Shots That Killed Emilly and Rebeca in Rio de Janeiro Came from Military Policy, Says Grandmother

[Judi Lynn]

1. Killing of two girls stokes outrage over Brazil's horrific toll of black lives

Tom Phillips in Duque de Caxias
Mon 7 Dec 2020 13.43 EST

Shooting of cousins aged just four and seven, allegedly by police, heightens calls for national reckoning over ‘genocide’

Tom Phillips in Duque de Caxias
Mon 7 Dec 2020 13.43 EST


The shooting of two young black girls – who had between them enjoyed fewer than 11 years of life – has sparked outrage in Brazil and intensified the debate over police violence and structural racism in a country still grappling with the legacy of slavery.

Emily Victoria Moreira dos Santos and Rebeca Beatriz Rodrigues Santos, cousins aged four and seven, were killed on Friday night as they played outside their grandmother’s home in Barro Vermelho, a redbrick favela on Rio’s rundown northern fringe.

. . .

Fifty-six per cent of Brazil’s 211 million citizens identify as black or brown but last year nearly 80% of those killed by police and 75% of murder victims were black.

One of the most recent victims was João Alberto Silveira Freitas, a 40-year-old father-of-four who was beaten to death by security guards outside a Carrefour supermarket in Porto Alegre on the eve of Brazil’s black awareness day. That horrific attack, which was caught on camera, sparked street protests in several major cities and was compared to the killing of George Floyd in the US.

Flávia Oliveira, a prominent black broadcaster, called such killings part of “the toxic legacy of slavery” in a country that was the last western nation to abolish the practice, in May 1888.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/07/brazil-girls-killing-black-lives-matter