{"id":59984,"date":"2020-06-01T10:43:54","date_gmt":"2020-06-01T13:43:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=59984"},"modified":"2020-06-04T11:38:24","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T14:38:24","slug":"black-lives-matter-protest-gathers-hundreds-at-rio-de-janeiro-governors-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=59984","title":{"rendered":"Black Lives Matter Protest Gathers Hundreds at Rio Governor\u2019s Palace"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the office of Rio de Janeiro Governor Wilson Witzel<\/a> on May 31, protesting the deaths of black and favela youth at the hands of the police. Holding signs reading \u201cBlack Lives Matter\u201d in Portuguese and English, protesters demanded an end to violent police operations in the favelas.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe, black women, black people from the favelas, we have roots in the building of this country, with our own hands,\u201d state legislative aid and trans rights activist Benny Briolly told the crowd outside Guanabara Palace. \u201cWe know that the blood that runs in the alleys, the blood that has stained the Brazilian State, is our blood.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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

\u201cThe life of my people matters,\u201d yelled Monica Cunha, whose son was killed by police in 2006<\/a>. Cunha, the coordinator of the State Legislative Assembly\u2019s (Alerj<\/a>) Human Rights Commission, said that the wave of police violence was unacceptable. \u201cMy people must continue to live. That\u2019s why we are here. That\u2019s the goal: black people alive.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Inspired in part by protests in response to the death of George Floyd<\/a>, the act also followed a string of police killings over the last several weeks, including that of <\/span>14-year-old Jo\u00e3o Pedro Matos Pinto<\/span><\/a>, killed on May 18. The black adolescent was inside a relative\u2019s home in the city of S\u00e3o Gon\u00e7alo<\/a> when he was shot in the back<\/a> by police. On May 30, a day before the march, police killed 23-year-old Matheus Oliveira<\/a>. According to witnesses, Oliveira was shot in the head on the outskirts of the Borel<\/a> favela, in Rio\u2019s North Zone<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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

Rio\u2019s police violence, which reached all-time highs in 2019, has surged even higher during quarantine<\/a>. According to Rio\u2019s state-run Public Security Institute (<\/span>ISP<\/span><\/a>), police killed 177 civilians in April 2020<\/a>, a 43% increase over April 2019. Militarized police operations in the favelas, often accompanied by armored trucks and helicopters, have increased in both frequency and lethality<\/a> in the same time frame, with a 27.9% increase in the number of operations in April 2020 in comparison to April 2019, and a 57.9% increase in the number of civilians killed during these operations, according to the <\/span>Network of Security Observatories (<\/span>ROS<\/span><\/a>).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The victims of this violence are overwhelmingly black. Of the 885 civilians killed by Rio police in the first semester of 2019, 80% were black or brown<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLiving in Brazil nowadays, as a black youth, it\u2019s a miracle that I\u2019m still alive,\u201d said Pablo Fontes, a student from the South Zone<\/a> favela of Santa Marta<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s unbelievable that we are going through a global pandemic, where people don\u2019t have enough to eat, and are in need of basic things, and he [Witzel] continues to send the police into the favelas, even as organizations in the favela are working to guarantee the minimum for people that live there.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the crossfire monitoring platform Fogo Cruzado<\/a>, eight separate food parcel distribution campaigns were interrupted by shootouts<\/a> between March 13 and May 22. All eight involved the presence of the police.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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

Protestors chanted \u201c<\/span>N\u00e3o consigo respirar<\/span><\/i>\u201d (\u201cI can\u2019t breathe,\u201d the three words uttered by both George Floyd and Eric Garner before their deaths<\/a>) and \u201c<\/span>Vidas negras importam<\/span><\/i>\u201d (\u201cblack lives matter\u201d) as they marched, peacefully, away from the governor\u2019s office and down Paissandu Street. As the crowd gathered on the corner of Marques de Abrantes Street, organizers requested quiet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Organizer and PerifaConnection columnist<\/a> Wesley Teixeira, seated on a friend’s shoulders, announced the act\u2019s close promising it would be the first of many. \u201cBut it\u2019s important that we stay alive for this. We need to defend the lives of our people,\u201d said Teixeira. \u201cThe black youth speaking to you now, this is more than just one black youth. It\u2019s an entire nation. It\u2019s a whole people. It\u2019s thousands of activists from the favelas of Complexo do Alem\u00e3o<\/a>, from City of God<\/a>, from Mar\u00e9<\/a>, from the Baixada Fluminense<\/a>.\u201d He then told the crowd to disburse.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Remaining protesters\u2014many awaiting rides home to the city\u2019s peripheries\u2014soon found themselves face-to-face with the police violence they had come to denounce. Riot police, facing a group of chanting protestors, fired rubber bullets and smoke bombs<\/a> into the crowd. \u201cThey formed a line and we continued with our \u2018forced\u2019 idea of freedom of protest,\u201d protestor Andressa Oliveira told <\/span>RioOnWatch<\/span><\/i> over WhatsApp later that evening. \u201cWhen they decided that they wouldn\u2019t tolerate it, they started firing the bombs. And I must repeat, the protestors were unarmed and presented no threat.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Organizers have scheduled national-level protests for Sunday, June 7, at 3pm.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Support our efforts to provide strategic assistance to Rio\u2019s favelas during the Covid-19 pandemic, including\u00a0<\/b>RioOnWatch<\/i><\/b>\u2019s tireless, critical and cutting-edge hyperlocal journalism, online community organizing meetings, and direct support to favelas\u00a0by clicking here<\/a><\/b>.<\/b><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the office of Rio de Janeiro Governor Wilson Witzel on May 31, protesting the deaths of black and favela youth at the hands of the police. […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":162,"featured_media":59985,"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":[1288,1290,1333,329,336],"tags":[460,2467,804,231,280,32,3131,2924,1679,1592,37,17,2481,18,124,1189,66,120,156,375,268,21,2878],"writer":[2609],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-59984","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-highlight","8":"category-civilsociety","9":"category-event-reports","10":"category-solutions","11":"category-violations","12":"tag-baixada-fluminense","13":"tag-black-lives-matter","14":"tag-borel","15":"tag-city-of-god","16":"tag-complexo-da-mare","17":"tag-complexo-do-alemao","18":"tag-fogo-cruzado","19":"tag-international-solidarity","20":"tag-isp","21":"tag-laranjeiras","22":"tag-north-zone","23":"tag-police-brutality","24":"tag-police-violence","25":"tag-protest","26":"tag-race","27":"tag-racism","28":"tag-santa-marta","29":"tag-sao-goncalo","30":"tag-south-zone","31":"tag-state-government","32":"tag-state-violence","33":"tag-west-zone","34":"tag-wilson-witzel","35":"writer-edmund-ruge"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59984","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\/162"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/59985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59984"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=59984"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=59984"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=59984"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=59984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}