Ecuador’s Strike is a Class Struggle, Not an Endorsement of Previous Government

Real News Network. October 9, 2019

Massive protests have brought Ecuador almost to a standstill. Much of the country is paralized by a coalition of social organizations, including the indigenous movement under CONAIE, many student organizations, the Unitary Front of Workers or FUT, and many citizens in general, especially farmers and workers.

The protests erupted after President Lenin Moreno declared a host of economic and social austerity measures, proposed by the IMF, as a condition for loans. These included eliminating subsidies, raising gas and food prices, and restructuring work laws, based on more neoliberal standards, among other things.

Building up to the protests, anger among Ecuadorians reached a boiling point when the National Assembly struck down a law that would have made it possible to confiscate private assets from people involved in corruption.

By the second week of massive protests, thousands of indigenous protesters paralyzed towns and roads and thousands more arrived in the capital, after walking in many cases hundreds of miles from their rural homes, all the way to Quito.

Andres Tapia, Communications Director CONFENAIE: “We are all striking against a massive increase in food and transport prices, also the government’s agreement with the IMF. These agreements with oil, mining and timber corporations, represent a great danger for our indigenous lands.”

We spoke over the phone with Andres Tapia, he is the Communications Director of CONFENAIE, short for Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Andres Tapia, Communications Director CONFENAIE: “We are extremely worried about [the destruction of the biosphere], and that is precisely the central demand of the indigenous movements articulated under CONAIE.

However, on this particular strike our demands are the following:

1- no to the austerity measures imposed by the IMF,

2- no to a mining and oil based economy,

3- no to the new laws regulating work.

So we want to be categorical on this: our protests are an organic process by social organizations, along with the indigenous movements and in no way is it an endorsement of Correa or any other Ecuadorian political figure.”

The fact that the protests, at least from the indigenous movement, do not endorse former president Rafael Correa, is precisely a very important part of the issue.

President Moreno and other high ranking government officials have alleged a destabilization plot by Correa, as a justification for declaring a state of exception, similar to martial law, and sent the military and riot squads to repress the protesters.

Even the Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido tweeted about his support for President Moreno, claiming that there is a Pro-Maduro – Pro-Correa plot that is financing the protests. Guaido made these claims despite a decade of Correa’s forceful opposition to the indigenous movement.

Correa not only imprisoned many indigenous leaders, but also intensified a surveillance state apparatus on them, violently repressing demonstrations and waiving many of their constitutional rights in favor of mining projects.

Andres Tapia, Communications Director CONFENAIE: “The indigenous movement’s agenda goes beyond supporting a political or presidential figure, like Rafael Correa was. Historically, In that sense the indigenous movement spoke for the great majority of the Ecuadorian people. Now is not the exception. Over the last decades, we have been protagonists of Ecuador’s social changes.”

Recently there have been many documented cases of human rights violations, including three deaths (by Oct, 7th), about 600 people detained, dozens of cases of often grave injuries, such as shots with pellet bullets and even live rounds, public beatings, run-overs, and even many alleged cases of torture.

The official in charge of this operation is General Oswaldo Jarrin, who was trained in Israel and The School of the Americas, as part of “Operation Condor,” back in the nineteen eighties.

Jarrin ordered elite troops and assault vehicles to be stationed outside the Carondelet Presidential Palace in preparation for Wednesday’s general strike.

In the early 2000’s, very similar strikes took down three governments, one after the other.

However, this time, to avoid being deposed like many before him, President Moreno strategically flew to Guayaquil, under the protection of the Social Christian Party which runs the city and surrounding areas.

Apawki Castro, Communications Director CONAIE: “[The alleged plot of Correa financing us], is a lie, a “PR strategy”, trying to control information, and also the Correa faction is obviously trying to use our momentum and get on board. We are not supporting any character, our struggle is about rights, ours and nature’s, along with the rest of our demands. They have that strategy, trying to use us, on a move to bring back Rafael Correa, but we are steering clear from any of that.”

There are supporters of former president Rafael Correa on the streets, trying to swing the momentum in their favor, including the Governor of Pichincha and many Alianza Pais figures, some like Luis Tuarez where violently rejected by the crowd.

But by far, the core of the protests is formed by the indigenous and student movements, along with an angry population tired of imposed austerity measures, while corruption cases involving millions of dollars multiply, many unprosecuted.

And while on the streets people protest, in the background, the political right stands to win. Right wing parties, have encouraged and supported Moreno, letting his government do all the “dirty” austerity work, and they are now in a position to win the next elections and take over a stronger state apparatus.

Apawki Castro, Communications Director CONAIE: “As indigenous movements, we have proposed a new economic model, away from the current extractivist model, which is not a sustainable model for our nationalities and territories. So for now, that is demand number two on our agenda.”

Furthermore, Tapia, who represents a group from the Amazon regions, stresses the importance that nature has for the indigenous movement.

