Brazil Clean Up Street For 2014 FIFA World Cup By Killing All Street Children [Graphic Image+Video]

As thousands took to the streets this weekend to protest the civil and military dictatorship – which left a legacy of some of the most sadistic and brutal repression against political prisoners seen in Latin America – the military police have unleashed a new war on the poor of Brazil, and the State is preparing to enforce new “anti-terrorism” laws which raise legitimate fears that they will bring back the practices of the fascist dictatorship. (Note: On March 22nd, Brazilian fascists called for protests under the slogan “march for family.” They were a failure, much like the white man march in North America. In some places, groups of six or less people participated.)

Police have used fabricated reasons to justify repression against poor communities and anti-capitalist social movements, ahead of a powerfully contested Word Cup in Brazil.

A police station was set on fire, and cops came under armed attack, possibly by drug lords they haven’t “pacified” yet. Drug leaders in pacified communities are typically ex-military police, who the capitalist media misrepresent as “community leaders,” in order to forcefully associate them with social movements against capitalist oppression. The mainstream capitalist media have consistently referred to Brazilians living in favelas as “criminals,” in a clear attempt to increase hatred against poor people, who mostly have nothing to do with drug trafficking.

These are the results of police raiding a building occupied by poor people: they forcefully evicted them, at gun point, again.

Residents protested, and unrest spread in some favelas (slums).

This recent act of brutal oppression against poor people came just as the country was enraged by the most sadistic crime committed by Brazilian police in recent memory – which they try to cover up now: they killed a 38 year old mom of 4 kids, threw her in the trunk of their car and later dragged her body on a main boulevard in broad daylight.

Claudia’s assassination raised even more questions about some 6,000 people that have disappeared. Many of their families are convinced they were police victims.

A child looks at military police during a demonstration against the police murder of a mother of 4 kids.

The State of Brazil has done this before: during the military dictatorship, prisoners were tortured, bodies were sliced open, and the state police criminals confess in cold blood that they would still like to decapitate “bandits” since “they are still here.”

Over the past decade, 40,000 people have gone missing in Brazil. Most of them have disappeared since the “pacification” of the favelas was unleashed on the poor communities – which are inhabited by a fifth of Rio de Janeiro’s population. Brazilians have given a name for the missing, they call them Amarildo, by the name of a missing person, whose disappearance is one of the few that was actually investigated. After relentless pressure by the community he lived in, investigations found that the 25 UPP (pacification police units) from Rochina tortured and killed the father of 7 children. Amarildo’s body has never been recovered.

recovered.

Is torture of this magnitude still going on in Brazil? This report, from three years ago shows that it is, especially in the favelas. Its origin and specifics date a long time back, as it was used against the slaves.

Man tortured during a military parade 70 years ago has been just now identified: he was an indigenous.

Brazil is one of the few countries where crimes of the capitalist junta have been covered up for such a long time. Torture was used regularly by the military and civilian dictatorship against dissidents, who even tortured children. Public pressure is mounting to expose these crimes. After 70 years a man who was tortured in public during a military parade has been identified as indigenous.

Yet, these investigations are an exception in Brazil, where thousands of missing people are never investigated or reported.

Cops have officially admitted that they committed some 5,000 murders in a 2007 report. But as one politician in Brazil said, “jails are for convicted bandits, not for cops.”

As a response, the state may enforce a new law – enforced disappearance by state agents – which is “the most wicked of all barbaric crime,” as João Tancredo, a human rights activist from DDH Institute said.

On the same day they killed Claudia Silva Ferreira, cops from the Morro da Congonha in Madureira also executed a 16 year old boy, and wrote in their report that they killed him because ”he resisted the police.” His father filed a complaint against the police, accusing them of putting a gun into his hands to cover up their crime.

The same day 3 military police assassinated a mother of 4 on her way to buy bread, they also killed a 19 year old boy. Illustration by Carlos Latuff

Police violence is endemic in Brazil, and it’s the face of economic racism, social oppression, stigmatization and criminalization of poor people in a country with the gravest inequality in the world. As people get more and more organized to fight economic crimes – As Garis’ have during their strike in maybe the most successful show of resistance against capitalist tyranny in a long time – the state has prepared “anti-terrorism” laws, to silence protests against FIFA’s World Cup – which is actually a new round of capitalist accumulation, as 120,000 people are to be forcefully evicted so that the state and the capitalist class can turn their land into profit. These laws ultimately will transform any person who protests against FIFA’s World Cup into a “terrorist.” So, for instance, if you live in Brazil, and protest because you don’t want to see children die, in pain, at the door of hospitals, you will be considered a “terrorist” by the Brazilian state. A 19 year old boy died after he was refused help in a hospital, images in this link show his last agonizing moments. (warning – the video is very disturbing.)

This pic is real, the comment of the police on their page is also real: these are kids they killed in the favelas, their comment is “We don’t go into favelas to die. We go in there to kill.”

This was posted by the police on their Facebook page where they bragged about their “successful” work. They say: “We don’t go into favelas to die. We go in there to kill.”

“Pacification”: replacing the drug lords with ex-cop drug kings

The city of Rio decided to demolish more houses, without notifying the people living in them first. They plan to destroy even more houses in the slums for the Olympic Park.

Over the past weeks a new round of police terror was unleashed against the favelas, after cops evicted poor people who were occupying a building, injuring several of them.

Residents took it to the streets in Manguinhos, Arará, Camarista Meier – one cop and two people were wounded in the street fights. People erected barricades in Cidade de Deus, near the Maranata Church, and skirmishes took place in Lins and Macacos. The worst attacks took were launched by police in Manguinhos, Madureira, and in Vivente de Carvalho police opened fire using live ammunition against people.

Residents explained that the military police took a building behind the Park Library of Manguinhos to evict some 100 families that had occupied the site by force. As residents resisted the police assault, military police started firing gas bombs on the population. Residents then responded with a hail of rocks and bottles. At that moment, the military police started to fire live ammunition against residents. Several people were injured, and four young people were shot. One of them is hospitalized in serious condition in Hospital Salgado Filho.

This is the harsh reality in Brazil: cops have used lethal ammunition against people yet again. What is the capitalist mainstream media in Brazil reporting about this? They say it was ”an attack against the police, orchestrated by the drug lords,” (who, mind you did not live in that building occupied by poor people). Mainstream media are the accomplice of the military police in their attempt to justify another occupation and further gentrification as the World Cup approaches.

The lies of the mainstream media were a perfect cover for the Governor of Rio, Sérgio Cabral, to request the intervention of the army. He later distributed racist T-shirts for the inhabitants of the ”pacified favelas.” When asked about the genocidal onslaught of police forces and civilian vigilantes against blacks of Rio de Janeiro, the Mayor Eduardo Paes responded: “Avoid being black.”

Military police are allowed to use “total force” against residents in favelas.

As police brutality increased, and some cops were injured, UPP attacked the favelas Arara, Lins, Mandela, Manguinhos and Alemao. In the Morro dos Macacos they imposed a curfew.
However, police need to lay the blame on the people they attack, so they try to misrepresent their repression against the social uprising in the favelas as “a war on drugs.” If police can claim they were “attacked,” they can also claim they acted in “self-defense” – even though people living in the slums repeatedly report that many times cops just shoot people randomly in the streets. In fact the police wars against the favelas are a cover up for forced capitalist gentrification – which makes political sponsors quite rich from public money. Not to mention that after the BOPE or UPU brutally occupy the favelas at gun point and “pacify” them, many times it turns out that the favelas end up being indeed ruled by drug lords, who are in fact ex-military police.