O Estopim (2014) - full transcript
THIS FILM WAS MADE
IN A COLLABORATIVE WAY,
WITH THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE TALENT
OF MANY PEOPLE.
ON JULY 14, 2013
AMARILDO DIAS DE SOUZA (43 YEARS)
WAS TORTURED TILL DEATH
BY MILITARY POLICEMEN
OF THE ROCINHA FAVELA
IN RIO DE JANEIRO.
THAT STORY HAS BECOME A SYMBOL
OF THE FIGHT OF THE SOCIETY
AGAINST THE STATE VIOLENCE.
Attention all Rocinha
UPP callsigns...
All Rocinha UPP callsigns.
SARC in operation.
9030 AREP ?pia...
Inform...
Command, please check if this name
is on the list of wanted suspects.
- 9030 AREP Val?o.
- Val?o, report.
Ok Commander.
Just to inform that...
a citizen
was stopped by the AREP.
Commander
there are too many numbers.
I'll try and SARC it here, OK?
OK.
Aren't you vicious?
90/30,
here it's AREP Roupa Suja...
I haven't copied the SARC.
Do you want to die,
you bastard?
Nothing on record, commander.
90/30, AREP Morama.
Please wait Morama.
All callsigns involved with the AREP,
orders from commander
Major Edson Santos
the AREP goes on.
It's not to undo the AREPs,
copy?
Sir, I'll tell you, look,
I'd like to have a live insurance.
- My name is Guilherme.
- Calm down! Just the family.
Beth! Just Beth.
Just Beth.
Just the family.
I'm not Government, ok?
I have no Government authority.
We sent
an official letter yesterday
to both the head
of the 15th precinct
and to the UPP Coordination Office
requesting your
husband's whereabouts.
Commander, ASAP...
ASAP, do you copy?
Carefully and immediately go to CMM,
to quickly refuel the car.
Boiadeiro-G?vea, 90/30.
Boiadeiro-G?vea, copy.
Correct,
immediately go to the CCC.
AREP Emotions... 90/30
ASAP! Proceed to the CCC
on 2nd street, ASAP.
Ok.
I have been personally
threatened by him.
- She had also a threat on her life.
- Me and my family.
We now have an emergency situation:
your husband's disappearance.
And the demonstration
you are doing here.
I won't negotiate
anything with the Major.
You will tell what to negotiate,
what to do,
what your conditions are.
Imagine if you sat at
a table with the Government,
what is it that you demand?
There is much we remember.
It's hard to forget.
The good things
that happened,
the bad things.
The most recent memories,
I think I was about 4.
I can remember a few things.
Our house had wattle
and daub walls.
It was mud,
with a bamboo and wooden frame.
Every storm we had and the first
thing I felt, already aged 5 or 6,
was a strong tummy ache.
When the first thunder sounded,
and the heavy rain.
Because I knew then that
a tragedy could happen.
And then my father
managed to buy a house.
Right next
to my granny's place.
Because there is a
strong family thing here.
Everybody builds close by,
all together, helping each other.
Neighbors, relatives,
everyone together
carrying
the building materials,
sand, stone, cement.
All the floods we had
and that nowadays
people have to save their things
from the rain,
in our time we had to save
the entire house in every rain.
So, this will to fight collectively
to avoid losing everything
led us to really see
what a community is.
Those who were kids, who was teenager
in the slum in the 1980s
learned the meaning
of the word community.
Before they made
this tunnel here,
before the huge urban
growth in the south side
the city of Rio de Janeiro
ended in Leblon.
Rocinha was off the city plan.
That's why we're here.
We were disregarded by the government
in that place no one goes to.
The problem was that the city
continued on growing.
And Rocinha is in the most
expensive square meter in Brazil,
between S?o Conrado
and Leblon.
This is good for Rocinha because
the job market we have.
Crossing the tunnel we have
the whole south zone of the city.
To look after cars,
carry bags for the ladies,
to work as doormen, waiters,
chefs, maids,
cleaners, nannies.
This also helped
the community to grow.
My granny used to say that her
employer wanted to help her.
"Tell me what you need
to improve your house".
"Tell what you need
to build another floor".
So I heard this a lot
when I was a teenager.
The employer helping
the employee.
The slum cannot be seen as a problem.
The slum was a solution.
Solution of a non-housing plan
from this Government
that received everyone
to build the Rio-Niteroi bridge,
the Avenida Brasil,
the Aterro do Flamengo
and there was no plan.
A plan like
"these people will have kids,
and where are they going
to study?"
Where will everyone
be able to live?
This plan was not made.
Well, leave them up
there in the shacks
that they'll get tired of so much toiling
and will go back to the Northeast.
But this never happened.
At age 12 I was working
in the open market,
carrying fruit and vegetables
in bags for the ladies.
Selling garlic, lemons.
That's how I could help
my mother.
And I grew up being beaten
by the police.
Getting my ass kicked
by the police.
And I don't see
all this project that is being
implemented by the Government
as a solution to our problems.
We also have, historically,
and that is also a disaster,
an entire punishing system
that try to control
these populations.
As if the problem of criminality
in Rio de Janeiro
from the 1930s to these days
was solely the responsibility
of the slum populations.
And this is not true.
The Pacifying Police Unit
was launched in Rocinha.
One hundred
security cameras...
More security today for the nearly
100 thousand dwellers of Rocinha...
The arrival of the pacifying forces
mobilized 3,000 men...
The implementation of UPP
brings hope of better days...
The Security Secretary talks
about making history...
This is the making of history...
Tens of escape routes
in a thick Atlantic forest area.
The air space in Rocinha will be closed
on Sunday for the Police to occupy...
One place less
to the Police to bleed...
And the PM commander summons:
shall we succeed?
The new monitoring room
linked to the Police computers
will facilitate
the identification of suspects...
The 70,000 dwellers were free from
the grip of the drug dealers.
The camera circuit will also be used
to watch the community.
Since Rocinha
was occupied by the Police...
at least 5 people were shot
in 12 hours of intense confrontation.
I'm talking about
the pacified Rocinha.
Fear rules and we don't know
who the next victim will be,
how many more people
will be assassinated, killed.
To avoid confrontations
that has been happening,
to avoid new cases
like Amarildo...
Bullets are fired by drug dealers
and policemen,
and the 99%
are in the cross fire.
This won't solve
the trafficking issue here,
nor in Alem?o, Manguinhos
and in none
of the pacified communities.
- Duda, tell me your full name.
- Carlos Eduardo da Silva Barbosa...
I was surprised when
one of the witnesses
said she heard the policemen
behind my house
saying: "Leave it out. He will
disappear just like Amarildo."
And I was really shaken.
It's panic, panic.
My daughter cries all the time
when I go out.
My wife is worried,
she's so much afraid,
thinking they will revenge
and try to do something
against my life.
My mum, I see her
waning away, every day.
Psychologically she is scared
and she cries so much.
It's a life I don't wish
to anyone.
I believe we don't need another
case like Amarildo anywhere.
This doesn't have to happen
in no slum.
I think we need dwellers
who complain
and press charges.
Right. Thank you, Claudia.
Bye. Bye.
- Who was it, Duda?
- Brazil News.
She called to hear me
on what happened on Friday.
Said she followed up the news
and wanted me to clarify
all the details and facts
about the last Police stoppages.
Another one.
This week all the media
came to asked me
what is going on here.
We'll see, right?
Let's see!
The kids used to see the
Police as a security.
You can't say that today.
The kids are afraid.
Afraid of leaving home,
walking on the alleys.
Why?
Because there is violence,
there is no respect
with us dwellers in the slum.
When they slapped me on the face,
I fell to the ground, all dizzy.
My chest was swollen,
my face was cut.
They lit a lighter next to me.
They arrived at my house
and used pepper spray
on the small bathroom window.
There was no ventilation,
only two very small windows,
one in the kitchen
and another in the bathroom.
They spread pepper spray
through the window
and we had to leave the house.
And they asked: why are you running?
Where are you going?
And they laughed at us.
There were weekends in which
I'd take my wife out to chill out.
They said we could go nowhere
and locked us to my front door.
It was as if I had been arrested.
I couldn't leave the place.
If they found me
in the street,
they would beat me up
or take me into a corner
to torture me.
Because last time they tried
to place a bag on my head.
I thought that...
Choking me...
I thought they were
going to kill me.
I went to the 2nd street, in my area.
I didn't want to, but I had to.
A girl filmed it.
I didn't know her then,
but now I do.
She said: Adriana,
I was on my balcony, I saw it.
I was taking a picture of my daughter
and saw it when it happened.
He was sitting on a motorcycle
with two phones,
moving songs
from one to the other.
When this PM turned and said:
Freeze!
When he said 'my papers are here'
and reached for his pocket
the policemen yelled "too late!"
and shot Jonathan.
He fell down,
when they took his phone
they yelled: "Fuck".
Sorry about the language.
"We screwed it, we got the wrong boy,
but now it's too late.?
When they looked up,
they saw she was there.
They broke into the house,
took her phone,
broke the memory card
and her phone.
So, it's...
She went
to the police station,
made a statement,
told the chief inspector,
but nothing happened till now.
The meaning of Police
in the community is fear.
in one of the police incursions here
in the street, the alley where I live,
the Major,
the Commander himself,
made a point
of saying it to my face,
in front of my family,
that he would get me.
That I was been noticed.
Then the officers
who were there with him,
from the tactical group he created,
started to threaten me, too.
Some of the police officers already
knew me, from my snack bar.
And even they seeing me
working,
they insisted in with the threats.
The policeman
broke into my home,
pointed an assault rifle
to my 15-year-old daughter.
Forced her to leave the house,
yelling, asking if there were
any more people in the house.
My wife was coming out of the bathroom
and was also threatened.
