Mauricio Santoro is a human rights advisor for Amnesty International in Brazil. He is also a political science professor at Cândido Mendes University.
Brown Political Review: More than 19,000 families were reportedly removed from their homes in Rio de Janeiro between the years 2009 and 2013 for the World Cup and upcoming Olympic Games. What consequences did this have?
Mauricio Santoro: There were many cases where the forced evictions had nothing to do with the World Cup or the Olympics. They were motivated by real estate speculation on the prices of the land. The government used the World Cup and the Olympics as an excuse to carry out the evictions. There was widespread support in Brazil for these big international events, and it was easier for the government to evict people this way. These people are now living in much worse conditions, because they are far away from the center of Rio and the places where they work.
BPR: One of the major concerns for the Olympic organizing committee in cleaning up the image of Rio de Janeiro is cracking down on prostitution and sex tourism. What has been the effect of those efforts?
MS: The crackdown led to gentrification and human rights violations. The police evicted some prostitutes from the buildings where they used to work. Prostitution was very restricted during the period of the World Cup and it probably will be restricted during the Olympics as well. The sex trade industry is very strong in Brazil in general, but in Rio especially because of the Carnaval and the foreign tourists. As you know, the poorest women are the ones who work as prostitutes. It’s the same pattern of discrimination brought by big transformations in the city.
BPR: The Brazilian government installed Pacifying Police Units in 2008 as a means of regaining Rio’s slums from the control of criminal organizations. What has the impact of this been?
MS: These special units managed to reduce violent crime in many neighborhoods, especially in the smaller slums. The bad side is that the increased contact between the police and the people that live in the poor neighborhoods has also led to many violent crimes and violent human rights abuses. For example, the number of forced disappearances rose, and there was perhaps the most famous human rights case in Rio in the last few years, which was the Amarildo case about a bricklayer who was abducted by the police, tortured and killed. His body is still missing. Another problem is that, in some of the biggest communities, the level of violence has actually increased since the pacification. The pacification program did not include a reform of the police, so we still have a very violent and a very corrupt police force. Another problem is that, in many cases, the coordination between national government, state government and the city is not good. To conduct pacification in a Brazilian slum there must be a very high level of dialogue between the state and the city, because the state controls the police and the city controls most of the public services. This dialogue is not going on.
BPR: In 2014, the National Truth Commission produced a report that drew a connection between the Brazilian military dictatorship of the 20th century and the militarized police forces of today. What are your suggestions for current police reform efforts?
MS: The report of the Truth Commission was very important for Brazil. One of the big challenges that the commission faced was how to show the link between the dictatorship and the human rights violations that we suffer today. The link also includes the army and the marines, because they are used in Brazil in daily public security operations. The dictatorship created a violent way to think about public security and how the police should operate day-to-day. One proposal is to end the military police force. We also want to end what we call in Brazil the “atos de resistência,” which is “acts of resistance.” It is a political tool that the police use to say that every boy killed was killed by the police in self-defense. This is a very serious problem because the police kill at least six people each day, so more than 2,000 people per year. The “atos de resistência” makes it very difficult for public prosecutors and judges to investigate killings committed by police officers. The commission also made some very important observations about the need to reform Brazilian prisons and the need to reform aspects of the Brazilian judiciary power.
BPR: According to Amnesty International, 70 percent of the 30,000 young victims of homicide in 2012 were black. How do you explain the correlation between race and homicide in Brazil?
MS: This has everything to do with the “Black Lives Matter” movement in the United States. What we are trying to do is raise awareness in Brazilian society about how violence has a racial bias: How black people — especially young black people — are the major victims of violence in Brazil. Violence decreased for white people in Brazil in the last three years, but it rose for black people. The majority of the public in Brazil doesn’t know about this. This is a very difficult subject, because it doesn’t mean that every police officer in Brazil is racist. It’s about how these institutional visions and how the way the police operate on a daily basis are marked by the huge racial inequality in Brazil and by the huge social inequalities in Brazil.
BPR: Can you elaborate on what Brazil can learn from Ferguson and vice versa?
MS: When we heard the first news about Ferguson, our reaction was something like: “Well, this is what happens daily in Brazil.” When we have this kind of death in Brazil, there are demonstrations, but very locally. It’s usually the families or the friends of these young guys that go to the streets, but it’s not something that becomes a national issue. We were really impressed by the size of the demonstrations and by how Ferguson and the Eric Garner death in New York became national issues in the United States. We want to learn from these experiences. How can we mobilize, for example, white middle class people in Brazil who usually think police violence is not a concern for them? How can we talk to a police officer in a demonstration on the street in order to make things more peaceful?