Andres Tapia, Communications Director CONFENAIE: “The indigenous movement has always been active defending the land, locally, internationally, and even in a global context. We have been at the forefront of the fight against climate change. In our struggle, [PachaMamma or Mother Earth] has been represented in one of our main traditional standard flags, and it still stands as such. In that context [taking care of nature] is one of our main demands, especially in the amazon. In principle, we oppose the many mining and oil concessions, given all over the country, by this and past governments, including that of Rafael Correa Delgado.”

On October 7th two official CONAIE documents were published.

The second document addressed several cases of looting, stating that whoever committed such crimes is not part of their movement, and furthermore stating that they have identified several groups of agent provocateurs, sent by the military, operating to spread chaos.

And as a response to that, in the build up for the general strike on October 10th, indigenous guards will provide security and detain violent individuals.

Ecuador’s indigenous people are leading the anti-government protests. They have a record of ousting presidents.

Kimberley Brown. Washington Post. October 10, 2019

QUITO, Ecuador — Juan Oshcu traveled more than six hours from his rural farm, walking and hitching rides, to reach the Ecuadoran capital. For three nights, he’s slept on wooden benches in one of the city’s cultural centers, a temporary base for the thousands of indigenous protesters who’ve arrived here this week.

“We have risen to say, in one united voice, ‘Enough, Mr. President!’” said Oshcu, a small-scale farmer from the indigenous Kichwa community of Latacunga.

Labor unions, women’s rights groups and students all are protesting the austerity package introduced this month by President Lenín Moreno. But Ecuador’s majority indigenous population is now at the heart of the demonstrations that have paralyzed this South American country — a challenging development for Moreno, given the movement’s success at ousting previous presidents.

The country braced Thursday for an eighth day of protests in Quito and other cities, sparked last week when Moreno announced labor and tax changes and withdrew decades-old fuel subsidies — part of a belt-tightening program required under a $4.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.

As Ecuador protests grow, president moves government out of the capital

Protesters have blocked streets in the capital and highways in the countryside; occupied government buildings, oil fields, water-treatment facilities and a hydroelectric plant; and clashed with security forces. Moreno has called for dialogue but says he won’t reverse the austerity measures, which he says are needed after years of overspending by his predecessor, Rafael Correa.

“It’s necessary to correct grave economic errors,” he said last week.

Moreno declared a state of emergency and, as protesters descended on the capital this week, moved his administration 270 miles south to the port city of Guayaquil. Security forces have surrounded key facilities and fired tear gas and pepper spray. Five people have been killed, scores wounded and more than 680 arrested. Officials have put economic losses at more than $1 billion.

Ecuadorans have a history of ousting presidents, driven mainly by the indigenous movement. Most recently in 2005, Lucio Gutiérrez’s attempt to introduce austerity measures under an IMF agreement prompted tens of thousands to protest, and lawmakers voted to remove him.

This time, CONAIE, the national indigenous federation, is by far the largest organized group protesting. CONAIE President Jaime Vargas says that the community rejects the government’s new reforms and subsidy cuts but that their complaint goes further.

“Our fight is in defense of our territories,” he said. He said measures to appease the IMF have led to increased oil and mining in indigenous lands, actions that “don’t respect the collective rights of the indigenous people.”

Vargas says he won’t speak with the government unless it agrees to reverse the austerity measures and stop selling concessions of their land to oil and mining companies.

In Ecuador, Assange’s expulsion reflects desire for better relations with the U.S.

Many here have noted parallels between 2005 and 2019. But Vargas has stressed that the indigenous movement is not trying to destabilize Moreno’s government.

Political analyst Decio Machado says if the government falls, it won’t be because of the indigenous movement but rather for mistakes he says it has been making since protests began: calling the state of emergency, cracking down on protests and refusing to negotiate over the austerity measures.

Oshcu, in Quito, says cutting the fuel subsidies affects indigenous farmers in the countryside directly because it raises the costs of transporting their goods to collection centers.

“When the price of gasoline rises, the income for the community decreases,” he said. “That’s why we came.”

Violent clashes have been reported in cities including Quito, Guayaquil and Cuenca. Indigenous demonstrators are putting eucalyptus leaves in their noses to filter the tear gas and pepper spray.

“We are here for our rights,” Oshcu said. “If you don’t like that idea, then get out of the presidency.”

Ecuador paralyzed by national strike as Moreno refuses to step down

Dan Collyns. The Guardian. October 10, 2019

Indigenous protesters have clashed again with riot police in Ecuador’s captial as thousands of people joined anti-government rallies and marches calling for the repeal of austerity measures which have sparked the worst political unrest in a decade.

Hooded youths threw stones and burned tires as police fired tear gas around the empty parliament building which had been sealed off. Demonstrators also tried unsuccessfully to storm barricades around the presidential palace, which the president, Lenín Moreno, left on Monday, moving his government to the port city of Guayaquil.

