Amnesty International protests against police violence outside Rio 2016 Committe

Representing the number of people killed by the police in May, forty body bags were displayed this Wednesday (Jul. 27) in front of the Organizing Committee for the Rio 2016 Olympics. Organized by Amnesty International, the protest condemned the rates of police lethality on the Eve of the Olympics, and pointed out the large number of victims in the 2007 Panamerican Games and in the 2014 World Cup.

Until May 2016, 151 people were killed by public security officers in Rio de Janeiro city, forty of them only in May—an increase of 135% compared with May 2015.

For the Olympics, state and federal governments announced that about 60,000 police and 40,000 Armed Forces officers will be on call in Rio, patrolling highways, public transport, and possibly making inroads into favelas. According to Amnesty International, this is the biggest security operation in the country's history.

However, in the NGO's view, the police and the armed forces are still unprepared to deal with the population. The entity strongly criticizes their policy of "shoot first and ask questions later,” related to the use of force and impunity, which usually leads to a "license to kill" in a year of mega events.

"Our major concern about the Olympics is the increased risk of police violence, as it happened in 2007 Panamerican Games and in the 2014 World Cup. In a year of mega sporting events, we know that there is a significant increase in the number of people killed by the police in the city and state of Rio," said Renata Neder, Human Rights advisor at Amnesty International. According to her, most of the killings happened during police operations in the favelas.

"The police enter densely populated areas shooting—then, of course, people will be shot. Part of the cases were the so-called "Troia," which is when police officers hide in a house to kill a person and, other cases were persons suspected of having committed crimes or who were arrested in flagrante delicto, but who were unarmed and had already surrendered, some of them were even injured, or posed no risk, and police officers instead of stopping them, intentionally kill them," added the advisor.

Numbers of violence

When Rio hosted the 2007 Panamerican Games, one of last decade's highest number of people were killed in police operations. A total of 1,330 people were killed in the state, and 902 only in the capital.

In the 2014 World Cup, 580 killings were reported in the state, a increase of 40% compared with the previous year.

Only in Rio city, where the Olympic facilities were built, for the first five months of 2016, the number of killings reached 151, an average of 30 per month, a higher rate than last year. In 2014, 244 people were killed by the police, and in 2015, 307. In general, black young men who live in the favelas are killed.

Impunity is one of the main causes of violence. On the report “Violence has no place in these games! Risk of human rights violations at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games," released in June, Amnesty International gives details on the police "lethal force" in mega events, by providing examples of violence and force abuse, in addition to arbitrary detentions, in response to protests before the World Cup. The document also reports the number of killings and indicates some measures that can still be adopted  to prevent the rise in violence.

At the time, the Security State Secretariat reported that they had reduced the use of rifles, and invested in police training for progressive use of force. They investigated killings related to what they called "opposition to police intervention." The agency estimates that the number of killings fell by half between 2007 and 2015.

In June, Amnesty International also launched a petition that already gathers 120,000 signatures from 15 countries, demanding that the Rio 2016 prevented the use of unnecessary force by the police and armed forces, avoided violating human rights, created mechanisms for police accountability, and investigated abuse allegations.

Contacted by email, the Special Secretariat of Security for Mega Events, from the Justice Ministry, have not commented on the petition.

Translated by Amarílis Anchieta