Spanish
Rio de Janeiro.- A group of victims of police violence in Brazil demanded this Tuesday that the governor of Rio de Janeiro veto a bill approved in September by the regional legislature that offers a financial reward to police officers who kill alleged criminals in operations.
The demonstration in front of the Guanabara Palace, the seat of the regional government, brought together about 40 representatives of the non-governmental organization Network for Assistance to Victims of State Violence (Raave), mostly women whose children died in police operations.
"Stop killing us" and "Against State extermination" read some of the banners of these mothers, who also displayed photographs of their children, mostly schoolchildren killed in police operations and presented as alleged drug traffickers.
"You need to speak for our children, who no longer have a voice, so that other young people are not killed by those who should protect us," Priscilla Menezes, mother of a 13-year-old student shot in August 2023 in a police operation in Cidade de Deus, the famous favela that inspired the award-winning film of the same name, told EFE.
You can read: Two girls die in New York while practicing "subway surfing" on a train
This mother reported that she has already managed to prove before the Justice that her son was not armed, after the police presented a supposed weapon that would be in his possession, and bring before the court five of the uniformed officers involved in his murder. "If they pass that law, many other young people are going to die executed by the police," he said. According to Guilherme Pimentel, coordinator of Raave, the sole purpose of the demonstration was to ask the governor to veto the bill to prevent a repeat of the massacre that occurred while a similar initiative was in effect. "That project is not new. It already existed and was responsible for many deaths and for filling the pockets of many police officers who murdered," Pimentel told EFE. The questioned bill was approved on September 23 by the Legislative Assembly of the State of Rio de Janeiro and is in the hands of the regional governor, Cláudio Castro, for its respective sanction or veto. Despite the fact that the project is part of a proposal to restructure the Civil Police, its presenter introduced a device that guarantees an economic reward to the agents of this body in cases of "seizure of large-caliber weapons" and "in situations that involve the neutralization (death) of criminals". This type of bonus, known in the press as the 'Wild West' bonus, operated in Rio between 1995 and 1998, when the Legislative Assembly itself decided to bury it for having promoted police violence. "That bill incites shooting instead of arresting. The governor has to veto it," Human Rights Watch said in a statement. This human rights organization recalled that in Rio de Janeiro, 703 deaths were recorded in police operations last year, almost an average of two per day, and that until August of this year that number reached 470, 86% of whom were young black people. He also recalled that a study showed that, of 1,200 autopsies performed on people who died in police operations between 1996 and 1998, when the 'Wild West' law was suspended, in 65% of the cases the victims were shot in the back while fleeing.
