Watchdog denounces human rights violations against young, black people in Rio

Non-governmental organization Justiça Global announced it has submitted a report to the United Nations denouncing human rights violations against the young, black population of the slums and outskirts of Rio de Janeiro state. The organization says police officers have also died while on duty in crime enforcement.

The NGO reported its document, which has been submitted to the Office of the UN Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, reveals that 182 people were killed in the state in the first two months of 2017 in conflicts with security officers.

For Justiça Global, Brazil should be held accountable for the human rights violations in the country.

Monique Cruz, Institutional Violence and Public Security researcher at Justiça Global, recalled that last Thursday (March 30), two military police officers shot two men lying on the ground in front of a local school in Fazenda Botafogo, a northern neighborhood of Rio.

Inside the school, teenager Maria Eduarda Alves da Conceição was also shot dead in the middle of a Physical Education activity. After a video with footage of the violence emerged on social media and the press, the two police officers were arrested and taken to the Special Prison Battalion in Niterói, greater Rio area.

The NGO claims Brazil has been dealing with its public security issues by toughening its militarization and mass-incarceration policy, and credits it as the cause of the large numbers of police officers killed in conflicts. It estimates 103 officers have died on duty out of a total of 393 police officers killed in the country in 2015.

In the first 48 hours of 2017 in Rio de Janeiro alone, four police officers were killed. By the first 12 days of the year, the number of police officers killed had reached 10. On February 23, another five military police officers were shot dead in Rio and Baixada Fluminense, the densely populated metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro, within less than 12 hours.

Contacted by Agência Brasil, the Rio de Janeiro State Security Secretariat declined to comment, saying it had not been notified by the UN or contacted by Justiça Global on the issue.

Translated by Mayra Borges