100 children shot in five years of war against childhood in Rio de Janeiro

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – One-third of the victims were shot during police work or operations and 6 out of 10 children were shot in the capital.

Rafael, Endryw, Ana Clara, Alice, Kaio. These are the children shot in Greater Rio de Janeiro this year alone. There is one more, whose name and photo have not been disclosed. These are 6 of the 100 children shot in the past five years in the metropolitan region of the not-so-marvelous city.

Kaio, 8 years old, was shot by a stray bullet on April 16th. He underwent emergency surgery and was admitted to the Pedro II Municipal Hospital. Nine days later, he succumbed to his injuries and died on Saturday, April 25th. On Tuesday, April 27, he was buried in the presence of other children like himself.

Kaio was an only child, and lived with his parents in Rio’s West Zone. On Friday, April 16th, he was at a party at a tutoring center. His mother, Thais Silva, was with him. The boy was waiting in line for face painting when he was shot in the head by a stray bullet, possibly from a nearby shootout. When she saw her son’s blood on the floor, Thais was unable to react, only cry. “I couldn’t even hold my son,” she said, according to Rio de Janeiro newspapers.

Three other children shot these past 5 years were hit at school or on their way to school. Another 17 were shot at home, according to data from the Fogo Cruzado Institute, a digital platform that registers violence data.

Settings that should be safety havens for children, however, are not so in Rio de Janeiro, a stratum of Brazil where being born in the periphery does not quite follow the natural statistics of a life cycle. “A child’s life lost is one less gift and one less future for all of us,” says Pedro Hartung, attorney and legal coordinator for Alana Institute, which promotes the right and comprehensive development of children in Brazil.

In 2019, the last conventional school year before the pandemic, 32% of shootings in Greater Rio occurred around schools.

The dire situation prompted the Public Defender’s Office to bring a Public Civil Action to ban police activities near daycare centers and schools and that police helicopters keep their distance from the buildings. The Public Prosecutor’s Office also took action and issued a recommendation to establish a compulsory notification system for schools in the municipal education network in the event of shootings in the vicinity of the facilities.

Source: El Pais