They broke into their home,
placed a gun to his face.
And the other one said:
"kill him. Kill him now!"
And my grandson said: "mum, granny,
they are going to kill Duda!"
Then I said: "no, Christian, slow down.
They are not going to do it".
I asked if that policeman
who broke into my place
had a search warrant.
And they started to scorn.
They started to say
I was an intellectual,
that I was a "smarty".
Just because I had mentioned
my rights.
I even asked him that since he was
a representative of the law,
shouldn't he be the one to make sure
my rights were respected.
When they started to actually
ask me about
weapons an assault rifles,
saying they already knew
I was responsible for the weapons,
that I stashed the rifles
of the drug dealers,
I realized my life
was at risk.
And since I had already witnessed
several torture sessions
and many police actions involving
bribery and filthy stuff.
I realized that I could become
a victim at any moment.
I could become a victim of torture
or they could making me disappear.
So I had no doubt.
I had to denounce or wait
for the worse to happen to me.
On the 29th a bullet was fired
by a policeman into my place,
through the window
and crossed my daughter's bedroom.
I placed myself
in the line of fire
and asked the police to stop
because the alleys
are very narrow where we live
and the houses
are full of holes.
The policemen are firing
without looking.
These policemen started to yell
from the end of the alley,
calling me out,
aiming their rifles at me,
telling me to walk towards them.
I refused to go.
I told them I was in my home
and would not go out
where it was dark.
The Human Rights Commission
is inside the Legislative Branch,
helping the public.
Helping them with legal advice,
social advice
and taking on the charges.
They didn't even search me, just
told me to place my hands on the wall
and beat me.
The policemen who caught me there,
who searched me,
they told him: "tell that
man there, the big white one,
that if we catch him alone
in the alley,
we'll hurt him because he's very
cheeky, very full of himself."
I'm quite proud
of taking individual cases and
turning them into collective actions.
We organize in such a way that
the individual doesn't feel alone.
So you call me to tell
how it was with M?rcio.
The feedback it's important.
Thank you guys.
What's up, Boi?
Take the cement here.
I was coming from the market,
after buying things
we needed at home
and I passed by the policemen
who stopped Amarildo.
Some of them with ninja hats,
that tactical group.
I felt worried
because that weekend
the UPP Police and Civil Police
did a major operation.
THE ARMED PEACE OPERATION
WAS CARRIED OUT
ON JUNE 12 AND 13, 2013
BY THE CIVIL
AND MILITARY POLICE FORCES
It had been 2 days since the start
of the 'Armed Peace' Operation,
which didn't produce
the expected result.
It wasn't a successful operation.
This lack of satisfaction
leads the Major to order them
to bring Amarildo in
to have him talk
about weapons and drugs.
My neighbor came and said:
"Beth, the Police
have arrested and taken Amarildo."
I asked: "Why?
He just came back from fishing?"
She replied: "Go after them."
I was wearing shorts, put a jacket on
and went running after them.
It's just a few meters
from my place to the UPP
and I no longer
saw my husband.
They really rushed
my husband away.
When I got there, I asked
the policemen where my husband was.
They said Amarildo was there because
they have some questions to ask him
and would release him.
I said I would not leave until
they release my husband.
And I remained there,
waiting for my husband.
Then, a VW Gol stopped
in front of the UPP
and the policemen took
my husband from there, in handcuffs.
I asked where they
were taking my husband.
They said they'd take him
but he'd no quarrel with the Justice
and we'd let him go.
Before my husband
went into the car,
he told me his documents
were with the policeman.
Another policeman
standing next to the car
threatened my husband again.
This policeman came to me
and my 13-year-old daughter
and said the Major had phoned them
and told no one was allowed to go up.
Because there were 20 people
being held up for questioning
and they couldn't talk
to anyone.
Later on, in the evening,
Beth came to me,
desperate, crying,
saying that the policemen
had taken Amarildo
and he hadn't come back yet.
I tried to calm her down
saying to keep clam,
they took Amarildo
but they would've to let him go
because Amarildo was no criminal.
I went after him, but I was like:
"Amarildo disappear."
Then I went to the police station,
to the morgue,
I went to every place
in Rio looking for him
and nothing, nothing at all.
The other day we went back
to the UPP.
They said they let him go and that he
should be in some relative's place.
I told them I have lived
with my husband for 30 years.
I know the ways he takes.
He goes from home to work,
he wasn't fond of music groups
or dances.
My husband's only vice was fishing
and bringing fish home.
And my husband
is missing.
He wouldn't go to a relative's place,
not even when we fought.
When she said he wasn't
in the police station neither hospital,
then went back to the UPP
with her family
and the Major said he'd let him go,
'cause he was clean
and that he had already
gone home,
then I started to worry
and be certain that something
really serious had happened to him.
Then I said, wait a minute,
I will start to talk.
Rio is frightened with a riot
in front of the Rocinha slum,
the largest in Latin America.
The main route between
the south and west
is blocked by
football and drumming.
That moment was well printed
in my mind
because an uncle of mine
was in that riot.
But soon the drumming
changes into a huge confusion.
The traffic comes to a halt
and the police start to act.
I wanted somehow
that the community could
come together again.
I missed the community
together again,
united to complain or demand.
The main entrance of Rocinha
turns into a battle field.
To try and rescue that union
in the community of Rocinha.
Because Amarildo
was one of ours.
And we decided that
couldn't go unpunished.
Hundreds of Rocinha dwellers
demonstrated on Thursday evening,
demanding explanations
on the disappearance of assistant
mason Amarildo de Souza,
missing since the 14th of July.
The presence of major Edson
at the demonstration
was a request from the dwellers.
They wanted him to explain
what had happened to Amarildo,
since he was the head of the UPP.
And who had taken Amarildo
from his home were the UPP policemen.
I told him we would
only clear the roads
with the presence of the chairman
of the Human Rights Commission.
The crowd blocked the Lagoa-Barra
motorway for some 2 hours...
After a few minutes
the Major notified me that someone
from the Human Rights would come.
The people were blocking the road
at the exit of the tunnel.
I'm not mistaken,
the major is a militia man.
The first contact with
the demonstrators,
with the family, with Duda,
was a little complicated due to
the lack of information.
People mix Government
with the State
and in that case I was representing
a team from a parliament commission
that is part of the State
but that is not Government.
The role of this
parliament commission
is to inspect and demand
from the Government.
- Calm down. Just the family.
- My name is Guilherme.
Beth! Just Beth.
Just Beth.
Just the family.
Look, my name's Guilherme,
I'm not from the Government,
- I have no Government authority.
- Right.
I'm with the
Human Rights Commission.
At first people treated
much like Government.
They made demands,
and then Duda
came up and said
"I?ve been there,
I've pressed charges, I'd already
spoken about these practices."
Guilherme,
this isn't the first case.
Others have happened
since the occupation.
Families that live here
are afraid of charging,
a husband was murdered, too.
Planted a gun and drugs
and said the man was a drug dealer.
- This's common. It happens all the time.
- They do this with anyone.
Two youngsters were
kidnapped in their home,
they forged a possession
and arrested them.
There are people imprisoned
who are not drug dealers.
We need people here
to help us.
The Major, he militarized
the community.
He does whatever he wants
and his men too. They have no limits.
The policemen kill
on his orders.
We can't change from a community
ruled by the drug dealers
to a community occupied
by the militia.
Because what they're doing here
is the work of militia,
thrashing the lives of workers,
arresting innocent people.
I'm waiting for two things:
get arrested or get killed.
Do you know why?
'Cause I went there to press charges.
- I went there to press charges.
- You do have to press charges.
But who is going
to protect me?
It was awful the number
of other cases
and people who came forward
to speak out.
People are scared to talk,
they don't believe it
can produce anything.
And they absorb
their own pain.
No matter how big it's.
But that was a moment of catharsis,
when the whole favela had come down
because of one man's disappearance
and it was a moment to breathe,
a flash of hope that
something could be done.
I think it triggered
other people to speak out.
You can even kill me,
but I have 20 thousand more
behind me.
It was a storm of tragedies
that took place there
while I tried
to explain my role,
and tried to open
a channel to negotiate.
- For as long as we get no response...
- I will talk to the Major now.
We'll have the chance
to sit down and negotiate.
We want the dwellers
to come along and negotiate, too.
I'm not negotiating
anything with the Major.
- Ok.
- Please, let me finish this.
I'm not negotiating
anything with the Major.
I'll tell him we can sit down
everybody to negotiate.
You'll negotiate what to do
and what the conditions are.
You are the ones
who live here.
I'm here to open this channel.
Just to open the channel.
Consider this: if you sat now
at a table with the Government,
what is it that you want?
Think about It,
I need that answer.
Then I said
we first wanted to talk
to the top officials
in public security.
I wanted to talk to
Jos? Mariano Beltrame.
There was no use
talking with soldiers.
We wanted to talk
to their boss.
in the mean time,
we opened half of the street,
since the dialogue had begun.
But we enforce that
would block the street again
in 10 minutes
until we have an official position.
And so it really came.
Tomorrow at 10AM,
in the State Security Secretary
will be present:
the State Security Chief,
Beltrame,
the Civil Police chief,
who at the time was Martha Rocha,
the head police chief
at the 15th precinct,
chief Orlando Zaccone,
the chief commander
of the UPPs...
and the Major Edson,
who was not mentioned
during the negotiation,
also show up in the meeting.
I did not hesitate.
I asked permission
to Amarildo's family.
As I thought that meeting
was for them to speak out,
was more important
they talk about the tragedy.
But I was at that moment in
most absolute perplexity.
I had to talk to Mr. Beltrame,
to chief Martha Rocha,
to Mr. Zaccone
and to the UPP coordinator
that a corrupt man
was present there.
