Resident of Rio's slums tried to go about their business, shaken by four days of deadly gunbattles with drug gangs and attempts by police to bring calm to the sprawling squalid communities. Rio's state governor, meanwhile, asked the federal government for 4,000 army troops to help keep the peace in the shantytowns.
In a letter to the country's justice minister Tuesday, Governor Rosinha Matheus said she would accept soldiers in the shantytowns, but federal officials denied there were any plans to send troops here.
No violence was reported Tuesday in the Rocinha and Vidigal hillside favelas, or shantytowns, where fighting between drug-trafficking gangs has killed at least 10 people, some bystanders, since Friday.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Police reportedly were combing the nearby Atlantic forest for gang members who fled when police stormed into the favelas Monday.
About 1,300 armed police were deployed to keep the peace, but residents said they felt the cease-fire was temporary at best.
"Today it is calm. What about tomorrow?" asked Antonio Trajano, a shantytown shopowner. "These days have been a terrible experience, and people will remain afraid for a long time."
The atmosphere in the shantytown Tuesday was bustling: loudspeakers blared advertising while merchants hawked wares from carts full of fish, meat, cloth and toys.
Residents say the government must invest time and money to keep the peace.
"Ninety-nine percent of the population are honest people, but still there is fear when you cross the sidewalk or a bridge," said William de Oliveira, president of the Rocinha neighborhood association. "What is needed here are long-term policies to boost education, sports and investments that provide jobs."
The war erupted Friday, when a drug gang tried to seize control of the rich drug-selling points on Rocinha's upper hills.
The commando-style invasion set off alarms across Brazil's main resort city, where drug violence rarely disturbs the wealthy neighborhoods.
But Rocinha and Vidigal are just a few hundred yards [meters] from trendy beaches, luxurious hotels and condominiums.
"Drug gangs are almost always fighting for territory," said Rubem Cesar Fernandes, president of the human rights group Viva Rio. "The difference is that this time it happened in slums which are part of the `beautiful' side of Rio."
In Brasilia, federal lawmakers from Rio de Janeiro state met with Justice Minister Marcio Thomaz Bastos to ask the government to intervene in the state.
"There is a clear lack of authority. There is a problem constituted by the difficulty of the governor to fire her security secretary, who has lost control of the situation," Representative Lindberg Farias, of the governing Workers' Party, was quoted as saying by the O Globo news agency.
Rio state security secretary Anthony Garotinho, who is also the governor's husband, proposed that elite troops occupy eight of Rio's most violent slums until 4,000 new police could be trained to take their place.
In a statement, the defense ministry denied media reports that there was an agreement to send troops to Rio. If troops were sent in, the army would decide how and where they would be deployed, the statement said.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
North Korea yesterday fired a ballistic missile, Seoul’s military said, about a week after US President Donald Trump approved South Korea’s plan to build a nuclear-powered submarine. Analysts have said Seoul’s plan to construct one of the nuclear-driven vessels would likely draw an aggressive response from Pyongyang. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korea fired an unidentified ballistic missile toward the East Sea, referring to the body of water also known as the Sea of Japan. The missile landed in the sea outside Japan’s economic waters and no damage or injuries had been reported, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said. The missile
RSS