A delegation of Black Lives Matter activists from Boston just returned from Rio de Janeiro. They were in the picturesque city last week ahead of the Summer Olympics, which opens August 5th. Their main concern is a familiar issue in the United States—the questionable shootings of black men, women and children in Brazil.
About 80,000 police have fanned out across "the Marvelous City" (Cidade Maravilhosa), as many Brazilians call Rio, hoping to guarantee the safety of visitors, including some from New England. In the run up to that moment critics say police have wrongly targeted multiple Afro-Brazilians in the city's shantytowns, known as favelas. Amnesty International reports that police last year shot dead more than 300 people in Rio alone --mostly black men.
"Military police across Rio de Janeiro have regularly used unnecessary or excessive force during security operations in the city’s favelas. Such killings are rarely investigated" -- Amnesty International
“The amount of police murders we’ve had this year in the U.S. Brazil experiences in a week,” said Daunasia Yancey, co-founder of Black Lives Matter in Boston, speaking with WGBH by telephone from Rio. She explained why she was in Brazil.
“To bring International attention to the issue of police homicides in Rio and in Brazil. Really our goal is to put it on the map and to have these conversations that are happening.”
Yancey and Black Lives Matter movement activist marched with anti-racism campaigners through downtown Rio on Saturday. Yancey was one of three Black Lives Matter activists who met with Hillary Clinton last August to press her about the mass incarceration of black men they say her husband' s administration caused. Yancey says many of the same problems with racial disparities in policing and incarceration exist in Brazil.
“We have been invited here by local activists and we’re here to lend our solidarity and our American-ness; to use United States privilege to bring media attention to the issues. Anti blackness is global.”
The shooting deaths in Rio, Sao Paulo, Salvador and other major cities of Brazil dwarfs the number of blacks killed by police in the US. Human Rights Watch counted 8,000 deaths by police in the state of Rio de Janeiro alone over the past decade. Three-quarters of those killed were black males. Police shootings in Brazil take place under various circumstances, including criminals in gun battles with police, but also in circumstances as questionable as the recent point blank killings in Minnesota and Louisiana.
“In 2007, my nephew was living in Rio, and he was murdered by a policeman on his 30thbirthday,” said Liz Martin, the daughter of a former Worcester policeman, organized the Black Lives Matter delegation's trip to Rio. She began investigating the killing of her nephew nearly 10 years ago. Martin, who is white, is the founder of a Boston based non-profit, Brazil Police Watch. Martin says she and other members of the delegation have found common ground with many individuals in Rio's poorest communities:
“In particular, my connection is with the mothers who are victims of police violence. We’ve all met. Right now we're at the courthouse in support of Rafeal Brava, illiterate, black, homeless. For the rest of the week we are meeting with different groups and discussing police violence, housing evictions; issues that have always existed and have been exacerbated by the Olympics.”
Martin and other Black Lives Matter activists acknowledge Brazil's constitutional prohibitions against racial discrimination. But they argue that the thousands of police shootings and abuse countrywide belies Brazil's much vaunted claims of being a "racial democracy". The BLM delegation returned to the United States on Sunday, where relations between black activists and police may be tense like those in Brazil, but with far fewer deaths.
