0for peace. In a mixture of revolt and indignation, protestors dressed in white and\u00a0came together\u00a0on December\u00a030, 2015 to\u00a0peacefully protest\u00a0on the corner of Josaf\u00e1 and Edgar Werneck streets. According to\u00a0reports, the main\u00a0suspects of the crime are militiamen active in Gard\u00eania Azul<\/a>. The Homicide Division (DH-Capital) is investigating the case and a suspect has been arrested.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/p>\n

Rog\u00e9rio de Souza, who was in the street at the time of the crime, recounts various men who entered the favela shooting. According to him, there were many people in the street at the moment that the killers\u00a0arrived. \u201cThey came to kill. I was playing an arcade game and saw everything. The street was calm\u00a0and suddenly men appeared shooting at nothing,\u201d he recounts. \u201cI’ve lived here since I was born and never seen anything like it. It is unbelievable what happened, it was cowardice. The walls in the streets are full of bullet holes,\u201d reported\u00a0Rogerio, indignant, while pointing at the marks of insecurity.<\/p>\n

L\u00facia de Freitas, who also lives in City of God, doesn\u2019t believe there was a shootout\u00a0as was reported. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a shootout because there were only teens and children playing in the street. We feel like prisoners\u00a0in our own houses. The sensation of insecurity is enormous,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

One of the high points of the protest was the artistic intervention by actor and resident of the community Giovana Rocha. From the beginning the organizers of the event had thought about using toys as a form of protest. They were placed on the ground to represent the interruption of childhood for the community’s children and this space served as a stage for Giovana to recite the poem \u201cDa Paz,\u201d<\/a> by Marcelino Freire.<\/p>\n

Protest unites artists<\/h3>\n

Famous for being one of the composers of the classic funk song Rap da Felicidade<\/em><\/a>, MC Doca, who still lives\u00a0in the community, made a point\u00a0of participating in the protest and calling\u00a0for better days. \u201cCity of God can\u2019t put up with more. Those\u00a0who died were one of us. We want peace.\u201d The singer Tonz\u00e3o Chagas<\/a> also called\u00a0for justice. \u201c2015 was the year we had the most murders\u00a0in City of God–the majority of them haven’t been solved. We don’t resign ourselves to these statistics. No one is going to quiet us. Enough of seeing our friends\u00a0die here in City of God,\u201d he categorically stated.<\/p>\n

The father of one of the victims, Marcos dos Santos, was also present at the protest. He thanked his neighbors and friends for their care and asked for justice for his son. “My son helped me every day. I’m devastated but I’m going to fight for justice and that this doesn\u2019t happen with any other family,\u201d he lamented.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/h3>\n

The\u00a0same targets as always<\/h3>\n

According to\u00a0journalist Cec\u00edlia Olliveira, a specialist in criminology and public security, a relationship of persecution has been established towards\u00a0a class that is mostly comprised of poor, black residents of low-income areas. \u201cWars don’t exist against things, they exist\u00a0against people. And what is the profile of the ‘enemy’ in this war? Mostly blacks, the poor and residents of low-income areas. In these areas anything is allowed, after all it’s\u00a0saving society from the ‘bad’ that\u00a0reigns there.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Olliveira, author of the\u00a0Abordagem Policial<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>blog on the police<\/a> and public security, solving\u00a0the problem is only possible if there is a revision of policies and legalization of drugs. \u201cThe rate\u00a0of violence is directly linked to the type of policies we have. In truth, our police fulfill the role they have been\u00a0assigned<\/a>. If drug policies aren’t\u00a0revised, the ‘war’ is not going to end. The problems will be reduced\u00a0but the state of ‘war’ will not be revoked.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas For the original article in Portuguese by Juliana Portella\u00a0published in Viva Favela click here.\u00a0 City of God was the second community in Rio de Janeiro to receive a\u00a0Pacifying Police Unit (UPP),\u00a0in […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":26558,"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":[1294,1277,1328,1290,1333,335,336],"tags":[231,987,33,15,18,809,443,30,1385,21],"writer":[1481],"translator":[407],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-26556","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-communitymedia","8":"category-uppwatch","9":"category-by-community-contributors","10":"category-civilsociety","11":"category-event-reports","12":"category-policies","13":"category-violations","14":"tag-city-of-god","15":"tag-gardenia-azul","16":"tag-militia","17":"tag-pacifying-police-unit","18":"tag-protest","19":"tag-public-security","20":"tag-security","21":"tag-urban-violence","22":"tag-violence","23":"tag-west-zone","24":"writer-juliana-portella","25":"translator-elizabeth-gladding"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26556","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\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26556"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=26556"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=26556"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=26556"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=26556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}