Other groups including labour unions and indigenous federations marched, for the most part peacefully, on the first day of a national strike which leaders say will not end until the government repeals a decree scrapping fuel subsidies which caused the price of petrol to spike by a third and the cost of diesel to more than double.

Moreno’s government lifted the petrol and diesel subsidies last Tuesday as part of a $4.2bn loan deal with the International Monetary Fund reached last year that hinges on belt-tightening reforms. According to the government the payments had cost the country close to $1.4bn (£1.1bn) annually, according to official sources.

Outside Quito’s parliament building, thousands of indigenous Ecuadoreans camped out on the grass, many of them carrying sticks. Through loudspeakers, leaders of different indigenous groups addressed the crowd.

“What the government has done is reward the big banks, the capitalists, and punish poor Ecuadorians,” said Mesías Tatamuez, head of the Workers’ United Front umbrella union.

Indigenous protests have played a central role in toppling a string of Ecuador’s presidents, including Abdalá Bucaram in 1997, Jamil Mahuad in 2000 and Lucio Gutiérrez in 2005.

Jaime Vargas, the leader of the Ecuador’s indigenous confederation Conaie, said there would be no dialogue until the government rolled back its order ending the subsidies.

“If it is repealed the people will then decide if we will talk or not, but we are angry because we have several injured, several detained and several dead, and this will not stand.”

Across the country, two people have died in the unrest, dozens more have been injured and more than 570 have been detained, according to official sources.

One demonstrator who wanted to remain anonymous said she had been among more than 100 protesters held by police in the basement of the parliament after a foiled attempt by protesters to take over the building on Monday.

“They treated us badly, they insulted us. There are children and young people who are suffering terribly, young people who are being subjugated,” she said.

Amnesty International called on the Ecuadorean government to end to “the heavy-handed repression of demonstrations, including mass detentions”.

“The state of emergency cannot be an excuse to violently repress people’s discontent over economic measures that may put their rights at risk,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International.

Ecuador’s defence minister, Oswaldo Jarrín, said the army was seeking to “restore, order, peace and tranquility” on Wednesday as widespread protests took place across the country.

Moreno, 66, has accused political opponents of orchestrating an attempted coup and claimed associates of his predecessor Rafael Correa – a former ally turned bitter enemy – were infiltrating the protests and stoking unrest.

“They are sectors who are taking advantage of the situation to generate an atmosphere of chaos in Ecuador, very different behaviour from a country which has seen other social protests,” María Paula Romo, the interior minister, said on Wednesday.

Correa, who governed Ecuador for a decade, has brushed off the claim he was behind the protest but called for Moreno to step down and for new elections in which he might consider being a candidate.

Protest leader Lourdes Tibán, a former parliamentarian, said the violence had been caused by “infiltrators who want to show that the indigenous activists are criminals and thieves who causes damage – but that’s not true”.

She said the vast majority of protesters were marching because the fuel price hike had inflated food and transport prices and the indigenous people were the hardest hit.

“Rafael Correa does not have the moral authority to praise this protest when he criminalised social protest for us,” she said.

Street vendor Carmen Jaque, 50, who had marched to the capital from the Andean province of Chimborazo, said: “We, the people, are marching here, not infiltrators. We’re the ones feeling the price rises.”

Moreno was elected in 2017 as the candidate for Correa’s centre-left party but has since moved to the right. Though he enjoys the support of business and the military, Moreno’s popularity has sunk to under 30%, compared with 70% in 2017.

Exclusive: As Trump grows frustrated on Venezuela, U.S. to 'squeeze' Cuba, scrutinize Russia

Matt Spetalnick and Luc Cohen. Reuters. October 9, 2019

WASHINGTON/CARACAS (Reuters) - The Trump administration is preparing new sanctions on Cuba over its support for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and is taking a "closer look" at Russia's role in helping him remain in power, the U.S. special envoy on Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, told Reuters.

President Donald Trump's frustration over the failure of his "maximum pressure" campaign to unseat Maduro has spurred foreign policy aides to ready further U.S. actions and press for tougher sanctions on OPEC member Venezuela by European and Latin American partners, a second senior administration official said on condition of anonymity.

Abrams said Washington sees Cuba and Russia providing a lifeline to Maduro, nine months after the Trump administration and dozens of other countries resolved to no longer recognize the socialist leader as Venezuela's legitimate president.

"We're always looking to ways to squeeze (Cuba) because we do not see any improvement in their conduct either with respect to Venezuela or human rights internally," Abrams said in an interview in his State Department office.

The new sanctions under consideration for communist Cuba, expected "in the weeks ahead," would likely target the island's tourism sector as well as Venezuela's cut-rate oil delivered to Havana, building on the U.S. blacklisting of tankers used to transport the supplies, the senior official said.

While U.S. sanctions on Cuba stem from accusations that it provides training, arms and intelligence to Maduro's security forces, targeting Russia would be based heavily on Moscow's financial support of Caracas. Oil giant Rosneft <ROSN.MM> has helped Venezuela market its crude since Washington imposed sanctions on state oil company PDVSA in January.