There was a man
who always
threatened my physical integrity.
And I spoke about
his stance, attitude
and omission regarding
the community.
And I went further,
I also revealed
what he did
with the money of the moto-taxis.
The money from the sponsor company
to make improvements
to the moto-taxi business,
that money was going
to his pocket.
This was revealed there,
during that meeting.
Major Edson
is an UPF representative.
And he was
a very powerful man.
We were very
impressed with it.
Although all the evidences,
we could not have him removed
from his position, at least.
Taken from that place
from where he could harass
the witnesses, as everyone knows.
He had support from
State representatives.
Rio de Janeiro representatives
with connections in Rocinha
and representatives who had an interest
in the continuation of that arrangement.
I felt an enormous concern
of the authorities
not to tarnish that
political project.
I felt it was...
very political issue,
not one of justice.
There was no will
to really investigate
those charges, those facts.
Just like when I pressed
charges in April and...
The Government knew
about the torturing
and threats
that Amarildo's family
was suffering since April.
IN JULY, THE CASE
OF THE DISAPPEARANCE OF AMARILDO
BECOMES AN INQUIRY AT THE
15TH CIVIL POLICE STATION.
The period I was in charge
of the inquiry
was the initial period of 15 days.
It was too short.
I'd a general idea
of the situation,
what was being presented
and some of the questions
that were made.
The first one was regarding
the cameras at the UPP building,
that were switched off.
So, we had images of Amarildo
going into the police car
and going towards
the UPP building.
But we had no images
of his getting off at the UPP
due to this off camera.
So, there was only the statement
of the UPP Commander
who said he was there
when Amarildo
arrived at the UPP
and that after
checking his papers,
because they took
his working papers there,
he verified Amarildo had no
arrest warrant pending
and let him go.
He also said he saw
Amarildo going down
the stairs that face
the UPP container.
But at the end
of this staircase
there was
another camera that was not off
and Amarildo didn't appear
leaving by the stairs.
AFTER 15 DAYS INTO THE INQUIRY,
THE CASE IS TRANSFERRED
TO THE HOMICIDES POLICE STATION.
The police started
on a line of inquiry that was
totally wrong and prejudiced.
The prejudice
was to criminalize the victim
to justify these measures,
the barbarism.
If he is a drug dealer
he can be killed
by the police the way he was.
During the 15 days
I was at the head of the inquiry
the only questions the press and even
the people in my social environment
even family members, friends...
they asked me whether Amarildo
was a drug dealer or not.
We can't conclude whether
there was a homicide or not,
if there was a torture or not
due to the fact that a person,
in this case, the alleged victim
is a drug dealer.
The "Extra" newspaper
published an article
on the possible involvement
of Amarildo and his wife
with the drug traffic.
Amarildo, as well as many other
members of the organization,
he was responsible
for storing materials,
drugs, for the traffic.
The report concluded
at the beginning of the week,
Ruchester Marreiros
came to request
the temporary detention
of Elizabete Gomes da Silva.
The police chief said he only found
the involvement of the couple
after the disappearance
of Amarildo.
The head of the G?vea Police Station,
Orlando Zaccone,
recorded yesterday
an interview in Piau?,
and explained why he decided not to
request the detaining of Elizabete.
After observing the data collected
by chief Ruchester,
I found no evidence
attached to the inquiry
to justify the detaining of many people,
including Beth,
wife of the missing person,
Amarildo.
There were no elements capable
to evidence that the Beth mentioned
in a statement given by
a policeman was the Elizabete
'cause there was no recognition evidence
that they were the same person.
Orlando Zaconne also questions another
conclusion of the assistant chief.
That Amarildo's house would be
an escape route for drug dealers.
He probably does not know
Amarildo's house,
which has 10 square meters and
has no window through which to escape.
A house of very poor people
who lived where
drug trafficking was happening.
My report included this evidences
rejecting them.
Since I cannot go along with the idea
that people who live near
or next to the drug traffic,
anywhere in this country,
are drug dealers just because
they live in poor places.
Where is Amarildo?
Mr. President,
on the Amarildo case,
there are many indications
that the drug dealers have
disappeared with him.
If Amarildo were not missing,
he would have to be in prison.
The one taking the blame now
is the poor military police officer
who has nothing to do with it
and that is being accused
of vanish with Amarildo's corpse.
And now they are sleeping
thanks to prescription pills,
with this sword dangling
over their heads,
with this rotten finger
of some people, pointing at them,
as if they were to blame.
I deeply regret
this case is being exploited
by some state representatives.
in a time of pain they use this
to gain advantages.
There is a fantasy
that the drug dealer is someone
who has to be exterminated.
The so-called drug dealer,
slum dweller,
he is built and materialized into
this enemy number one.
All the dead are drug dealers.
All the dead have a connection
with the traffic.
We don't de-constructed
until today
the perspective of war,
of confrontation.
And as a result of the confrontation,
the extermination.
We are choosing people to die
and after they are dead
they instantly become drug dealers.
They are immediately
branded as drug dealers.
Because the drug dealer has been
stripped of his humanity.
So killing a drug dealer is no crime.
It's not a human fact.
We haven't understood yet
that he who kills
a criminal is a criminal.
We told the police
that if they follow on this path
they would commit one more crime,
because the trafficking has absolutely
no connection with it.
They also try
to fabricate evidence
with witnesses taken
by those involved.
By Major Edson, who is one
of the main accused parties
and by another policeman
also accused.
They take witnesses that
saw and heard
some drug dealers saying
that they had eliminated Amarildo
after he left
the main UPP building.
This farce was
quickly dismantled.
A witness saw Amarildo's body
covered by a plastic,
being tortured
and asking for help.
This witness never wanted to give
a statement and this is understandable.
With a police that keeps
threatening the witnesses,
planting witnesses.
How are you going to make
a statement to help the inquiry?
It was the procedural fraud
practiced
that enable to prove what they did.
The conversations between
the alleged drug dealers
who we now know
weren't drug dealers
but agents of the State
pretending to be drug dealers
and assuming
the disappearance of Amarildo.
A man who identifies himself
as the drug dealer named Catatau
makes threats to a policeman
infiltrated in the traffic
and suggests he killed Amarildo,
who went by the alias Boi.
Expert examination
showed that this man
was police officer Marlon
staging a farce.
You rat, I'll cut your head off,
do you hear?
My friend, my friend...
Let me explain to you,
Boi is on you, already!
So what we have is
a set of procedural fraud
which was not very
well explained, either.
The conversations
between State agents.
We have in Rio de Janeiro,
The Guardian, that tapes everyone,
this device should be audited
for us to find out who
talked to whom in this period.
Who in the Government
talked to whom?
And then we would know what problem
isn't in the order of the Rocinha UPP,
the Commander
and his subordinates.
This would show us the MO
of the State in these occurrences.
The State also cared to preserve
the person of Major Edson.
in such way that
he was never dismissed.
He went on vacation.
When came to the conclusion,
days before he was formally charged
with the death of Amarildo
he had gone on vacation.
He wasn't removed from his post.
If we look at it,
from the disappearance
of Amarildo on the 14th of July
until the two following months.
The entire government had
the version not official.
The media insisted on it until
they could no longer deny.
The Judiciary branch,
the Prosecutor's Office step aside
without going
into the question
and it almost came to the point
that the fantasy version
that incriminated the victim,
Amarildo, prevailed.
We got to the conclusion,
that some of the police officers
were responsible
for the death of Amarildo.
Torture and death
of Amarildo.
What happened was a barbaric
action that took place there.
I'm a worker.
Any vagrant will say
he is a worker.
Every bastard vagrant I took down
said he was a worker.
Now you're a worker
in that shitty place?
What sort of worker, son?
Only been a drug dealer.
Pay attention.
You are fucked already.
Do you want your wife
to be fucked too?
Your child to be fucked too?
'Cause that's what
I'm going to do, Boi.
This "I'm a worker" talk
is rubbish.
Fuck off!
My wife, my wife is honest.
- Boi, you've been snitched.
- It's nothing like that.
You know the dirty
things that happen there.
No, it's only honest
people in my place.
My children, my wife,
we've nothing to do with it.
All friends with the criminals
in this shitty place.
- Do you want me to take your son in?
- You know me!
I'm going to forge it
and bust your son.
I'll bring him in and beat the crap
out of him like I'm doing with you.
- You know me!
- Is this what you want?
- Give us the fucking guns!
- There are no guns!
You're stashing them guns
for the men.
Who lives in that house cannot
work for any criminal act.
- Only honest stuff.
- But you are stupid.
You're stashing them guns because
of the powder for your old lady.
My wife is decent.
My wife is a mother of a family.
You mean your wife
is a family mother?
She is a whore.
A real whore.
Sniffer, she is a real slut.
Keeps putting her big nose
on the powder.
Whore my ass.
Do not talk about my family.
- Keep your voice down.
- Don't talk about my family.
Just offering her
old pussy around...
Do not talk about my wife,
you bastard!
- Why are you all steamed up?
- I'm not steamed up.
You're fucked!
- You're fucked!
- Leave alone!
No more dirty business
in that shitty place.
Dirty business is what
you are doing to me now.
You stash the guns for the drug dealers
who sniff powder and fuck your woman
and I'm the one
fucking around?
Do not talk about my wife.
- Your wife is a whore, son.
- My wife is no whore!
- Do not talk about my wife!
- And keep your voice down.
Do you want to die?
Give me them fucking guns!
Damn it!
Where are the guns, you bum?
Where are the guns,
mother fucker?
Where are the guns,
mother fucker?
- You vagrant.
- There is no fucking gun.
Where are the guns,
mother fucker?
Wake up. Wake up, you bum.
Talk now, mother fucker.
Where are the guns?
It's over, Boi.
It's over!
