{"id":33425,"date":"2016-10-07T08:09:45","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T11:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=33425"},"modified":"2020-08-07T14:03:49","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T17:03:49","slug":"favela-da-skol-residents-suffer-violent-evictions-by-police-in-complexo-do-alemao","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=33425","title":{"rendered":"Favela da Skol Residents Suffer Violent Evictions by Police in Complexo do Alem\u00e3o"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Homes belonging to approximately 200 families were destroyed by Rio\u2019s state government last weekend, after residents were forcibly removed from a small favela in Complexo do Alem\u00e3o<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At 11am on Saturday October 1, officers from Alem\u00e3o\u2019s Police Pacifying Unit<\/a>\u00a0(UPP) arrived at Favela da Skol<\/a>\u00a0and ordered residents to evacuate. Military Police<\/a> also arrived and following resistance from residents, officers used tear gas and rubber bullets to forcibly clear the area. Residents estimated that 15 to\u00a020 officers were present. By 4pm, only rubble remained on the site where\u00a0200 simple homes, several community spaces and three buildings had stood.<\/p>\n

The area, named after the Skol factory that had previously employed residents, was declared an \u201carea of risk\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and residents were evicted in\u00a02010. Many residents from Skol had accepted government offers of social rent<\/a>\u00a0while new social housing apartments would be\u00a0built for them in the same space. However, Rio\u2019s state government has repeatedly failed to deliver on this promise, and the favela was\u00a0listed as one of the potential campus locations<\/a>\u00a0for Mayor Paes\u2019 promised Complexo do Alem\u00e3o university. However the space remained vacant and on September 30, around 200\u00a0families returned to occupy the site after six years of broken promises.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had problems here because of real estate speculation<\/a>,\u201d said resident Camila Santos. \u201cThe government said they owned this land, and that they would build public\u00a0housing here for us. But we learned that their claim of ownership was false.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

Santos and other residents later discovered that Rio\u2019s state government was planning to offer public\u00a0housing located far from their communities<\/a>, schools and jobs in the city\u2019s West Zone<\/a>. Skol residents\u00a0are now entirely in limbo<\/a>\u00a0with no housing solution offered\u00a0and dwindling state help to pay rent.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy salary is R$700 per month, and rent is R$700 per month. I have three children. What do I do?\u201d asks Santos. \u201cWhen we left, we were happy because it seemed like a good deal: social rent, with the opportunity to rehouse. But we were tricked.”<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went to the mayor, we went to Alerj<\/a>, but nothing. They say they will build apartments, public squares, and they tear down your beautiful house and leave this,\u201d said Santos, pointing towards the debris.<\/p>\n

Last weekend\u2019s removals<\/a> and demolitions garnered international media attention<\/a> after community journalists Rene Silva and Renato Moura were arrested while broadcasting events<\/a> over a live Facebook video stream. Silva and Moura were detained around 3pm for\u00a0contempt of authority, civil disobedience and trespassing<\/a>. They were later released and the police action\u00a0has received condemnation<\/a> from Rio\u2019s Public Defender’s\u2019 Office, Amnesty International Brazil and the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism<\/a> (ABRAJI).<\/p>\n

Rio\u2019s state security department has tried to dispel notions that police behaved aggressively, with criminal investigator Mauro Ricart providing a statement to Globo<\/em> that\u00a0attempts to discredit footage<\/a> from Silva and Moura. Ricart\u2019s statement willfully ignores eyewitness statements and implies that the gunshots could have come from the favela itself. However, Santos says that while Skol was a poor community and living conditions were precarious, violence was never a problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were no traffickers, no criminals\u2013only workers and their families,\u201d she said. \u201cThere was never any trouble here. Our biggest problem [as a community] was sanitation<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Santos and the favela\u2019s other residents are now awaiting a meeting with Rio\u2019s state security department, due to take place on October 10, to investigate who authorized police operations and the aggressive behavior demonstrated on October 1. They are also waiting to learn about the latest developments to their housing situation, and currently remain without any word about what will happen to their social rent or when they will have somewhere new in the community to live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas Homes belonging to approximately 200 families were destroyed by Rio\u2019s state government last weekend, after residents were forcibly removed from a small favela in Complexo do Alem\u00e3o. At 11am on Saturday […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":33427,"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":[1294,1293,1854,1277,1288,336],"tags":[977,1653,32,1652,11,2030,282,26,25,1484,918,37,296,15,17,888,1545,135,268,1385],"writer":[1956],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-33425","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-communitymedia","8":"category-evictionswatch","9":"category-housingwatch","10":"category-uppwatch","11":"category-highlight","12":"category-violations","13":"tag-citizen-journalism","14":"tag-community-media","15":"tag-complexo-do-alemao","16":"tag-favela-da-skol","17":"tag-forced-evictions","18":"tag-freedom-of-expression","19":"tag-housing","20":"tag-housing-rights","21":"tag-human-rights","22":"tag-intimidation","23":"tag-military-police","24":"tag-north-zone","25":"tag-occupation","26":"tag-pacifying-police-unit","27":"tag-police-brutality","28":"tag-police-intimidation","29":"tag-repression","30":"tag-social-rent","31":"tag-state-violence","32":"tag-violence","33":"writer-ciara-long"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33425","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\/103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33425"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=33425"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=33425"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=33425"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=33425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}