{"id":27061,"date":"2016-02-25T09:55:25","date_gmt":"2016-02-25T12:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=27061"},"modified":"2016-02-29T16:28:19","modified_gmt":"2016-02-29T19:28:19","slug":"police-kill-youth-and-terrify-residents-in-intense-police-operations-in-mare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=27061","title":{"rendered":"Police Kill Youth and Terrify Residents in Intense Police Operations in Mar\u00e9"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

On Monday February 22, police killed 19 year-old Igor Silva during an operation in the Parque Uni\u00e3o<\/a> favela in Complexo da Mar\u00e9<\/a> in Rio’s North Zone<\/a>. The same day a graphic video<\/a> shot by a resident was posted on social media showing officers\u00a0from the Civil Police’s Special Resources Coordination (CORE) shoving\u00a0Silva’s lifeless body in the back of a police vehicle. The video and subsequent press\u00a0reports alleging pharmacy worker Silva was involved in the drug traffic<\/a>–a common justification for fatal police violence<\/a>–have caused disgust amongst residents and community organizations who have denounced the police and media’s actions.<\/p>\n

Monday was a day of intense\u00a0police operations in Mar\u00e9 with shootouts reported starting at\u00a06am on community Facebook pages. Mar\u00e9 Vive<\/a> posted updates throughout the day with shootouts reported in Nova Holanda<\/a>, Baixa do Sapateiro<\/a>, Rubens Vaz and Parque Uni\u00e3o.<\/p>\n

Schools, hospitals and daycare centers were closed and residents posted that they were terrified to leave their houses.\u00a0One resident wrote<\/a>: “My God!! They’re going to kill everyone!”<\/p>\n

Community journalist Tha\u00eds Cavalcante<\/a> was caught in the middle of a shootout. She later tweeted: “The meaning of life changes when you see death up close. What a difficult day.”<\/p>\n

\"Igor<\/p>\n

Igor Silva was shot in the chest by police during a shootout in the Parque Uni\u00e3o favela that morning. A resident filmed police mishandling his corpse, altering the crime scene and putting Silva’s body in a CORE vehicle before driving off. The video<\/a> has subsequently been shared widely on Facebook with residents and human rights defenders horrified at the treatment of the young man’s body.<\/p>\n

Residents were further outraged by the media’s reporting of the incident. Globo<\/em>‘s\u00a0G1<\/a><\/em> and R7<\/a><\/em> published the video reporting that police were “providing help” to the victim.<\/p>\n

News\u00a0reports of Silva’s death by\u00a0G1<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>and O Dia<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>emphasized\u00a0the police statement that Silva had a pistol, radio and three bulletproof vests, quoting\u00a0the chief police officer alleging he was a criminal: “These are people that have been used to engaging in shootouts since they were young. Today was no different. We had various conflicts and in one of them a police officer managed to react and hit this boy.”<\/p>\n

The G1<\/em> report and allegation was questioned in a post by Mar\u00e9 Vive<\/a> which published the officer’s quote and G1<\/em>‘s featured image of bulletproof vests alongside an image of Silva at work at the pharmacy: “Tell me, who would be crazy enough to shoot with a pistol against the CORE armed with rifles, machine guns, helicopters and all the rest? And if he had three bulletproof vests why the hell didn’t he use one?” The post, shared over 1,900 times, slammed the media’s reporting and police statement concluding with the affirmation, “We want justice and won’t be quiet.”<\/p>\n

Community organization\u00a0Redes da Mar\u00e9<\/a> published a note<\/a> denouncing the police operations and Silva’s death: “The shot that hit Silva hit us too because it’s a very serious\u00a0violation of the most sacred right we have, the right to life. Our democracy cannot coexist with the idea that some lives are worth more than others. The assassination of young Brazilian favela residents<\/a> cannot become natural.”<\/p>\n

The note called for an immediate response: “Society needs to mobilize and call for the State to fulfill their responsibility and call too for a radical change to this security<\/a> policy based on war. Rio de Janeiro State Governor, Luiz Fernando Pez\u00e3o<\/a>, has an obligation to make a statement about what happened today in Mar\u00e9 and immediately stop actions like these that only result in violence and death.”<\/p>\n

Complexo da Mar\u00e9 comprises 16 communities and has a population of around 130,000. Located between the Avenida Brasil and Linha Vermelha highways, close to Rio’s international airport, the favela complex was occupied by the army<\/a> in March 2014<\/a> ahead of the World Cup<\/a> with\u00a0the\u00a0installation of Pacifying Police Units (UPPs)<\/a> projected for the following year. Two years later, and with the Olympics<\/a> approaching, no UPPs have been installed and as Monday’s events tragically evidence, violent conflicts and the State’s aggressive war-based security policy continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas On Monday February 22, police killed 19 year-old Igor Silva during an operation in the Parque Uni\u00e3o favela in Complexo da Mar\u00e9 in Rio’s North Zone. The same day a graphic […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":27064,"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":[1294,1288,1290,335,336],"tags":[1087,1144,280,125,1343,23,1366,281,5,362,17,301,809,1555,1011,1952,443,796,268,1385,167],"writer":[444],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-27061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-communitymedia","8":"category-highlight","9":"category-civilsociety","10":"category-policies","11":"category-violations","12":"tag-voicesfromsocialmedia","13":"tag-baixa-do-sapateiro","14":"tag-complexo-da-mare","15":"tag-drug-traffic","16":"tag-governor-pezao","17":"tag-mass-media","18":"tag-analyzing-media-portrayal-of-favelas","19":"tag-nova-holanda","20":"tag-olympics","21":"tag-parque-uniao","22":"tag-police-brutality","23":"tag-public-policy","24":"tag-public-security","25":"tag-redes-de-desenvolvimento-da-mare","26":"tag-right-to-come-and-go","27":"tag-rubens-vaz","28":"tag-security","29":"tag-social-media","30":"tag-state-violence","31":"tag-violence","32":"tag-world-cup","33":"writer-felicity-clarke"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27061","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=27061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27061"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=27061"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=27061"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=27061"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=27061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}