Asked whether Washington is preparing sanctions against Rosneft, Abrams said the administration was "taking a closer look at the ways in which Russia is sustaining the regime" but declined to specify any entities or individuals.

In early August, the Trump administration froze U.S. assets of the Venezuelan government and threatened "secondary sanctions" on any company doing business with it, an escalation of pressure on Maduro. The move was widely seen as opening the door to putting sanctions on Rosneft, which in recent months has taken around half of Venezuela's crude exports.

Abrams said the administration now intended to start "naming names" under Trump's August order and that new individual sanctions are expected over the next three months.

But U.S. officials are mindful of the need for caution in targeting a company as large and far-reaching as Rosneft over its Venezuela ties.

"We don't have the luxury of being haphazard," the senior administration official told Reuters, stressing that they were not specifically referring to Rosneft.

"If it was a company that was solely doing business in Venezuela, that's a slam dunk. But when you deal with entities that have multiple components, we have to be thorough."

At the same time, the Trump administration recognizes the risk of adding tensions to an already-troubled U.S.-Russia relationship at a time when the countries face geopolitical disagreements over issues like Syria, Ukraine and arms control.

'WHY AREN'T WE DOING MORE?'

With some critics saying the economic weapons at the Trump administration's disposal are dwindling, it remains unclear whether the remaining options will be enough to shift the balance of power in Venezuela.

Maduro retains the loyalty of the country's military despite opposition leader Juan Guaido's efforts to get them on his side after he invoked the constitution to assume an interim presidency in January, arguing Maduro's 2018 re-election was a fraud. Guaido leads the opposition-controlled National Assembly.

Further restrictions on Americans traveling to Cuba would be aimed at squeezing the island economically and expanding Trump's steady rollback of the historic opening to Cuba by Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama. The reversal, along with his pressure on Venezuela, has gone over well among Cuban Americans in South Florida, a key voting bloc in Trump's 2020 re-election campaign.

The senior administration official insisted Trump's growing impatience with the failure of sanctions and diplomatic pressure to push Maduro from power meant he would not ease up despite the president's decision last month to fire his hawkish national security adviser, John Bolton, who was widely identified with the hardline policy on Venezuela.

The official said that before the administration stepped up pressure in January as Guaido assumed the rival presidency, the process had been hampered by two years of "slow-walking" by other government agencies that preferred an incremental approach.

"That's the frustration that the president harbored - he'd been saying for two years, 'Why aren't we doing more?'," the official said.

However, a former senior U.S. official said the administration underestimated the complexities of the Venezuelan situation, especially the difficulty of spurring a mutiny in the ranks where many officers are suspected of benefiting from corruption and drug trafficking.

Asked whether Venezuela policy would change with Bolton's departure, Abrams said: "The policy of supporting Guaido, supporting the National Assembly, pushing for a return of democracy, is not going to change."

In farm-rich Argentina, hunger cries ring in leaders' ears amid crisis

Nicolás Misculin, Miguel Lobianco. Reuters. October 9, 2019

CLAYPOLE, Argentina (Reuters) - In the hard-up neighborhood of Claypole on the outskirts of Argentine capital Buenos Aires, Elena Escobar makes her way to the local Caritas Felices soup kitchen to serve food to street children who scrape by from meal to meal.

Escobar, 53, says the volunteer-run kitchen has seen a surge of kids and families seeking help over the last few months, amid a biting recession and fast-rising prices that have pushed millions of people into poverty.

“There are many children in need, many malnourished, with kids that get to dinner time and don’t have any food,” said Escobar. The kitchen receives over 100 children each week, up from around 20-30 when it opened its doors in April.

The rise in hunger and poverty creates a complex backdrop for the leaders of Latin America’s no. 3 economy, who are in knife-edge talks with creditors to avoid default on billions of dollars of debt amid economic and political upheaval.

Ahead of a presidential election on Oct. 27, officials will head to Washington this month to meet with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a major backer that struck a $57 billion funding deal here with the country last year.

Those talks are likely to weigh on the current administration of President Mauricio Macri and the next one, likely led by left-leaning Peronist Alberto Fernandez, the front-runner to win the vote.

The Claypole kitchen is far from alone in witnessing rising hardship, with government data showing poverty rates jumped to 35% in the first half of 2019 amid recession and steep inflation, from 27.3% a year earlier.

‘A SCOURGE’
Around 13% of children and adolescents went hungry in 2018, according to data from the Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina, and rising food prices have become a regular target of popular anger in street protests around the country.

Political leaders know something must be done, but face a complex juggling act: bolstering growth and spending to ease issues such as hunger, while cutting debt and averting a damaging default that would shut off access to global markets.

“We can’t live in peace with such a scourge,” left-leaning Fernandez said in a speech on Monday in reference to hunger, which he described as Argentina’s “greatest shame.”

