[h=1]Rio chaos in countdown to kick-off[/h] [h=2]Gunfights and killings in shanty towns have escalated just weeks before the World Cup begins in Brazil[/h]
Brazilian soldiers keep watch in the occupied Complexo da Maré, one of the largest 'favela' complexes in Rio Photo: Getty
By
Donna Bowater, Rio de Janeiro
7:00AM BST 27 Apr 2014
96 Comments
Ricardo Ferreira Mirapalheta can’t remember whether the bullet mark left on the window of a community centre was fired by a police officer or a gangster.
Nor does it matter. Since it happened, the scar of gunfire has spread like a fracture across the corrugated window, a constant reminder of the violence that has plagued Maré, one of Rio de Janeiro’s biggest favelas.
“There were children in here. Everyone just threw themselves on the ground,” he recalled.
Close to the international airport and home to 130,000 people, Maré is the welcome mat for visitors arriving in Rio de Janeiro, and the biggest target for authorities in the run-up to the World Cup in June.
[SUP]Police try to evict thousands of people who occupied an abandoned telecoms building to create a new favela, Telerj, in the north of the city (Gustavo Oliviera)[/SUP]
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After a recent escalation in violence, the authorities brought in the armed forces to try to control the rival drug gangs that dominate the area. Some 2,700 troops from the army and the navy have taken over from the state’s military police to try to secure the territory.
But in the three weeks since the army entered, tensions in Maré remain high — a sign that gangs here will not give in as easily as elsewhere.
So far, at least two people have died including a 67-year-old woman who was killed by a stray bullet, while troops reported an average of two attacks a day from criminals.
“There are two drug gangs and one militia. So it won’t be in two days, it won’t be in a year, that we bring peace quickly,” said Luiz Pezão, the new governor of Rio, after meeting with
Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff.
Characterised by its chaotically-built red-brick shanty homes and illicit energy connections, Maré has been a strategic stronghold for Rio’s drug gangs for years, given its location near the airport and one of the main thoroughfares through the city.
In Timbau, where Mr Mirapalheta, 51, runs a music-based social project, the prevalent gang is the Terceiro Comando Puro, or the Pure Third Command.
But neighbouring communities are controlled by the biggest drug faction, the Comando Vermelho, or Red Command, and intense conflict between them has produced what locals describe as a war.
“The children I work with have all experienced violence: shootings, stray bullets, killings. It’s a culture they are used to,” said Mr Mirapalheta, a musician who has lived in Maré for 20 years.
[SUP](Gustavo Oliviera)[/SUP]
The authorities believe that criminals in Maré have been coordinating attacks in other favelas on the police who have been stationed there as part of the ongoing pacification programme. Since the start of the year, at least 16 officers have been killed.
With the World Cup less than 50 days away, and tens of thousands of fans due to pass Maré on their way to Ipanema and Copacabana, Rio’s surge in violence has unsettled the authorities and risked undermining the pioneering peacekeeping programme.
In the past week, conflict also erupted in a supposedly “pacified” favela near Copacabana, on the doorstep of Rio’s tourist district, after residents accused police of killing a popular television dancer and actor.
[SUP]Brazilian Police Special Force members attempt to control the protesters (AFP/Getty Images)[/SUP]
Clashes spilt over onto the main road through the neighbourhood, forcing hotels to lock their doors while police partially closed roads, a tunnel and a nearby metro station.
“The pacification model, which only a few years ago enjoyed broad support from all sectors of society, has reached a stalemate,” said Verena Brähler, PhD research student at University College London and an expert on violence in Rio.
“The relative advances in security have not brought along improvements in learning and employment opportunities for the many young men and women in the favelas.
[SUP](Getty Images)[/SUP]
José Mariano Beltrame, Rio’s state security secretary, denied the football tournament was the only motivation for the operation said. “We will not do it because of the World Cup because the World Cup goes and Maré remains.”
But for those who live in Maré, there is a Brazilian saying that sums up their situation: many say that pacification is “para inglês ver” or “for the English to see” — and is simply cosmetic. Residents in other favelas where police have entered have said the same, with some declaring they preferred gang rule because it was, at least, consistent.
Critics of the pacification programme said that police operations in the heart of the city have only driven criminals to its suburbs and outskirts, which, invariably, has lead to more crime — at the start of the month, Scottish oil worker Peter Campsie was killed in an attempted carjacking in Niteroi, a city across the bay from Rio de Janeiro.
One community leader in Maré, who asked not to be identified, said: “The truth is there is no pacification. The police enter inside the favela and there’s still drug trafficking, nothing changes. It’s all for the tourists and the gringos, and it’s just because of the World Cup. It’s not going to change anything.”
Security remains among the foremost concerns ahead of the Fifa event, which starts on June 12. Brazil continues to have a high level of crime with a murder rate of 50,000 a year, according to the UN, making it more violent than Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Nicaragua, and accounting for almost a third of homicides in Latin America and the Caribbean.
And in Rio de Janeiro, where the England team and many of its fans will be based, crime has spiked in recent months despite a concerted effort to improve security, with street robberies increasing last year from 4,700 to almost 6,700.
The figures were a disappointing blow to the government’s pacification efforts. Since 2008, the police and state forces in Rio have been entering favelas in the south zone of the city to install pacifying police units inside communities that had been subjected to drug gang law.
The initiative had appeared to be successful. Before the programme began, the homicide rate was as high as 37.8 per 100,000 in 2007, which was reduced by half to 18.9 per 100,000 in 2012.
But in recent months, the programme has been challenged with attacks on police headquarters in some of the biggest, most problematic favelas including Complexo do Alemão and Complexo da Penha in the north of the city. Gunfights also returned to the Rocinha favela, the biggest in the city, over Christmas, closing a tunnel for hours as police tried to regain control.
Nevertheless, Ralf Mutschke, Fifa’s director of security, has said he is “confident” in Brazilian security forces — despite widespread public discontent in the country leading to violent clashes during last year’s football Confederations Cup in six Brazilian cities.
Around 150,000 police and troops will be deployed throughout the 12 host cities during the World Cup in a security operation costing £475 million. Another 20,000 private security staff will also be working inside the stadiums.
Brazil is under pressure to deliver a trouble-free event after the 2010 World Cup passed without major incident in South Africa, another country with high rates of violence. There were similar clean-up operations of homeless people in Cape Town in the run-up to that event. But back in Maré, cynicism endures as residents continue to live with the constant threat of conflict. While for Mr Mirapalheta, the countdown to the World Cup was not long enough to make real improvements.
“I’ve seen a lot of police operations. The number of deaths in Brazil is greater than in a war.”
