Drug crime has returned to some of the favelas taken over by Rio’s police in recent years, putting the ‘pacification’ program under further scrutiny. Escalating violence and accusations of human rights abuses indicate police forces may be losing control. One resident group questions the wisdom of trying to resolve the problem with more military force.(…)
Arquivo - Tag: Violence
Terror in Brazil’s prisons
A gruesome video recently released is only one example of a penitentiary system often dominated by medieval conditions and shocking violence, Dom Phillips reports, and quasi-feudal political arrangements in the state of Maranhão have done little to improve the system there. By Dom Phillips It cannot have been an easy decision for this newspaper to(…)
Belo Horizonte, June 26 – Bizarre scene, blurry photos
I was at the Brazil-Uruguay game on Wednesday, which was surrounded by protests marked by an especially large amount of property destruction and clashes with police. I left the game, and walked past a line of Police Shock Troops (I was wearing a big Fifa press badge, so they let me) into a bizarre world.(…)
São Paulo protests – what do they mean?
Brazil-watchers have all seen that protests exploded into violence last night, and that the police handled the situation horribly and perhaps even maliciously, over-reacting, letting the situation get out of control, and committing shocking acts of violence. None of that is actually in dispute anymore. Claire Rigby described the tension and fear last night excellently(…)
How many more lives will the US-led “war on drugs” take?
Denis Russo Burgierman wrote a very interesting piece in today’s Folha de S.Paulo. I’m reproducing it below in full. These words are not mine – I’m just the translator. VB Heads of state from all the countries in the Americas will spend the weekend in the beautiful city of Cartagena das Índias, on the Colombian(…)