Fernandez, who has been buoyed by support for populist running mate Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, blames Macri and austerity measures agreed with the International Monetary Fund for the rise in poverty and hunger.

Macri’s running mate, Miguel Pichetto, meanwhile, said on Monday the way to eradicate hunger was to generate employment and attract “big global companies” to Argentina.

Both sides have said they would honor the country’s debts with creditors, including the IMF, though neither has laid out a clear plan for how to do so while boosting spending at home.

Most investors expect some sort of losses.

Indeed, Moody's Investors Service anticipates holders of Argentina dollar bonds will need to write off here 10% to 20% of their investments, while Fitch Ratings believes the government will write down local and dollar debt.

‘JUST NO WORK’
Hunger and poverty are not new in Argentina, but have risen abruptly over the past two years amid a series of economic shocks that have rattled the grain-exporting nation, famed for its rich arable land and cattle.

The issues have become a lightning rod for anti-government protests and marches, with the hardships of the poor brought into sharp focus as the government has been locked in talks with creditors about repayments on around $100 billion in debts.

Driving the problem is stubborn inflation, a tumbling peso and a slump in domestic production and consumption, which have hurt spending power, incomes and jobs.

“There is just no work,” said 46-year-old Isabel Britez, a volunteer at the Los Piletones dining room in Buenos Aires, who said that was the main message she heard from people eating at the kitchen, which serves around 2,000 meals a day.

Macri, looking to revive his election hopes, has rolled out plans to bolster jobs, including tax cuts for employers. He also announced a freeze on some food prices earlier this year.

Sergio Chouza, an economist at the University of Avellaneda in Buenos Aires, said food prices have rocketed nearly 60% over the past year, with basics such as dairy up as much as 90%.

“That results in a deterioration of diets and pushes many people below the poverty line,” he said.

MORE NOODLES, LESS MEAT
Poverty is a key reason for Macri’s fall from grace. His economic austerity, part of the $57 billion funding deal agreed with the IMF last year, reined in deficits but hit growth and voters’ wallets.

Macri was defeated heavily in a primary election in August. Since then, he has announced lower taxes for the middle class and higher subsidies for the poor along with food aid. The Senate approved an emergency food law last month.

“Perhaps we underestimated the impact of the economic situation on the elections. (The poverty issue) affected the vote for Mauricio,” Eduardo Amadeo, a Macri ally and member of Argentina’s house of deputies, told Reuters.

“The reforms we launched have stabilized the economy and we have tried to reduce the impact from the devaluation in August on people’s wallets,” Amadeo said.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Social Development listed official measures to deal with the crisis, but declined to comment further on poverty rates.

In the meantime, even as soup kitchens flourish, some volunteers say meals are getting more meager amid tight funding conditions and as food donations dry up.

“Previously, people donated some meat and chicken; now we only get noodles and rice,” said Lorena Nievas, who works at the Abrazando Hogares soup kitchen in the southern Patagonian city of Puerto Madryn.

For many residents, however, there is no choice.

“I have people from the street who come in for their lunch and snacks here. It’s all the food they get,” she said.

A surge in killings by police roils Bolsonaro’s Brazil

Gabriel Stargardter. Reuters. October 9, 2019


Just before leaving her teaching job on the afternoon of May 17, Alessandra Mattos received a panicked voice message.


“Alessandra!” a relative said. “There’s been an accident with Brayan.”


She grabbed her things, flagged a motorcycle taxi and rushed to a slum in the Rio de Janeiro suburb of São Gonçalo. There, dead in a pool of blood, lay Brayan Mattos dos Santos, the 19-year-old nephew she helped raise.


She tried to get closer, but a policeman blocked her advance.


“It wasn’t me,” Mattos said the officer told her. “It wasn’t me.”


The “accident,” Mattos soon learned, was the sort of fate dreaded by families of young, dark-skinned men across South America’s most populous country. Black and mixed-race youths like dos Santos long have been disproportionately represented among homicide victims in Brazil, the country with the world’s highest number of murders. Now, amid a crackdown on suspected criminals championed by President Jair Bolsonaro, they are increasingly dying at the hands of police.


No weapons, narcotics or other illegal materials were found on dos Santos, a car and motorcycle enthusiast who had recently begun driving for Uber. He appears, instead, to have been at the wrong place at the wrong time — near a street stall for illegal drugs just as a police raid went down. His death, in a state where killings by police have climbed by 16% this year, according to government figures, is being investigated by Rio prosecutors.


The raid is one of many lethal operations that human rights activists, some Rio residents and opposition lawmakers see as part of a bloody and illegal campaign to clean up historically violent neighborhoods across Latin America’s biggest country. Emboldened by victories last year of far-right politicians with aggressive law-and-order agendas, Brazil’s police forces are surpassing their own longstanding reputations for being among the most violent in the world.


The slain include victims like dos Santos, who had no known criminal ties. In late September, hundreds gathered in northern Rio to grieve the death of an eight-year-old girl who was shot, according to bystanders, by a policeman who missed when aiming at a motorcyclist. Her death, one of several children allegedly shot by police this year, is still being investigated.


