RIO DE JANEIRO: Police killings in the state of Rio de Janeiro have hit a record high, rising by 18% in the first three months of this year in a spike partly attributed to a zero tolerance for criminals campaign by state leaders.
Official data reviewed by The Associated Press show police forces in Rio killed 434 people during clashes in those months, compared to 368 people in same period last year.
The number, released on April 17, is the highest since record keeping began in 1998.
The rise comes under the watch of Gov. Wilson Witzel, a former marine and political ally of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. Witzel has promised a zero tolerance policy against criminals, calling drug traffickers “narco-terrorists” and vowing to ease gun possession laws.
On the campaign trail, he said he wanted to send sharp shooters aboard helicopters to target armed criminal in favelas. Weeks ago, the governor acknowledged that police were using shooters.
The police communications department declined to comment about the latest statistics.
“Even though there is no direct order (to kill), you have a governor and officials that use this language, that we should commemorate the deaths of suspects, that a (police) operation was successful when there were nine or 10 deaths,” said Felippe Angeli, a public security expert with the Sou da Paz institute in Brazil. “This ends up having an impact.”
Police killings in the state, however, did not begin with the current administration, sworn in on Jan. 1.
Last June, Orlando Dos Santos found out his 27-year-old stepson had disappeared in the wake of a police operation in the Babilonia slum, which sits on a hill behind the city’s iconic Sugarloaf mountain.
The following day, guided by local residents, Dos Santos and other people whose relatives had also disappeared, began searching with the help of the local fire department. They found seven bodies at the bottom of a cliff, which were later linked to the police operation.
Dos Santos’s stepson, whom he said had gotten involved with criminal groups not long before the police crackdown, was never found.
“The place where they were found and the way their bodies were, made it very clear that it had been an execution,” Dos Santos, a car mechanic, told The Associated Press.
Police killings have intensified in the last couple of years.
Since 2013, the number of victims in Brazilian police operations has continued to rise from 416 victims to 1,534 last year.
In 2018, the military was put in charge of Rio state’s security forces. Rates for crimes such as theft dropped, but critics say structural problems remained unsolved.
Widespread violence is a historical problem in Brazil and in Rio, one of its main tourist destinations.
Paulo Storani, former deputy commander of an elite squad of officers known by the acronym BOPE, said the increase in the number of deaths is a “natural” consequence of the police’s decision to try to recover territories abandoned by the state to organized crime for many years.
“There is no license to kill in the police. The criminals are armed with weapons of war and police are oriented to recover territories. There are violent confrontations because the criminals were strengthened by the inaction of past governments,” Storani said.
In parallel, overall homicides in the state have declined by 26% in the first three months of the year to 1,046 registered deaths.
But some experts fear the government’s rhetoric combined with their desire to pass legislation facilitating gun possession will further deepen the crisis.
“Violence engenders more violence,” Dos Santos said. “I think the duty of the police officer is to catch, apprehend and for the justice to judge.”
Police killings in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro state reach record high
Police killings in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro state reach record high
- Police forces in Rio killed 434 people during clashes in the first quarter of 2019
- The rise comes under the watch of Gov. Wilson Witzel, who calls drug traffickers “narco-terrorists”
In rare overlap, Chinese Muslims observe Ramadan with Lunar New Year
- Lunar New Year started on Feb. 17 and is celebrated for another two weeks
- Chinese Indonesians make up about 3 percent of the Indonesian population
JAKARTA: Every year, on the first day of Lunar New Year, Febriani visits relatives and gathers for a feast with her Chinese Muslim family, part of a long-standing tradition honoring their ethnic heritage.
But this year, as Thursday marks the beginning of Ramadan, she is celebrating two important occasions within the same week, in a rare overlap that last took place in 1995.
“I’m very happy and grateful that Lunar New Year and Ramadan are celebrated so closely. I observe both every year, so it’s truly special,” she told Arab News.
Widely observed across Asia, the Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year festival is believed to date back to the 14th century B.C., to the times of the Shang Dynasty, China’s earliest ruling dynasty, when people celebrated good harvests.
In 2026, it started on Feb. 17 and is celebrated for another two weeks. For many, celebrations typically involve elaborate feasts, giving children pocket money in red envelopes, and watching dragon dance parades.
In Indonesia, Chinese-descent citizens make up an estimated 3 percent of the country’s Muslim-majority population of more than 280 million. While most are either Buddhists or Christians, a small minority professes Islam.
For 25-year-old Febriani, both Lunar New Year and Ramadan are equally meaningful.
“The two celebrations teach us to strengthen bonds, to share with one another, and to become closer to family,” she said.
“They are both important to me because they happen only once every year and they’re always an occasion to gather with the extended family. It is also a chance to self-reflect and strengthen relationships with your loved ones.”
For Naga Kunadi, whose family lives in Central Java’s Cepu district, Chinese New Year is all about embracing his ethnic identity.
Earlier in the week, his family was busy preparing for the new year’s feast, which was a fusion of Chinese and Indonesian dishes, such as claypot tofu, meatball soup and shumai, or steamed dumplings.
“To celebrate Chinese New Year, we prepared halal Chinese food at home. It’s also a way to introduce to my children the traditions from our Chinese side, but there’s a bit of a fusion because my wife is Javanese,” Kunadi told Arab News.
Kunadi, an Islamic teacher at the Lautze Mosque in Jakarta, sees both Chinese New Year and Ramadan as opportunities to teach important life values for his two children.
Upholding Chinese New Year traditions with his family is for him a way of preserving his ethnic heritage.
“We want to preserve cultural values as long as it does not clash with our religion,” he said.
“If we leave our culture behind, we might lose our identity, so this is something I want to teach my children.”
The fasting month of Ramadan, on the other hand, gives him a chance to teach and practice honesty.
“I want to focus on the religious and moral aspects during the holy month of Ramadan, when we practice honesty on a personal level,” Kunadi said.
“There’s always an opportunity to eat or snack in secret without anybody knowing, but we train ourselves not to do that. For me, Ramadan is a time for everyone to put honesty into practice, including myself and my children.”
