{"id":38575,"date":"2017-09-11T13:57:13","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T16:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=38575"},"modified":"2017-09-14T13:18:40","modified_gmt":"2017-09-14T16:18:40","slug":"is-it-war-a-debate-on-the-language-about-violence-in-favelas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=38575","title":{"rendered":"“Is It War?” A Debate on the Language About Violence in Favelas"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

In light of the increasing tensions in Rio de Janeiro favelas such as Complexo da Mar\u00e9<\/a>, Jacarezinho<\/a>, and Complexo do Alem\u00e3o<\/a>, Brazilian and global media are increasingly describing the city’s situation as one of \u201cwar.\u201d On Saturday, September 2, the investigative journalism hub Casa P\u00fablica<\/a> hosted a discussion on\u00a0public security<\/a> and the use of the word \u201cwar\u201d in coverage<\/a> of Rio\u2019s favelas. The focus was on the implications of this language for both people living in favelas and those living in the formal city.\u00a0Journalist Rog\u00e9rio Daflon moderated the discussion between\u00a0El Pa\u00eds<\/em>\u00a0journalist Mar\u00eda Mart\u00edn, journalist and researcher Cec\u00edlia Olliveira, Military Police ex-commander Colonel \u00cdbis Pereira, and Lidiane Malanquini from the Mar\u00e9 civil society organization\u00a0Redes de Desenvolvimento da Mar\u00e9<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The event began with a screening of the short documentary \u201cBala Perdida<\/a>\u201d by Ag\u00eancia P\u00fablica, before Colonel Ibis Pereira opened the discussion by reminding the audience that Brazil is home to many of the most dangerous cities in the world (19 Brazilian cities<\/a> were on a 2016 list of the world’s 50 most violent cities). Of those cities, he said, Rio de Janeiro has the highest annual number of violent deaths of those aged between 15 and 29 years old. The colonel argued it is important to view violence as deriving from the lack of good public security policies<\/a>: “We should not fall into the temptation of talking about war, but we have to start talking more about public security policies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lidiane Malanquini asserted that the discourse of “war” erases the government’s responsibility to develop public security policy. This “war” narrative, she said, creates a situation in which \u201cpeople speak a lot about the data and don\u2019t speak about the emotional repercussions. How can we quantify the situation of the families that are broken by this violence, and the feelings of a whole street on seeing a young person dead? So I think it is really important that people start to look at what is behind these data.\u201d Speaking about the current situation in Complexo da Mar\u00e9 in terms of \u201cwar,\u201d Malanquini continued, legitimizes the everyday deaths and violence occurring due to armed conflicts with the police. Residents’ everyday experience of violence is allegedly due to the “war on drugs<\/a>” which the government claims will bring security to the city’s population, but for whom is this security?<\/p>\n

All the speakers underlined how crucial it is to understand the consequences of the language used in reporting<\/a>. Cec\u00edlia Olliveira suggested people often use strong words without considering the weight of their meaning, and that \u201cthe word ‘war’ is deeply rooted in Rio de Janeiro\u2019s language.” She explained that words such as “heroism” and “conquer” derive from police reports and from the military’s vocabulary of war, and have been absorbed over the years into the language of journalists and the general public: \u201ctherefore, the people speak like the newspapers speak, which speak like the police speak and so on.\u201d Olliveira said the newspapers applying the language of “war” are legitimizing the behaviors of war.<\/p>\n

Olliveira also recounted how difficult it is, as a reporter, to find the real numbers of victims and of shootings in the city from the police. Working with the project Fogo Cruzado<\/a>, which monitors armed confrontations and resulting deaths, Olliveira has to triangulate information gathered from three sources: the users of the application, newspapers, and the armed forces. She said that even within the police, information is decentralized, resulting in contradictory data that make it difficult to quantify the repercussions of police interventions in favelas. Moreover, disinformation within the armed forces themselves creates a situation in which even police officers often do not have full information about their missions; Olliveira said they often don\u2019t have a clear idea of the purpose of their actions beyond \u201ckilling the enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

