Police abuses in Rio de Janeiro’s biggest massacre denounced to the UN

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A Brazilian human rights organization presented this Tuesday, June 1, an “urgent appeal” for at least four UN Human Rights Office rapporteurs to investigate possible abuses that occurred in a police operation that left 28 dead last May in Rio de Janeiro.

The complaint sent to the UN headquarters in Geneva was presented by the Arns Commission, an organization integrated by 20 political, legal, academic, intellectual, and social movement personalities from Brazil, informed the entity in a statement.

The Paulo Evaristo Arns Human Rights Defense Commission said it opted for the “urgent appeal”, a measure used for denunciations of serious human rights violations before the UN, because of “the evidence” that the operation served for “the indiscriminate practice of extrajudicial executions against the civilian population” in a poor community in Rio.

“The objective of the measure is to alert and denounce before the international community the arbitrariness committed during the police operation that culminated in the massacre,” the Arns Commission stated in its communiqué.

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The violent police action, in which 27 civilians from a poor community and one policeman were killed, took place on May 6 in the favela of Jacarezinho and was described by human rights organizations as the biggest massacre in the history of Rio due to the abuses committed by the uniformed officers during the operation.

According to international human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, evidence shows that during the nine hours of shootings during the operation in Jacarezinho, there were cases of extrajudicial executions, abuses against detainees, and destruction of evidence.

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The Arns Commission requested that these allegations be investigated by four of the special rapporteurs of the UN Human Rights Office: the Special Rapporteur on summary executions, the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, the Special Rapporteur on people of African descent, and the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty.

BACKGROUND DOES NOT JUSTIFY DEATHS AND DOES NOT EXONERATE THE STATE.

“The police allege that the dead were involved in criminality, but it must be clarified that international law is emphatic in determining that the possible background of an executed person does not justify such a violation nor exempt or diminish the responsibility of the State”, affirmed the president of the Arns Commission, former Brazilian Minister of Justice José Carlos Dias.

The complaint presented to the UN included a lawsuit filed by the Arns Commission before the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court to decide whether the police operation violated the court’s prior decision to prohibit police actions in the favelas during the confinement due to the Covid pandemic.

The Supreme Court’s decision conditions such operations upon a demonstration that they are “exceptional” cases.

“So far, the authorities have not demonstrated the exceptional nature of the operation nor the measures adopted to avoid extrajudicial executions during the execution of the arrest warrants,” the human rights organization alleged.

The Commission also said that in its complaint to the UN, it cited other cases that have occurred in Rio and have already been investigated by special rapporteurs that “demonstrate the recurrence of the Brazilian State” in practices of “police brutality in regions with a high density of black and poor inhabitants”.

“The Commission requested the UN bodies to demand from the Brazilian State a prompt, impartial and effective investigation, especially in its initial phase of evidence gathering, that seriously considers the hypothesis of extrajudicial execution,” according to the communiqué.

It also demanded that the State be required to modify police operations “to avoid the death of black people, young people and inhabitants of the periphery,” and apologize for alluding “to the criminal behavior of the dead to justify the atrocities committed”.

In a report released on Monday, Human Rights Watch asked the Public Prosecutor’s Office to carry out civil and criminal investigations against the agents who participated in the actions and against the high officials of the Rio de Janeiro Police for ordering the operation.

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