Brazil’s black movement calls for end to Operation Shield

Brazil’s black movement calls for end to Operation Shield

After police action resulted in the killing of at least 16 people in Guarujá, where extra-judiciary executions are also said to have taken place, members of the South American country’s black movement staged a demonstration Thursday in front of the Public Security Secretariat (SSP) in downtown São Paulo, Agencia Brasil reported.

“We need to immediately end Operation Shield, which is a revenge operation against the communities of that territory. The residents are absolutely frightened, terrified,” said Elaine Mineiro, or Elaine do Quilombo Periférico, a São Paulo councilwoman, who spoke on Wednesday with residents of the areas where the killings took place. “What we heard there is that the men are afraid to go home. They ask their wives to pick them up from work because the preferred target is men, almost always black and young,” she said.

On July 27, Military Police Officer Patrick Bastos Reis of the Tobias de Aguiar Ostensive Rounds Battalion (Rota), was shot and killed in Guarujá. According to the SSP, he was shot while patrolling in a community. The secretariat reported that he was hit by a 9-millimeter (mm) caliber shot. After the police officer’s murder, the state began Operation Shield in the Baixada Santista region, with at least 16 civilians killed so far.

“We ask here in front of the Secretariat of Public Security that this scenario of insecurity ends, that the population can stop being afraid, and that what happened in the Baixada be investigated. That the victims can be identified, made public and that the Public Prosecutor’s Office investigates what happened in this operation,” said Simone Nascimento, from the Unified Black Movement.

The demonstrators displayed posters criticizing the police action, such as “It’s not an operation, it’s a massacre”, “It’s not a war on drugs, it’s a war on the poor”, and “Revenge is not justice”. Members of the participating organizations put red paint on their hands as a form of protest.

“What we have insistently said is that revenge is not a public security policy. We were personally in Baixada Santista talking to residents and found children terrorized by police action. We came here to ask how many more have to die for this war to end. We need to stop and put an immediate end to Operation Shield,” said Paula Nunes, a São Paulo State legislator also known as Paula from the Feminist Caucus (PSol).

(Source: Agencia Brasil)