You fucked, Boi!
- It's over, Medeiros.
- Shit, this is going to stink, Major.
No, it's not.
Clean this shit and lose the body.
Amarildo,
I can say with an open heart,
with a clean soul.
Being the person he was
on a very day basis,
he was always
working on something.
He was glad to work.
It was the same thing with
helping people.
I always saw Amarildo
carrying a sofa, a fridge,
carrying building materials
for other people.
I saw him taking a neighbor
who was ill to the hospital.
They managed to do
something bad,
something really bad
to such a good person.
Torture always existed
in this country, always.
But it gets improved
in the civil military dictatorship.
At that time it was against
thoughts, against ideas.
And we inherited this.
The Police inherited this.
This practice was widespread,
it goes for everyone.
But today it essentially
affects the poorer level.
With the military dictatorship,
the Police, mainly the Military Police,
gains much relevance.
Their numbers raised and they gain
these powers on the fringe of legality.
BOPE, for example,
was created by a colonel linked
to the dungeons of the
dictatorship in 1978.
So we have a relation of these
paramilitary groups
or "para-official",
the military dictatorship,
the military police
and the terror model implemented
during the dictatorship,
that was not dismantled with the
re-democratization of the country.
Still today,
we still have this interface
between a Police State,
the punitive State
and the State of exception.
In a State with the rule of law,
the State is limited by the Law.
But in a Police State
everything is allowed.
In a Police State, the State
no longer is a representation
of civil society or of
a politically organized society.
Therefore the State with their apparatus
becomes the enemy of society.
And through force
or brutality,
it seeks not to
be legitimized,
but it seeks affirmation
through terror.
No violence!
The violence on the 20th
was very intense.
The police truly had no skill at all
to deal with that kind of event.
So, many people were wounded,
constitutional rights
were violated in series.
The population was a hostage
of the Police training
which at that time was none.
Resist, resist, resist!
Bastards!
Cowards! Cowards!
Stay!
Its a civil war, fucker!
And one demonstration after the other,
the violence got worse.
That was a remarkable
characteristic.
From aggressions
with no grounds at all
to arrests with no justification.
Revolution!
No matter the reason,
police violence
has always been disproportional.
So the feeling the population has
is that when it relates to the State,
the State rejects it,
then it protests
and then it gets beaten up.
And in a police State the power
is not with the Police alone.
Other Justice agencies,
they start to act also
with the same police logic
and they coordinate
themselves within the State.
So we get a repressive
State structure
within the structure of the State.
The Police that started
to repress the demonstrations
is the same that always
trained up on the favelas.
Breaking in, kicking walls,
slapping faces, killing people.
That is the Police
that got trained.
And the middle
class always said
it was allowed because
that Police "are protecting us".
But they started to go to the demonstrations
and no longer protected the middle class.
All the violence people
went through during the demonstrations.
All the brutality,
all the incompetence of the Police,
the media were there,
filming it.
But in the communities here,
it's a rare thing,
one in a million.
When one has the courage
to point a camera
and record a police action
like this.
At this point,
Amarildo comes up as an icon.
As a symbol
of people's feelings
regarding this landmark
of police brutality.
And this spreads around the world.
It didn't move only Rio de Janeiro.
Where is Amarildo?
Police, where is Amarildo?
Police, where is Amarildo?
The Amarildo case
attracted attention
because after a long time
without a strong demonstration,
the slum came down so strongly
and served as a trigger
in other people
and other slums.
This was very important.
#WHEREISAMARILDO?
The police after 2007,
told, without any doubt,
by their commanders,
started to change its behavior
and started to make
people disappear.
So,
we believe the Police today
disappears
with the people it kills.
Because doing that,
there is no inquiry.
People, let's round up, please.
Let's block the street.
Death is a very hard thing,
but the disappearance
deepens the loss
because you have not buried anyone,
you cannot grieve,
you didn't say goodbye.
We are here
because we are sad,
because our Pacifying Police Unit
dragged my uncle
from his family.
That's enough.
It's not because we are poor,
and live in a poor community.
that we will be
victims of the State.
There's a say in Brazil that goes:
"go after your rights".
But I think that
it?s not correct.
Because you've to go after
the right you don't yet have.
The right you have you don't have
to go after. It already exists.
A right is not to be begged for,
it's to be demanded.
The Military Police in the State of Rio
cannot arrive at the slum
with a free pass to do
whatever it wants.
And that's it!
Many times
the policeman told me
about what the internal
police rules ask me...
No way. Your internal rules don't ask me
anything because I'm no policeman.
You are the policemen.
With the excuse that
Rocinha is a cartel,
they made Rocinha
into a head quarter.
Where everyone
inside the favela is a private,
getting orders
from any soldier.
Freeze, mother fucker!
Freeze, you bastard!
What? Is this the right way
to talk to me?
Amarildo's smile we'll never
see that again.
Amarildo's face we'll never
see that again.
The only thing left to the family
was grief and sadness.
There is a concept
of public security
that emphasizes and keeps
these two perspectives:
that of war
and that of the enemy.
And with a massively punitive control,
brutal and unlimited.
They gave a free pass to the Police
do what they want in the slum.
Because that is what
the UPP is all about.
The UPP is the Al-5
of the slums in Rio.
How was the DOPS called?
The political Police.
What is an UPP?
The same thing.
It's only the year that changes.
The torture is the same,
the disappearances are the same.
in the past it was the white university
student that was hunted down.
Now it's the children of black people and
of north-easterners who live in the slum.
The governor won't show up
on national TV to speak:
"I've come to promote
the control of the poor,
through guns,
rifles, and soldiers."
He will say he is
fighting the enemy.
That he is fighting
the drug traffic.
That he is promoting the good.
That the State is now coming in.
But when you search
for information,
you'll see that before the UPP
the Government
did work in the slums,
especially in election years.
The Government inaugurated PAC
and build the cable car
in Alem?o.
So what are they talking about
when they say the State
is coming in now? This is a lie.
What is going on now
is a greater militarization of the
slums and the areas around them.
The media plays
a major role in this.
And Brazilian media
is becoming conservative
and not analytical at all.
Every day TV tells us that shots
were exchanged in a pacified area.
Either the area is pacified
or there is a shootout.
There is a short-circuit
in critical reasoning
that would state: "Look, it did not
pacify it. It did not happen".
Because shootout and deaths
on both sides
is an absence of peace.
There is this
huge problem in there, right?
And the Brazilian media
refuses
to reflect upon it
in a decisive way.
If people try to learn what
has been going on in the city,
they will see that
the Amarildo case
was not the problem of the soldier who
arrested, tortured and killed a person.
What happened to Amarildo
is a public security issue.
The UPP would only work
if it were a Public Policy Unit
where the Police would be
part of the project.
The Police being the project will
never work neither in Rocinha
nor in any slum
and in no country either.
The Police cannot be
the project of any place.
With all the consideration
you have shown the family,
we will ask you to do this peacefully
because this is our fight.
They've already destroyed our family and
we won't let them destroy our dignity.
We're a dignified family
and we're among dignified friends,
so we'll walk in
and do our demonstration,
say our prayers and then we will all
leave peacefully, holding hands,
always struggling for our rights
because this is enough.
A State that spends billions
buying armaments,
increasing the numbers
of the police force,
with Robocop armored suits,
repressing the demonstrations,
armored cars,
armored helicopters,
assault rifles, spy robots,
so much money to control
and where is the advanced post of the
Department of Culture in Rocinha?
Where is the advanced post
of the Department of Social Services
and Human Rights in Rocinha?
Where is the advanced post of the
Department of Work and Income in Rocinha?
There is none,
but the UPP is there.
Full of assault rifles and ammunition
to exercise social control.
A large share of the society
and the authorities
are not worried about it.
They think the social issue
can be managed
from a police perspective.
But the social problem
is no police matter.
If all the dwellers
had gone with me,
if all the people
who were suffering.
If all the communities
that are experiencing this
organize themselves,
unite to seek their rights,
not submitting.
How many Amarildos died
without culprits?
How many people died
in Rocinha,
in Alem?o, Tabajaras,
Chap?u Mangueira, Vidigal.
In which community
its youth is not being
tortured and murdered?
They abandon for
over 4 decades
those who live in communities,
and now they say that
public security
is what we need.
Imagine those
who live in slums
more and more organized
and even more assuming their roles,
masters of their own lives.
The Amarildo case
was the trigger
for people from the slums,
for those from the asphalt.
Everybody should understand
that we are the power.
The response to this
is a network amongst the slums,
a network for people in a city
who question this
militarization model.
People who live in the slum
has this Gabriela syndrome.
All Brazilian does, too.
I was born like this,
I grew up like this,
I'll live like this
and I'll die like this... No!
We might even fail, man.
But the next generation will not
go through what we've endured.
We can change it
for the next generation.
We will go to every place
to create this network.
To strengthen this
link that is ours,
it belongs to the society.
Man, I was...
looking at the kids
talking one of these days,
it's the end of the year
and they have this tradition
to dye their hair.
New Year's Eve with hair dyed.
And they were saying they
wouldn't dye their hair this year.
And I asked them why not.
And they said if the policemen
grab them, they will beat them up.
Last year policemen said
they were all criminals
because they'd all
dyed their hair yellow.
And then I said
I would dye my hair too
and if the police beat them up
they will have to get me too
and we'll all go to jail together.
They all got excited and everyone
started to dye their hair.
I said: "If I do it,
will you all do it, too?"
They said: "We'll do it."
Everyone started to dye their hair,
I had to buy the dye,
hydrogen peroxide for everyone.
I even paid for them to have their
hair dyed as everyone joined in.
Breno...
All the kids around here,
Breno is there.
My next door neighbor.
Paula's son.
Everyone with their hair dyed blonde.