Two top commanders of Rio’s military and civil police forces, which together are responsible for security in the state, told Reuters that police have never received or issued orders to kill. Officers, rather, are finding themselves in more violent confrontations because of a nearly 50% increase in the number of raids, a response to higher crime.


“An officer never has the objective of killing,” said Fábio Barucke, operational head of the civil police. “But we have a responsibility to defend ourselves.”


Rio, a state of 17 million people that includes the seaside metropolis of the same name, has long been known as a hotbed of conflict between criminal gangs and sometimes trigger-happy police. Now, with Bolsonaro and a like-minded governor urging lawmen to get even tougher, tensions, violence and the death toll are mounting.


Bolsonaro is seeking to boost legal protections for police who kill on the job, proposing in a bill to lessen sentences for officers who shoot because of “excusable fear, surprise or violent emotion.” He has said criminals should “die like cockroaches.” Wilson Witzel, Rio’s governor, has ordered snipers to fire on suspects from helicopters. Witzel recently told foreign journalists that suspects, when confronted by police, should “surrender or die.”


The police feel authorized to kill. The discourse stimulates violence.”


To some in the political opposition, the rhetoric of Brazil’s new leaders is reminiscent of Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippine president whose offensive against drug dealers has led to thousands of killings by police. “The police feel authorized to kill,” said Marcelo Freixo, a congressman from Rio and veteran researcher on violence and organized crime. “The discourse stimulates violence.”


Reuters found no evidence that Bolsonaro, Witzel or other right-wing leaders elected in a wave of populist protest last year have ordered police to break laws or methodically kill criminal suspects. Bolsonaro’s justice minister, Sérgio Moro, told Reuters that the administration doesn’t advocate police violence.


“Confrontations between police and criminals are always undesirable,” he said in an interview in Brasília, the capital. “You don’t resolve public security with confrontations, but with intelligence, strategy, due process and state presence.”


Between January and August 2019, Rio police killed 1,249 people, according to official figures, nearly a fifth more than a year ago. The rate amounts to 5 people per day, more for the period than any since the state began keeping its current database in 2003. By contrast, 14 police officers have died in operations this year, down from 24 killed on duty between January and August 2018.


LETHAL ENFORCEMENT


Recent nationwide figures aren’t available, but killings by police have also climbed in São Paulo, Brazil’s most populous state, and other major urban areas.


Like dos Santos, most victims of police killings are dark-skinned, a reflection of the socioeconomic and racial makeup of poor neighborhoods where most drug traffickers and other criminal gangs operate. Although whites make up half the population in Rio, they accounted for 12% of those killed by police early this year, according to government data obtained by Reuters via a freedom of information request.


It’s impossible to calculate how many of the victims are believed to have been innocent bystanders. Human-rights activists, however, say they believe that the surge in killings indicates some police are out to kill, regardless of any evidence or the risk of collateral damage.


“These numbers aren’t those of a few murders,” said Freixo, the congressman. “They are numbers of execution, of extermination.”


Officially, many of the deaths in police operations are attributed to “resistance” by suspects. Police, wary of heavily armed gangs, argue they have little choice but to shoot in self defense, especially in labyrinthine slums where gangs can easily ambush them. But local and international activists have for decades decried excessive force and outright executions by police.


The problem predates Bolsonaro.


After a 2003 visit to Brazil, a special rapporteur for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights wrote that she was “overwhelmed with information about human rights violations.” She criticized Brazil’s government, especially some state administrations, because they “fail to fully accept the existence of extrajudicial and summary executions.”


In early September, Michelle Bachelet, a former Chilean president who is now the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, criticized Brazil for “discourse legitimizing summary executions.” In response, Bolsonaro criticized Bachelet for pursuing the agenda “of criminals” and “attacking our valiant police.”


Dos Santos died at the hands of Rio’s 7th Military Police Battalion, the state’s most lethal. The unit, one of 39 battalions in Rio, since 2003 has killed 1,055 people. Through August, 137 civilians this year have died in operations involving the 7th, 35 more than any other battalion in the state.


The 7th operates “in very complex geography,” said Rogério Figueredo, commander of Rio’s military police force. “There are various communities with several criminal factions all disputing the territory.”


According to a police report reviewed by Reuters, dos Santos’ death may have been accidental. Officers, the report said, returned fire after being shot at by suspects. Dos Santos died because of “intervention by a state agent.”


To understand his killing and the recent rise in the body count, Reuters spoke to police and government officials, security experts, human rights researchers, and friends and family of dos Santos. The picture that emerges, including exclusive details about the May raid in São Gonçalo, is that of an entrenched conflict worsening amid the law-and-order agenda of a new populist leadership.


“WHAT WE WANT TO HEAR”


The very structure of Brazilian police forces has long been controversial.