The idea of a war in the minds of the armed forces and in the pages of newspapers, continued Colonel Ibis Pereira, also creates a profile of people who can be killed in the war. He explained that people involved in drug trafficking are considered \u201ckillable,\u201d because they are all allegedly part of the crime that this “war” fights against. Their deaths become justified and publicly accepted<\/a>. Pereira said the war-centered language derives from the militarization of the police<\/a> in Brazil’s dictatorship, a phenomenon which has not yet been dismantled. \u201cTherefore, it is vital to change the terms in which this situation is reported,\u201d affirmed the colonel.<\/p>\n

Malanquini added that the word \u201cwar\u201d also comes with words such as \u201ccollateral damage\u201d: \u201cTherefore, a child killed by a bullet in their school becomes ‘collateral damage’ of the ‘war’ against the enemy. If the people use the word ‘war’ they also legitimize its violating practices.\u201d<\/p>\n

Olliveira stressed that journalists need to do more to humanize the people living in areas affected by violence: \u201cWhen one person is killed in the conflict, the family also lives this death. But the [readers] don\u2019t care about it and they don\u2019t know that the mother of a victim tried to kill herself… [Journalists] have to stop saying, \u201csomeone died,\u201d but include information on who that person was, where that victim came from, and what about the family? There is a need to humanize these people in the news.” Olliveira acknowledged the difficulties facing reporters who find themselves summarizing the bare minimum of information in order to create fast news, augmenting the dehumanization process. She said an important task of journalists is to try not to fall into this trap.<\/p>\n

A member of the audience asked how these representations in the media affect society, specifically people living in favelas. Olliveira reflected that often favela residents give up on speaking to the press, as their words are often reported wrongly or inserted in a context that contradicts their opinions. She said \u201cit is important that, as a journalist, you care about the person you are speaking with.” To fight perceived biases, Malanquini explained that people in Mar\u00e9 have started sending reports to newspapers that include information regarding the consequences of the operations conducted by the police\u2014such as the number of schools and shops closed\u2014to give a different and more complete image of the armed conflict and of the affected areas.<\/p>\n

Another audience member asked what type of language the media should use to avoid reinforcing the images of \u201cwar\u201d and \u201cvictims of war.\u201d Malanquini responded that \u201cthe first step is to start talking about the peripheries for other issues beyond just violence<\/a>,” such as community initiatives and the potential of the youth population. She believes that by focusing on the topic of violence<\/a>, journalists are automatically reinforcing the war discourse. This echoed Olliveira’s argument that newspapers have to cooperate more with reporters from favelas as there are many community journalists reporting a completely different type of news<\/a> with the potential to create a different image of the peripheries. She recounted how Michel Silva<\/a>, a community journalist from\u00a0Rocinha<\/a>, said that if newspapers had more reporters from the favelas they would know that the current situation is not war and they would better understand the political dynamics.<\/p>\n

Offering a final reflection to close the event, Colonel Pereira emphasized the challenge and the importance for journalists to try to transmit humanity along with the news of violence in order to affect the audience emotionally, rather than leaving them indifferent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas In light of the increasing tensions in Rio de Janeiro favelas such as Complexo da Mar\u00e9, Jacarezinho, and Complexo do Alem\u00e3o, Brazilian and global media are increasingly describing the city’s situation […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":158,"featured_media":38592,"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":[1277,1288,1333,1463,1329],"tags":[2465,1653,280,842,23,1900,1366,2481,809,12,30,2444],"writer":[2534],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-38575","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uppwatch","8":"category-highlight","9":"category-event-reports","10":"category-perceptions","11":"category-by-international-observers","12":"tag-casa-publica","13":"tag-community-media","14":"tag-complexo-da-mare","15":"tag-debate","16":"tag-mass-media","17":"tag-media-narrative","18":"tag-analyzing-media-portrayal-of-favelas","19":"tag-police-violence","20":"tag-public-security","21":"tag-rocinha","22":"tag-urban-violence","23":"tag-war-on-drugs","24":"writer-sophie-pizzimenti"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38575","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\/158"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38575"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=38575"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=38575"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=38575"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=38575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}