We'll go through the New Year
all dyed yellow, all right.
A community that lives at ease,
with more freedom will have more to gain.
Since some paths to happiness
are peace, culture and leisure.
A community that is cornered,
beaten up from all sides,
moves away from such hope
and its youngsters grow up in rebellion.
We can't fight organized crime by sending
in the armored cars into the alleys.
It will only produce more anger
in the people who live in the slum.
I live in the slum and I demand respect,
it's only my rights that I'm asking here.
Kicking doors without a warrant,
this must be punished, it cannot be.
It's all wrong,
it's even hard to explain.
But the way things are going,
it's way past the breaking point.
It's all wrong,
it's also hard to understand.
There are people sowing evil
and wishing to reap good.
Jobless mothers, children out of school,
that is the cycle we see in this place.
It's thousands of stories that are
basically the same, you can see.
I honestly can't see how
this cycle would stop,
but the way they are treating us
only helps this evil to spread.
Police dying,
criminals dying,
and a second after
another one takes the place
of the dead one,
and no one cares, to make it worse.
Now, my friend, it's all up to you,
just a warning to finish this.
The future of the slum depends
on the fruit you choose to plant.
Yes, it's all wrong.
It's even hard to explain.
But the way things are going,
it's way past the breaking point.
It's all wrong
and also hard to understand.
The Government sows evil
and wants to harvest good.
That's it.
UNTIL THE FINISHING
OF THIS FILM (JULY 2014),
MAJOR EDSON
AND 24 OTHER POLICE OFFICERS
STILL FACED CRIMINAL CHARGES
FOR THE TORTURE AND DEATH OF AMARILDO.
IN A COLLABORATIVE WAY,
WITH THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE TALENT
OF MANY PEOPLE.
ON JULY 14, 2013
AMARILDO DIAS DE SOUZA (43 YEARS)
WAS TORTURED TILL DEATH
BY MILITARY POLICEMEN
OF THE ROCINHA FAVELA
IN RIO DE JANEIRO.
THAT STORY HAS BECOME A SYMBOL
OF THE FIGHT OF THE SOCIETY
AGAINST THE STATE VIOLENCE.
Attention all Rocinha
UPP callsigns...
All Rocinha UPP callsigns.
SARC in operation.
9030 AREP ?pia...
Inform...
Command, please check if this name
is on the list of wanted suspects.
- 9030 AREP Val?o.
- Val?o, report.
Ok Commander.
Just to inform that...
a citizen
was stopped by the AREP.
Commander
there are too many numbers.
I'll try and SARC it here, OK?
OK.
Aren't you vicious?
90/30,
here it's AREP Roupa Suja...
I haven't copied the SARC.
Do you want to die,
you bastard?
Nothing on record, commander.
90/30, AREP Morama.
Please wait Morama.
All callsigns involved with the AREP,
orders from commander
Major Edson Santos
the AREP goes on.
It's not to undo the AREPs,
copy?
Sir, I'll tell you, look,
I'd like to have a live insurance.
- My name is Guilherme.
- Calm down! Just the family.
Beth! Just Beth.
Just Beth.
Just the family.
I'm not Government, ok?
I have no Government authority.
We sent
an official letter yesterday
to both the head
of the 15th precinct
and to the UPP Coordination Office
requesting your
husband's whereabouts.
Commander, ASAP...
ASAP, do you copy?
Carefully and immediately go to CMM,
to quickly refuel the car.
Boiadeiro-G?vea, 90/30.
Boiadeiro-G?vea, copy.
Correct,
immediately go to the CCC.
AREP Emotions... 90/30
ASAP! Proceed to the CCC
on 2nd street, ASAP.
Ok.
I have been personally
threatened by him.
- She had also a threat on her life.
- Me and my family.
We now have an emergency situation:
your husband's disappearance.
And the demonstration
you are doing here.
I won't negotiate
anything with the Major.
You will tell what to negotiate,
what to do,
what your conditions are.
Imagine if you sat at
a table with the Government,
what is it that you demand?
There is much we remember.
It's hard to forget.
The good things
that happened,
the bad things.
The most recent memories,
I think I was about 4.
I can remember a few things.
Our house had wattle
and daub walls.
It was mud,
with a bamboo and wooden frame.
Every storm we had and the first
thing I felt, already aged 5 or 6,
was a strong tummy ache.
When the first thunder sounded,
and the heavy rain.
Because I knew then that
a tragedy could happen.
And then my father
managed to buy a house.
Right next
to my granny's place.
Because there is a
strong family thing here.
Everybody builds close by,
all together, helping each other.
Neighbors, relatives,
everyone together
carrying
the building materials,
sand, stone, cement.
All the floods we had
and that nowadays
people have to save their things
from the rain,
in our time we had to save
the entire house in every rain.
So, this will to fight collectively
to avoid losing everything
led us to really see
what a community is.
Those who were kids, who was teenager
in the slum in the 1980s
learned the meaning
of the word community.
Before they made
this tunnel here,
before the huge urban
growth in the south side
the city of Rio de Janeiro
ended in Leblon.
Rocinha was off the city plan.
That's why we're here.
We were disregarded by the government
in that place no one goes to.
The problem was that the city
continued on growing.
And Rocinha is in the most
expensive square meter in Brazil,
between S?o Conrado
and Leblon.
This is good for Rocinha because
the job market we have.
Crossing the tunnel we have
the whole south zone of the city.
To look after cars,
carry bags for the ladies,
to work as doormen, waiters,
chefs, maids,
cleaners, nannies.
This also helped
the community to grow.
My granny used to say that her
employer wanted to help her.
"Tell me what you need
to improve your house".
"Tell what you need
to build another floor".
So I heard this a lot
when I was a teenager.
The employer helping
the employee.
The slum cannot be seen as a problem.
The slum was a solution.
Solution of a non-housing plan
from this Government
that received everyone
to build the Rio-Niteroi bridge,
the Avenida Brasil,
the Aterro do Flamengo
and there was no plan.
A plan like
"these people will have kids,
and where are they going
to study?"
Where will everyone
be able to live?
This plan was not made.
Well, leave them up
there in the shacks
that they'll get tired of so much toiling
and will go back to the Northeast.
But this never happened.
At age 12 I was working
in the open market,
carrying fruit and vegetables
in bags for the ladies.
Selling garlic, lemons.
That's how I could help
my mother.
And I grew up being beaten
by the police.
Getting my ass kicked
by the police.
And I don't see
all this project that is being
implemented by the Government
as a solution to our problems.
We also have, historically,
and that is also a disaster,
an entire punishing system
that try to control
these populations.
As if the problem of criminality
in Rio de Janeiro
from the 1930s to these days
was solely the responsibility
of the slum populations.
And this is not true.
The Pacifying Police Unit
was launched in Rocinha.
One hundred
security cameras...
More security today for the nearly
100 thousand dwellers of Rocinha...
The arrival of the pacifying forces
mobilized 3,000 men...
The implementation of UPP
brings hope of better days...
The Security Secretary talks
about making history...
This is the making of history...
Tens of escape routes
in a thick Atlantic forest area.
The air space in Rocinha will be closed
on Sunday for the Police to occupy...
One place less
to the Police to bleed...
And the PM commander summons:
shall we succeed?
The new monitoring room
linked to the Police computers
will facilitate
the identification of suspects...
The 70,000 dwellers were free from
the grip of the drug dealers.
The camera circuit will also be used
to watch the community.
Since Rocinha
was occupied by the Police...
at least 5 people were shot
in 12 hours of intense confrontation.
I'm talking about
the pacified Rocinha.
Fear rules and we don't know
who the next victim will be,
how many more people
will be assassinated, killed.
To avoid confrontations
that has been happening,
to avoid new cases
like Amarildo...
Bullets are fired by drug dealers
and policemen,
and the 99%
are in the cross fire.
This won't solve
the trafficking issue here,
nor in Alem?o, Manguinhos
and in none
of the pacified communities.
- Duda, tell me your full name.
- Carlos Eduardo da Silva Barbosa...
I was surprised when
one of the witnesses
said she heard the policemen
behind my house
saying: "Leave it out. He will
disappear just like Amarildo."
And I was really shaken.
It's panic, panic.
My daughter cries all the time
when I go out.
My wife is worried,
she's so much afraid,
thinking they will revenge
and try to do something
against my life.
My mum, I see her
waning away, every day.
Psychologically she is scared
and she cries so much.
It's a life I don't wish
to anyone.
I believe we don't need another
case like Amarildo anywhere.
This doesn't have to happen
in no slum.
I think we need dwellers
who complain
and press charges.
Right. Thank you, Claudia.
Bye. Bye.
- Who was it, Duda?
- Brazil News.
She called to hear me
on what happened on Friday.
Said she followed up the news
and wanted me to clarify
all the details and facts
about the last Police stoppages.
Another one.
This week all the media
came to asked me
what is going on here.
We'll see, right?
Let's see!
The kids used to see the
Police as a security.
You can't say that today.
The kids are afraid.
Afraid of leaving home,
walking on the alleys.
Why?
Because there is violence,
there is no respect
with us dwellers in the slum.
When they slapped me on the face,
I fell to the ground, all dizzy.
My chest was swollen,
my face was cut.
They lit a lighter next to me.
They arrived at my house
and used pepper spray
on the small bathroom window.
There was no ventilation,
only two very small windows,
one in the kitchen
and another in the bathroom.
They spread pepper spray
through the window
and we had to leave the house.
And they asked: why are you running?
Where are you going?
And they laughed at us.
There were weekends in which
I'd take my wife out to chill out.
They said we could go nowhere
and locked us to my front door.
It was as if I had been arrested.
I couldn't leave the place.
If they found me
in the street,
they would beat me up
or take me into a corner
to torture me.