After a two-decade military dictatorship that ended in the 1980s, a new constitution gave responsibility for most law enforcement to each of Brazil’s 26 states. Rather than reinvent their forces, the states kept a military format for police charged with everyday law enforcement. A “civil police” force were made responsible for investigations and working with prosecutors. But the beat cops and routine patrols that most Brazilians encounter still operate within a highly regimented, militaristic structure.


As a result, everything from the fortresslike architecture of police stations to the language used by officers still reflects a barracks mentality. Training is often phrased in terms of “us” against “them.” Criminals are “the enemy.”


“The mold is that of the military,” said Fernando Salema, a former commander of the 7th battalion who is now a lawmaker, from Bolsonaro’s party, in the Rio state assembly. “We inherited that culture.”


That culture is often in sharp relief in Rio.


Clashes are as much a part of the landscape as its verdant hillsides and dramatic juxtaposition of rich and poor. Shootouts and the hum of police helicopters are a daily reality for many in a state where haphazard planning led slums and wealthy neighborhoods to co-exist in a dense urban tangle.


São Gonçalo, a hardscrabble suburb across the bay that carves Rio’s coastline, in recent decades became one of the state’s most violent areas. Per capita income, about $4,000 a year, is similar to that of El Salvador and less than a third the level in the city of Rio.


Once an industrial center, São Gonçalo has increasingly become a base for criminal gangs who smuggle drugs and weapons through the bay and hijack nearby highway cargo. It’s also one of many areas around Rio where so-called “militias,” violent criminal enterprises made up of retired and off-duty police, control extortion rackets and other illegal ventures.


In 2011, Patricia Acioli, a state judge who jailed dozens of corrupt São Gonçalo police, was shot 21 times outside her home. Eleven officers from the 7th, including its chief, were convicted of planning and executing the murder.


“São Gonçalo is a giant favela,” or slum, said another recent commander of the 7th. The officer, who now leads another battalion and spoke on condition of anonymity, said crime is so common it seeps into the force. “It has a corrupt population, and the officers come from the same.”


Earlier this decade, as Rio prepared to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, locals in São Gonçalo complained yet more criminals were moving in because of a police cleanup near beaches, hotels and sporting venues. When a deep recession took root shortly thereafter, crime worsened across Brazil. In 2017, a record 64,000 murders were reported nationwide, more than in any other country.


Already exasperated with the downturn and a far-reaching corruption scandal, voters swung sharply right, electing Bolsonaro and other populist conservatives last year. A former fringe congressman with little record as a lawmaker, Bolsonaro was best known for incendiary comments, including a 2015 quip in which he said police “should kill more.” Witzel, a former judge, was unfamiliar to most of Rio’s electorate until he too outmaneuvered veteran rivals with promises to purge crime.


After taking office in January, the two politicians embraced their law-and-order mandate. Witzel rode along with rifle-wielding police in a helicopter and posted the video online, promising to “bring peace back.” In an opinion piece in a local newspaper, he said the surge in police killings “isn’t difficult to justify.”


Some police say they felt invigorated. “It’s what we want to hear,” Salema, the former commander turned assemblyman, told Reuters.


“NO OTHER OPTION”


On Salema’s old beat, police this year began struggling with an internecine war within the local branch of the Comando Vermelho, or CV, one of Brazil’s most powerful drug gangs. After one CV boss in April killed a rival, fighting between factions spilled onto the streets. Gun battles erupted across São Gonçalo, and schools, hospitals and bus routes shut down.


The violence soon spread to other parts of Rio, prompting operations by police seeking to track down those responsible. In Maré, a slum near Rio’s international airport, a police helicopter on May 6 flew overhead and began shooting, according to local residents.


By the end of the operation, police had killed eight suspects, including four who had been surrounded after running into a home. A resident of the home told state prosecutors she hid in another room and heard the confrontation. A prosecutor, speaking on condition of anonymity, gave Reuters details of her account.


When police entered, the resident told prosecutors, two of the men gave up. But the officers rejected their surrender, according to the resident, replying, “our order is to kill.” The police then shot the two men and, finding the other two suspects on the roof, shot them, too. Before a forensics team could arrive, the resident told prosecutors, the police dragged the four bodies outside.


The officers, the prosecutor said, told investigators they only fired after being shot at. Rio’s civil police force, which ordered and conducted the operation, said it is still carrying out its own investigation and couldn’t comment on specifics of the raid.


Eleven days later, in São Gonçalo, officers from the 7th battalion conducted the raid that killed dos Santos. As part of their efforts to curb gang activity, police had targeted a point of sale for drugs in the São Gonçalo slum of Chumbada.


Around 4:40 p.m., according to the police report reviewed by Reuters, at least four officers neared the drug stall and split into two teams. One team, Captain Renato de Souza and Sargent Andre Ricardo Mendes, took one path toward the stall. A second, Corporal Erik Ribeiro and Corporal Alex Dias, took another.


Reuters was unable to confirm the details of the police report independently. Police officials declined a request to speak with the officers.


