I begin this text completely stunned. On the last 14th, we completed three months of the murder of city councilwoman Marielle Franco, “child of Maré”, as she defined herself, without any conclusion regarding the identity of her executioners. In this sense, the exceptional situation that we experience in Rio de Janeiro - and I would say, in Brazil - challenges us and surpasses us in our ability to understand, in depth, the violations and disrespect for laws and justice that affect us all by initiatives of governments and other powers, in recent times. It is obvious that, in this place where I write my speech, rights violations have always occurred, since I come from a place - favela Nova Holanda, in Maré – where impoverished, poor and black people live; and northeasterners like myself, who migrated to the city searching jobs and a dignified survival. The violence of the government is revealed to be twofold: when it does not assure the fundamental rights to guarantee urban life to these residents and when it does not recognize them with the basic right to life and to public security.
The police operation, involving agents of the Civil Police and men from the Military Intervention Forces in Rio de Janeiro, which took place this Wednesday, in the set of favelas of Maré, is one of those episodes in which the pattern of disrespect to favela residents is still more clear. The action started in Vila dos Pinheiros and Vila do João, where a house was invaded and five young people were murdered; in another house, another young man, just 18 years old, suffered the same end by the hands of state agents. Who are these young people? What, in fact, happened to everyone who died? Their deaths are justified, in the press, by a version of the police according to which these boys were part of armed groups. Is this statement true? If they were in a suspicious context, should they be murdered? Was any investigation made? How to obtain these answers considering a logic of military intervention that does not give value to the lives of the residents of the favelas, which has always characterized the police forces in Rio de Janeiro?
The operation process was also extended to other favelas, such as Nova Maré, Nova Holanda and Parque União. A helicopter was used as a shooting platform - an illegal and immoral measure, it should be said. In this situation, the logic and understanding that a war has been established is clear, and favela residents are considered part of the enemy army.
The helicopter fires and hit what lies ahead: houses, cultural spaces, such as the Hebert Vianna Cultural Canvas, the streets, where many bullet holes are engraved, and, as it could not fail to happen, people circulating at the time of the shots. We then arrive at Marcus Vinícius da Silva, a 14-year-old teenager who was on his way to his school. The seventh life abbreviated in yet another choice by the state to insist on the logic of extermination of black youth in this country. Therefore, we ask again: until when? Therefore, in the midst of pain, crying and sadness, we are outraged and do not admit that our voice is taken away from us. We want justice, we want an end to the genocide and we hold the state responsible for maintaining a warlike logic that continues to destroy the life and hope of the people of slums and peripheries in Rio de Janeiro and Brazil.
Eliana Sousa Silva
Director and founder of NGO Redes da Maré, researcher in public security and visiting professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies at USP
This article was originally published at Jornal do Brasil newspaper on June 19, 2017