Because last time they tried
to place a bag on my head.
I thought that...
Choking me...
I thought they were
going to kill me.
I went to the 2nd street, in my area.
I didn't want to, but I had to.
A girl filmed it.
I didn't know her then,
but now I do.
She said: Adriana,
I was on my balcony, I saw it.
I was taking a picture of my daughter
and saw it when it happened.
He was sitting on a motorcycle
with two phones,
moving songs
from one to the other.
When this PM turned and said:
Freeze!
When he said 'my papers are here'
and reached for his pocket
the policemen yelled "too late!"
and shot Jonathan.
He fell down,
when they took his phone
they yelled: "Fuck".
Sorry about the language.
"We screwed it, we got the wrong boy,
but now it's too late.?
When they looked up,
they saw she was there.
They broke into the house,
took her phone,
broke the memory card
and her phone.
So, it's...
She went
to the police station,
made a statement,
told the chief inspector,
but nothing happened till now.
The meaning of Police
in the community is fear.
in one of the police incursions here
in the street, the alley where I live,
the Major,
the Commander himself,
made a point
of saying it to my face,
in front of my family,
that he would get me.
That I was been noticed.
Then the officers
who were there with him,
from the tactical group he created,
started to threaten me, too.
Some of the police officers already
knew me, from my snack bar.
And even they seeing me
working,
they insisted in with the threats.
The policeman
broke into my home,
pointed an assault rifle
to my 15-year-old daughter.
Forced her to leave the house,
yelling, asking if there were
any more people in the house.
My wife was coming out of the bathroom
and was also threatened.
They broke into their home,
placed a gun to his face.
And the other one said:
"kill him. Kill him now!"
And my grandson said: "mum, granny,
they are going to kill Duda!"
Then I said: "no, Christian, slow down.
They are not going to do it".
I asked if that policeman
who broke into my place
had a search warrant.
And they started to scorn.
They started to say
I was an intellectual,
that I was a "smarty".
Just because I had mentioned
my rights.
I even asked him that since he was
a representative of the law,
shouldn't he be the one to make sure
my rights were respected.
When they started to actually
ask me about
weapons an assault rifles,
saying they already knew
I was responsible for the weapons,
that I stashed the rifles
of the drug dealers,
I realized my life
was at risk.
And since I had already witnessed
several torture sessions
and many police actions involving
bribery and filthy stuff.
I realized that I could become
a victim at any moment.
I could become a victim of torture
or they could making me disappear.
So I had no doubt.
I had to denounce or wait
for the worse to happen to me.
On the 29th a bullet was fired
by a policeman into my place,
through the window
and crossed my daughter's bedroom.
I placed myself
in the line of fire
and asked the police to stop
because the alleys
are very narrow where we live
and the houses
are full of holes.
The policemen are firing
without looking.
These policemen started to yell
from the end of the alley,
calling me out,
aiming their rifles at me,
telling me to walk towards them.
I refused to go.
I told them I was in my home
and would not go out
where it was dark.
The Human Rights Commission
is inside the Legislative Branch,
helping the public.
Helping them with legal advice,
social advice
and taking on the charges.
They didn't even search me, just
told me to place my hands on the wall
and beat me.
The policemen who caught me there,
who searched me,
they told him: "tell that
man there, the big white one,
that if we catch him alone
in the alley,
we'll hurt him because he's very
cheeky, very full of himself."
I'm quite proud
of taking individual cases and
turning them into collective actions.
We organize in such a way that
the individual doesn't feel alone.
So you call me to tell
how it was with M?rcio.
The feedback it's important.
Thank you guys.
What's up, Boi?
Take the cement here.
I was coming from the market,
after buying things
we needed at home
and I passed by the policemen
who stopped Amarildo.
Some of them with ninja hats,
that tactical group.
I felt worried
because that weekend
the UPP Police and Civil Police
did a major operation.
THE ARMED PEACE OPERATION
WAS CARRIED OUT
ON JUNE 12 AND 13, 2013
BY THE CIVIL
AND MILITARY POLICE FORCES
It had been 2 days since the start
of the 'Armed Peace' Operation,
which didn't produce
the expected result.
It wasn't a successful operation.
This lack of satisfaction
leads the Major to order them
to bring Amarildo in
to have him talk
about weapons and drugs.
My neighbor came and said:
"Beth, the Police
have arrested and taken Amarildo."
I asked: "Why?
He just came back from fishing?"
She replied: "Go after them."
I was wearing shorts, put a jacket on
and went running after them.
It's just a few meters
from my place to the UPP
and I no longer
saw my husband.
They really rushed
my husband away.
When I got there, I asked
the policemen where my husband was.
They said Amarildo was there because
they have some questions to ask him
and would release him.
I said I would not leave until
they release my husband.
And I remained there,
waiting for my husband.
Then, a VW Gol stopped
in front of the UPP
and the policemen took
my husband from there, in handcuffs.
I asked where they
were taking my husband.
They said they'd take him
but he'd no quarrel with the Justice
and we'd let him go.
Before my husband
went into the car,
he told me his documents
were with the policeman.
Another policeman
standing next to the car
threatened my husband again.
This policeman came to me
and my 13-year-old daughter
and said the Major had phoned them
and told no one was allowed to go up.
Because there were 20 people
being held up for questioning
and they couldn't talk
to anyone.
Later on, in the evening,
Beth came to me,
desperate, crying,
saying that the policemen
had taken Amarildo
and he hadn't come back yet.
I tried to calm her down
saying to keep clam,
they took Amarildo
but they would've to let him go
because Amarildo was no criminal.
I went after him, but I was like:
"Amarildo disappear."
Then I went to the police station,
to the morgue,
I went to every place
in Rio looking for him
and nothing, nothing at all.
The other day we went back
to the UPP.
They said they let him go and that he
should be in some relative's place.
I told them I have lived
with my husband for 30 years.
I know the ways he takes.
He goes from home to work,
he wasn't fond of music groups
or dances.
My husband's only vice was fishing
and bringing fish home.
And my husband
is missing.
He wouldn't go to a relative's place,
not even when we fought.
When she said he wasn't
in the police station neither hospital,
then went back to the UPP
with her family
and the Major said he'd let him go,
'cause he was clean
and that he had already
gone home,
then I started to worry
and be certain that something
really serious had happened to him.
Then I said, wait a minute,
I will start to talk.
Rio is frightened with a riot
in front of the Rocinha slum,
the largest in Latin America.
The main route between
the south and west
is blocked by
football and drumming.
That moment was well printed
in my mind
because an uncle of mine
was in that riot.
But soon the drumming
changes into a huge confusion.
The traffic comes to a halt
and the police start to act.
I wanted somehow
that the community could
come together again.
I missed the community
together again,
united to complain or demand.
The main entrance of Rocinha
turns into a battle field.
To try and rescue that union
in the community of Rocinha.
Because Amarildo
was one of ours.
And we decided that
couldn't go unpunished.
Hundreds of Rocinha dwellers
demonstrated on Thursday evening,
demanding explanations
on the disappearance of assistant
mason Amarildo de Souza,
missing since the 14th of July.
The presence of major Edson
at the demonstration
was a request from the dwellers.
They wanted him to explain
what had happened to Amarildo,
since he was the head of the UPP.
And who had taken Amarildo
from his home were the UPP policemen.
I told him we would
only clear the roads
with the presence of the chairman
of the Human Rights Commission.
The crowd blocked the Lagoa-Barra
motorway for some 2 hours...
After a few minutes
the Major notified me that someone
from the Human Rights would come.
The people were blocking the road
at the exit of the tunnel.
I'm not mistaken,
the major is a militia man.
The first contact with
the demonstrators,
with the family, with Duda,
was a little complicated due to
the lack of information.
People mix Government
with the State
and in that case I was representing
a team from a parliament commission
that is part of the State
but that is not Government.
The role of this
parliament commission
is to inspect and demand
from the Government.
- Calm down. Just the family.
- My name is Guilherme.
Beth! Just Beth.
Just Beth.
Just the family.
Look, my name's Guilherme,
I'm not from the Government,
- I have no Government authority.
- Right.
I'm with the
Human Rights Commission.
At first people treated
much like Government.
They made demands,
and then Duda
came up and said
"I?ve been there,
I've pressed charges, I'd already
spoken about these practices."
Guilherme,
this isn't the first case.
Others have happened
since the occupation.
Families that live here
are afraid of charging,
a husband was murdered, too.
Planted a gun and drugs
and said the man was a drug dealer.
- This's common. It happens all the time.
- They do this with anyone.
Two youngsters were
kidnapped in their home,
they forged a possession
and arrested them.
There are people imprisoned
who are not drug dealers.
We need people here
to help us.
The Major, he militarized
the community.
He does whatever he wants
and his men too. They have no limits.
The policemen kill
on his orders.
We can't change from a community
ruled by the drug dealers
to a community occupied
by the militia.
Because what they're doing here
is the work of militia,
thrashing the lives of workers,
arresting innocent people.
I'm waiting for two things:
get arrested or get killed.
Do you know why?
'Cause I went there to press charges.
- I went there to press charges.
- You do have to press charges.
But who is going
to protect me?
It was awful the number
of other cases
and people who came forward
to speak out.
People are scared to talk,
they don't believe it
can produce anything.
And they absorb
their own pain.
No matter how big it's.
But that was a moment of catharsis,
when the whole favela had come down
because of one man's disappearance
and it was a moment to breathe,
a flash of hope that
something could be done.
I think it triggered
other people to speak out.
You can even kill me,
but I have 20 thousand more
behind me.
It was a storm of tragedies
that took place there
while I tried
to explain my role,
and tried to open
a channel to negotiate.
- For as long as we get no response...
- I will talk to the Major now.
We'll have the chance
to sit down and negotiate.