As the operation got underway, dos Santos had gone to a shop in Chumbada to buy clothes for a party that evening, according to Mattos, his aunt. She showed Reuters a credit card receipt for the purchase, which she said came from dos Santos’ telephone, valued at 217.79 reais, or about $53.


“It’s expensive here,” dos Santos texted a friend in a message, seen by Reuters, about 10 minutes before the raid began.


According to statements the officers gave civil police investigators, Ribeiro and Dias were approaching the stall when gunfire burst from a group of about six people. It isn’t clear from the report who within that group is alleged to have fired. The officers, carrying high-caliber rifles made by Imbel, a Brazilian state-owned manufacturer of military weaponry, said they returned fire. Ribeiro fired 23 times, Dias 31.


During the firefight, Ribeiro told investigators, one person fell to the ground “near a shop.” Two others fled on a Honda motorcycle; several more escaped on foot. Another man, his shirt stained by a bullet wound in the shoulder, put his hands up and dropped to the ground.


Ribeiro and Dias approached the drug stall as the other two officers pursued the motorcycle. The injured man, still prone and unarmed, told police he had gone there to buy marijuana. Several meters beyond the stall, on a residential street, lay dos Santos.


Renato Perez, a civil police chief in São Gonçalo with knowledge of the raid, told Reuters he suspected dos Santos had gone there to buy marijuana. He offered no evidence or documentation to support that claim. Mattos, the aunt, denied the assertion, saying her nephew didn’t use drugs.


“They always have to invent something,” she said.


Mendes and de Souza, the officers who chased the motorcycle, caught up with the two suspects on a nearby street. According to the police report, one of the men carried 65.2 grams of marijuana and a 9 mm pistol with two bullets and its serial number scraped off. The other carried 49.7 grams of cocaine and a walkie-talkie.


The two were detained and charged with resisting arrest and possession of narcotics. They are awaiting trial, according to Rio’s public defenders’ office and state court filings. No other suspects were apprehended and no other weapons were found.


Danielle Costa, the civil police investigator who authored the report, concluded the officers had acted legitimately. They had “no other option,” she wrote, but to “use their firearms, in legitimate defense and to overcome resistance posed by lawbreakers.”


The civil police declined to make Costa available for an interview.


State prosecutors are probing the operation.


Andrea Amin, a Rio prosecutor who investigates police killings, in an interview told Reuters the law-and-order rhetoric risks legitimizing excessive force and a lack of due process. “A rise in deaths can’t be seen as a successful public security policy,” she said.

Oil contaminating Brazil's beaches 'very likely from Venezuela', minister says

Anna Jean Kaiser. The Guardian. October 10, 2019


Thick crude oil that has stained hundreds of miles of pristine Brazilian beach in recent weeks probably originated in Venezuela, the Brazilian government has said, in an accusation likely to further strain relations between the two countries.


Brazilian authorities have been investigating the growing disaster for more than a month, as the oil has spread to more than 130 beaches across nine states.


On Wednesday, the country’s environment minister, Ricardo Salles, told a congressional hearing that a study by the state oil company Petrobras had concluded that the oil “is very likely from Venezuela”.


He said that a foreign ship near Brazil’s coastline appeared to have caused the spill “accidentally or not”.


Salles said that more than 100 tonnes of oil had already been collected from the coastline since 2 September, but said that the disaster was proving “enormously difficult to contain”.


There was no immediate response from Venezuela, but the Brazilian assertion is likely to further escalate tensions between the two countries. Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s far-right president, is a longstanding critic of Venezuela’s embattled leader, Nicolás Maduro, and has close relations with rightwing Venezuelan groups seeking his overthrow.


Earlier this week, Bolsonaro dismissed speculation that the spill had been released by a sinking ship. “If it was a shipwreck, oil would still be coming up. It is more probable that something was dumped there criminally,” he told reporters.


Bolsonaro said he did not want to blame another country without proof, but hinted darkly: “We have a country on our radar screen that could be the origin of the oil.”


Petrobras’s chief executive, Roberto Castello, said on Tuesday that the amount of oil spilled so far – approximately 500 barrels – was far too much to have been from the result of a routine tank cleaning.


Social media users have shared shocking images of the spill, showing kilometers of white sand stained with oil blotches and dead, oil-covered turtles and dolphins. One video shows thick black oil lapping up against a rocky jetty.


The oil’s appearance came shortly after Brazil became the focus of international criticism over record wildfires and deforestation in the Amazon rainforest – both of which have surged since Bolsonaro came to office.


Environmentalists and indigenous leaders say that Bolsonaro’s stripping back of environmental legislation and protections has stoked a fresh assault on the country’s ecosystems.


“The oil spill that’s reached over 132 beaches in the north-east is criminal. Removing the residue from the ocean can take 10 to 20 years,” said the former environment minister Marina Silva in a tweet. “This is a warning that we need to strengthen and not suffocate the environmental monitoring institutions in the country.”