Mourão Likens Drug Factions in Brazil to Guerrillas in Colombia

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Acting President Hamilton Mourão said on Monday, September 23rd, that in some parts of Brazil, state police forces are waging a war against drug trafficking. and tragedies such as the death of 8-year-old Ágatha Félix could occur.

She was shot in the back when she was inside a van with her grandfather on Friday, September 20th, in the favela community of Fazendinha, Complexo do Alemão, in the northern zone of Rio de Janeiro.

“Unfortunately, the drug factions operating in Brazil have become guerrillas. If you compare it to Colombia, it’s the same thing as the FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia],” he said when he left the vice presidency office in Brasília this Monday morning.

According to Mourão, Brazilian drug traffickers are structured like guerrillas, with forces that are active in combat, support, and back-up forces, including doctors, lawyers and money laundering systems.

“So, unfortunately, we have to acknowledge that in certain places in Brazil there is a war, and there are tragedies of this nature,” he said.

According to reports from residents, the shot was fired by state police officers. The State Police reported that the teams of the Pacification Police Unit (UPP) Fazendinha were attacked from several locations in the community and the police retaliated.

“It is the word of one against the other,” said Mourão on the divergent reports. “And you know very well that in these regions of the slums if the guy says it was the trafficker who shot him, the next day he’s dead,” he added.

The acting president, who is a retired Army general, recalled the operations he commanded in the Alemão and Maré favela complexes in Rio de Janeiro.

“The state has to carry out its operations and seek the population’s safety in every possible way. And drug trafficking places the population on the street to shoot at the troops, so it endangers the very people who live in the area. This is a tragedy, and we have to do everything possible or impossible to prevent this from happening,” he said.

Illicit act exclusion

Mourão was asked whether Ágatha’s case could be used to overturn the extension of the  exclusion of liability provided for in the federal government’s anti-crime package, which is under discussion in Congress.

The proposal introduces changes to the Penal and Criminal Procedure codes and establishes that judges may halve or even stop applying the penalty to public safety officers who behave “excessively”, when motivated by “fear, surprise or violent emotion”.

The acting president chose not to give an opinion on the coordination with Congress, which is performed by Luiz Eduardo Ramos, the minister of the Government Secretariat, but said that “in an emotional climate, as there now is, it could hinder [the project’s approval].”

“Two police officers died [in operations during the weekend in Rio], nobody comments on that, it is as if two dogs died. We, Brazilian state forces, had one dead and 27 injured during an operation in Maré. Last year, during the military intervention in Rio, we had three deaths and nobody ever mentioned that. So there has to be some kind of protection. It’s obvious that if we live within the rule of law, the law has to apply to everyone, so whoever has violated the law has to be punished,” he said.

Mourão took over the Presidency upon President Jair Bolsonaro’s trip to New York to attend the opening of the United Nations’ 74th General Assembly. The acting president travels to Rio de Janeiro, where on September 24th, he will give a lecture at the Military Club.

Source: Agência Brasil