We want the dwellers
to come along and negotiate, too.
I'm not negotiating
anything with the Major.
- Ok.
- Please, let me finish this.
I'm not negotiating
anything with the Major.
I'll tell him we can sit down
everybody to negotiate.
You'll negotiate what to do
and what the conditions are.
You are the ones
who live here.
I'm here to open this channel.
Just to open the channel.
Consider this: if you sat now
at a table with the Government,
what is it that you want?
Think about It,
I need that answer.
Then I said
we first wanted to talk
to the top officials
in public security.
I wanted to talk to
Jos? Mariano Beltrame.
There was no use
talking with soldiers.
We wanted to talk
to their boss.
in the mean time,
we opened half of the street,
since the dialogue had begun.
But we enforce that
would block the street again
in 10 minutes
until we have an official position.
And so it really came.
Tomorrow at 10AM,
in the State Security Secretary
will be present:
the State Security Chief,
Beltrame,
the Civil Police chief,
who at the time was Martha Rocha,
the head police chief
at the 15th precinct,
chief Orlando Zaccone,
the chief commander
of the UPPs...
and the Major Edson,
who was not mentioned
during the negotiation,
also show up in the meeting.
I did not hesitate.
I asked permission
to Amarildo's family.
As I thought that meeting
was for them to speak out,
was more important
they talk about the tragedy.
But I was at that moment in
most absolute perplexity.
I had to talk to Mr. Beltrame,
to chief Martha Rocha,
to Mr. Zaccone
and to the UPP coordinator
that a corrupt man
was present there.
There was a man
who always
threatened my physical integrity.
And I spoke about
his stance, attitude
and omission regarding
the community.
And I went further,
I also revealed
what he did
with the money of the moto-taxis.
The money from the sponsor company
to make improvements
to the moto-taxi business,
that money was going
to his pocket.
This was revealed there,
during that meeting.
Major Edson
is an UPF representative.
And he was
a very powerful man.
We were very
impressed with it.
Although all the evidences,
we could not have him removed
from his position, at least.
Taken from that place
from where he could harass
the witnesses, as everyone knows.
He had support from
State representatives.
Rio de Janeiro representatives
with connections in Rocinha
and representatives who had an interest
in the continuation of that arrangement.
I felt an enormous concern
of the authorities
not to tarnish that
political project.
I felt it was...
very political issue,
not one of justice.
There was no will
to really investigate
those charges, those facts.
Just like when I pressed
charges in April and...
The Government knew
about the torturing
and threats
that Amarildo's family
was suffering since April.
IN JULY, THE CASE
OF THE DISAPPEARANCE OF AMARILDO
BECOMES AN INQUIRY AT THE
15TH CIVIL POLICE STATION.
The period I was in charge
of the inquiry
was the initial period of 15 days.
It was too short.
I'd a general idea
of the situation,
what was being presented
and some of the questions
that were made.
The first one was regarding
the cameras at the UPP building,
that were switched off.
So, we had images of Amarildo
going into the police car
and going towards
the UPP building.
But we had no images
of his getting off at the UPP
due to this off camera.
So, there was only the statement
of the UPP Commander
who said he was there
when Amarildo
arrived at the UPP
and that after
checking his papers,
because they took
his working papers there,
he verified Amarildo had no
arrest warrant pending
and let him go.
He also said he saw
Amarildo going down
the stairs that face
the UPP container.
But at the end
of this staircase
there was
another camera that was not off
and Amarildo didn't appear
leaving by the stairs.
AFTER 15 DAYS INTO THE INQUIRY,
THE CASE IS TRANSFERRED
TO THE HOMICIDES POLICE STATION.
The police started
on a line of inquiry that was
totally wrong and prejudiced.
The prejudice
was to criminalize the victim
to justify these measures,
the barbarism.
If he is a drug dealer
he can be killed
by the police the way he was.
During the 15 days
I was at the head of the inquiry
the only questions the press and even
the people in my social environment
even family members, friends...
they asked me whether Amarildo
was a drug dealer or not.
We can't conclude whether
there was a homicide or not,
if there was a torture or not
due to the fact that a person,
in this case, the alleged victim
is a drug dealer.
The "Extra" newspaper
published an article
on the possible involvement
of Amarildo and his wife
with the drug traffic.
Amarildo, as well as many other
members of the organization,
he was responsible
for storing materials,
drugs, for the traffic.
The report concluded
at the beginning of the week,
Ruchester Marreiros
came to request
the temporary detention
of Elizabete Gomes da Silva.
The police chief said he only found
the involvement of the couple
after the disappearance
of Amarildo.
The head of the G?vea Police Station,
Orlando Zaccone,
recorded yesterday
an interview in Piau?,
and explained why he decided not to
request the detaining of Elizabete.
After observing the data collected
by chief Ruchester,
I found no evidence
attached to the inquiry
to justify the detaining of many people,
including Beth,
wife of the missing person,
Amarildo.
There were no elements capable
to evidence that the Beth mentioned
in a statement given by
a policeman was the Elizabete
'cause there was no recognition evidence
that they were the same person.
Orlando Zaconne also questions another
conclusion of the assistant chief.
That Amarildo's house would be
an escape route for drug dealers.
He probably does not know
Amarildo's house,
which has 10 square meters and
has no window through which to escape.
A house of very poor people
who lived where
drug trafficking was happening.
My report included this evidences
rejecting them.
Since I cannot go along with the idea
that people who live near
or next to the drug traffic,
anywhere in this country,
are drug dealers just because
they live in poor places.
Where is Amarildo?
Mr. President,
on the Amarildo case,
there are many indications
that the drug dealers have
disappeared with him.
If Amarildo were not missing,
he would have to be in prison.
The one taking the blame now
is the poor military police officer
who has nothing to do with it
and that is being accused
of vanish with Amarildo's corpse.
And now they are sleeping
thanks to prescription pills,
with this sword dangling
over their heads,
with this rotten finger
of some people, pointing at them,
as if they were to blame.
I deeply regret
this case is being exploited
by some state representatives.
in a time of pain they use this
to gain advantages.
There is a fantasy
that the drug dealer is someone
who has to be exterminated.
The so-called drug dealer,
slum dweller,
he is built and materialized into
this enemy number one.
All the dead are drug dealers.
All the dead have a connection
with the traffic.
We don't de-constructed
until today
the perspective of war,
of confrontation.
And as a result of the confrontation,
the extermination.
We are choosing people to die
and after they are dead
they instantly become drug dealers.
They are immediately
branded as drug dealers.
Because the drug dealer has been
stripped of his humanity.
So killing a drug dealer is no crime.
It's not a human fact.
We haven't understood yet
that he who kills
a criminal is a criminal.
We told the police
that if they follow on this path
they would commit one more crime,
because the trafficking has absolutely
no connection with it.
They also try
to fabricate evidence
with witnesses taken
by those involved.
By Major Edson, who is one
of the main accused parties
and by another policeman
also accused.
They take witnesses that
saw and heard
some drug dealers saying
that they had eliminated Amarildo
after he left
the main UPP building.
This farce was
quickly dismantled.
A witness saw Amarildo's body
covered by a plastic,
being tortured
and asking for help.
This witness never wanted to give
a statement and this is understandable.
With a police that keeps
threatening the witnesses,
planting witnesses.
How are you going to make
a statement to help the inquiry?
It was the procedural fraud
practiced
that enable to prove what they did.
The conversations between
the alleged drug dealers
who we now know
weren't drug dealers
but agents of the State
pretending to be drug dealers
and assuming
the disappearance of Amarildo.
A man who identifies himself
as the drug dealer named Catatau
makes threats to a policeman
infiltrated in the traffic
and suggests he killed Amarildo,
who went by the alias Boi.
Expert examination
showed that this man
was police officer Marlon
staging a farce.
You rat, I'll cut your head off,
do you hear?
My friend, my friend...
Let me explain to you,
Boi is on you, already!
So what we have is
a set of procedural fraud
which was not very
well explained, either.
The conversations
between State agents.
We have in Rio de Janeiro,
The Guardian, that tapes everyone,
this device should be audited
for us to find out who
talked to whom in this period.
Who in the Government
talked to whom?
And then we would know what problem
isn't in the order of the Rocinha UPP,
the Commander
and his subordinates.
This would show us the MO
of the State in these occurrences.
The State also cared to preserve
the person of Major Edson.
in such way that
he was never dismissed.
He went on vacation.
When came to the conclusion,
days before he was formally charged
with the death of Amarildo
he had gone on vacation.
He wasn't removed from his post.
If we look at it,
from the disappearance
of Amarildo on the 14th of July
until the two following months.
The entire government had
the version not official.
The media insisted on it until
they could no longer deny.
The Judiciary branch,
the Prosecutor's Office step aside
without going
into the question
and it almost came to the point
that the fantasy version
that incriminated the victim,
Amarildo, prevailed.
We got to the conclusion,
that some of the police officers
were responsible
for the death of Amarildo.
Torture and death
of Amarildo.
What happened was a barbaric
action that took place there.
I'm a worker.
Any vagrant will say
he is a worker.
Every bastard vagrant I took down
said he was a worker.
Now you're a worker
in that shitty place?
What sort of worker, son?
Only been a drug dealer.
Pay attention.
You are fucked already.
Do you want your wife
to be fucked too?
Your child to be fucked too?
'Cause that's what
I'm going to do, Boi.
This "I'm a worker" talk
is rubbish.
Fuck off!
My wife, my wife is honest.
- Boi, you've been snitched.
- It's nothing like that.
You know the dirty
things that happen there.
No, it's only honest
people in my place.
My children, my wife,
we've nothing to do with it.
All friends with the criminals
in this shitty place.
- Do you want me to take your son in?
- You know me!
I'm going to forge it
and bust your son.
I'll bring him in and beat the crap
out of him like I'm doing with you.
- You know me!
- Is this what you want?
- Give us the fucking guns!
- There are no guns!
You're stashing them guns
for the men.
Who lives in that house cannot
work for any criminal act.
- Only honest stuff.
- But you are stupid.
You're stashing them guns because
of the powder for your old lady.
My wife is decent.
My wife is a mother of a family.
You mean your wife
is a family mother?
She is a whore.
A real whore.
Sniffer, she is a real slut.
Keeps putting her big nose
on the powder.
Whore my ass.
Do not talk about my family.
- Keep your voice down.
- Don't talk about my family.
Just offering her
old pussy around...
Do not talk about my wife,
you bastard!
- Why are you all steamed up?
- I'm not steamed up.
You're fucked!
- You're fucked!
- Leave alone!
No more dirty business
in that shitty place.
Dirty business is what
you are doing to me now.
You stash the guns for the drug dealers
who sniff powder and fuck your woman
and I'm the one
fucking around?
Do not talk about my wife.
- Your wife is a whore, son.
- My wife is no whore!
- Do not talk about my wife!
- And keep your voice down.
Do you want to die?
Give me them fucking guns!
Damn it!
Where are the guns, you bum?
Where are the guns,
mother fucker?
Where are the guns,
mother fucker?
- You vagrant.
- There is no fucking gun.
Where are the guns,
mother fucker?
Wake up. Wake up, you bum.
Talk now, mother fucker.
Where are the guns?
It's over, Boi.
It's over!
You fucked, Boi!
- It's over, Medeiros.
- Shit, this is going to stink, Major.
No, it's not.
Clean this shit and lose the body.
Amarildo,
I can say with an open heart,
with a clean soul.
Being the person he was
on a very day basis,
he was always
working on something.
He was glad to work.
It was the same thing with
helping people.
I always saw Amarildo
carrying a sofa, a fridge,
carrying building materials
for other people.
I saw him taking a neighbor
who was ill to the hospital.
They managed to do
something bad,
something really bad
to such a good person.
Torture always existed
in this country, always.
But it gets improved
in the civil military dictatorship.
At that time it was against
thoughts, against ideas.
And we inherited this.
The Police inherited this.
This practice was widespread,
it goes for everyone.
But today it essentially
affects the poorer level.
With the military dictatorship,
the Police, mainly the Military Police,
gains much relevance.
Their numbers raised and they gain
these powers on the fringe of legality.
BOPE, for example,
was created by a colonel linked
to the dungeons of the
dictatorship in 1978.
So we have a relation of these
paramilitary groups
or "para-official",
the military dictatorship,
the military police
and the terror model implemented
during the dictatorship,
that was not dismantled with the
re-democratization of the country.
Still today,
we still have this interface
between a Police State,
the punitive State
and the State of exception.
In a State with the rule of law,
the State is limited by the Law.
But in a Police State
everything is allowed.
In a Police State, the State
no longer is a representation
of civil society or of
a politically organized society.
Therefore the State with their apparatus
becomes the enemy of society.
And through force
or brutality,
it seeks not to
be legitimized,
but it seeks affirmation
through terror.
No violence!
The violence on the 20th
was very intense.
The police truly had no skill at all
to deal with that kind of event.
So, many people were wounded,
constitutional rights
were violated in series.
The population was a hostage
of the Police training
which at that time was none.
Resist, resist, resist!
Bastards!
Cowards! Cowards!
Stay!
Its a civil war, fucker!
And one demonstration after the other,
the violence got worse.
That was a remarkable
characteristic.
From aggressions
with no grounds at all
to arrests with no justification.
Revolution!
No matter the reason,
police violence
has always been disproportional.
So the feeling the population has
is that when it relates to the State,
the State rejects it,
then it protests
and then it gets beaten up.
And in a police State the power
is not with the Police alone.
Other Justice agencies,
they start to act also
with the same police logic
and they coordinate
themselves within the State.
So we get a repressive
State structure
within the structure of the State.
The Police that started
to repress the demonstrations
is the same that always
trained up on the favelas.
Breaking in, kicking walls,
slapping faces, killing people.
That is the Police
that got trained.
And the middle
class always said
it was allowed because
that Police "are protecting us".
But they started to go to the demonstrations
and no longer protected the middle class.
All the violence people
went through during the demonstrations.
All the brutality,
all the incompetence of the Police,
the media were there,
filming it.
But in the communities here,
it's a rare thing,
one in a million.
When one has the courage
to point a camera
and record a police action
like this.
At this point,
Amarildo comes up as an icon.
As a symbol
of people's feelings
regarding this landmark
of police brutality.
And this spreads around the world.
It didn't move only Rio de Janeiro.
Where is Amarildo?
Police, where is Amarildo?
Police, where is Amarildo?
The Amarildo case
attracted attention
because after a long time
without a strong demonstration,
the slum came down so strongly
and served as a trigger
in other people
and other slums.
This was very important.
#WHEREISAMARILDO?
The police after 2007,
told, without any doubt,
by their commanders,
started to change its behavior
and started to make
people disappear.
So,
we believe the Police today
disappears
with the people it kills.
Because doing that,
there is no inquiry.
People, let's round up, please.
Let's block the street.
Death is a very hard thing,
but the disappearance
deepens the loss
because you have not buried anyone,
you cannot grieve,
you didn't say goodbye.
We are here
because we are sad,
because our Pacifying Police Unit
dragged my uncle
from his family.
That's enough.
It's not because we are poor,
and live in a poor community.
that we will be
victims of the State.
There's a say in Brazil that goes:
"go after your rights".
But I think that
it?s not correct.
Because you've to go after
the right you don't yet have.
The right you have you don't have
to go after. It already exists.
A right is not to be begged for,
it's to be demanded.
The Military Police in the State of Rio
cannot arrive at the slum
with a free pass to do
whatever it wants.
And that's it!
Many times
the policeman told me
about what the internal
police rules ask me...
No way. Your internal rules don't ask me
anything because I'm no policeman.
You are the policemen.
With the excuse that
Rocinha is a cartel,
they made Rocinha
into a head quarter.
Where everyone
inside the favela is a private,
getting orders
from any soldier.
Freeze, mother fucker!
Freeze, you bastard!
What? Is this the right way
to talk to me?
Amarildo's smile we'll never
see that again.
Amarildo's face we'll never
see that again.
The only thing left to the family
was grief and sadness.
There is a concept
of public security
that emphasizes and keeps
these two perspectives:
that of war
and that of the enemy.
And with a massively punitive control,
brutal and unlimited.
They gave a free pass to the Police
do what they want in the slum.
Because that is what
the UPP is all about.
The UPP is the Al-5
of the slums in Rio.
How was the DOPS called?
The political Police.
What is an UPP?
The same thing.
It's only the year that changes.
The torture is the same,
the disappearances are the same.
in the past it was the white university
student that was hunted down.
Now it's the children of black people and
of north-easterners who live in the slum.
The governor won't show up
on national TV to speak:
"I've come to promote
the control of the poor,
through guns,
rifles, and soldiers."
He will say he is
fighting the enemy.
That he is fighting
the drug traffic.
That he is promoting the good.
That the State is now coming in.
But when you search
for information,
you'll see that before the UPP
the Government
did work in the slums,
especially in election years.
The Government inaugurated PAC
and build the cable car
in Alem?o.
So what are they talking about
when they say the State
is coming in now? This is a lie.
What is going on now
is a greater militarization of the
slums and the areas around them.
The media plays
a major role in this.
And Brazilian media
is becoming conservative
and not analytical at all.
Every day TV tells us that shots
were exchanged in a pacified area.
Either the area is pacified
or there is a shootout.
There is a short-circuit
in critical reasoning
that would state: "Look, it did not
pacify it. It did not happen".
Because shootout and deaths
on both sides
is an absence of peace.
There is this
huge problem in there, right?
And the Brazilian media
refuses
to reflect upon it
in a decisive way.
If people try to learn what
has been going on in the city,
they will see that
the Amarildo case
was not the problem of the soldier who
arrested, tortured and killed a person.
What happened to Amarildo
is a public security issue.
The UPP would only work
if it were a Public Policy Unit
where the Police would be
part of the project.
The Police being the project will
never work neither in Rocinha
nor in any slum
and in no country either.
The Police cannot be
the project of any place.
With all the consideration
you have shown the family,
we will ask you to do this peacefully
because this is our fight.
They've already destroyed our family and
we won't let them destroy our dignity.
We're a dignified family
and we're among dignified friends,
so we'll walk in
and do our demonstration,
say our prayers and then we will all
leave peacefully, holding hands,
always struggling for our rights
because this is enough.
A State that spends billions
buying armaments,
increasing the numbers
of the police force,
with Robocop armored suits,
repressing the demonstrations,
armored cars,
armored helicopters,
assault rifles, spy robots,
so much money to control
and where is the advanced post of the
Department of Culture in Rocinha?
Where is the advanced post
of the Department of Social Services
and Human Rights in Rocinha?
Where is the advanced post of the
Department of Work and Income in Rocinha?
There is none,
but the UPP is there.
Full of assault rifles and ammunition
to exercise social control.
A large share of the society
and the authorities
are not worried about it.
They think the social issue
can be managed
from a police perspective.
But the social problem
is no police matter.
If all the dwellers
had gone with me,
if all the people
who were suffering.
If all the communities
that are experiencing this
organize themselves,
unite to seek their rights,
not submitting.
How many Amarildos died
without culprits?
How many people died
in Rocinha,
in Alem?o, Tabajaras,
Chap?u Mangueira, Vidigal.
In which community
its youth is not being
tortured and murdered?
They abandon for
over 4 decades
those who live in communities,
and now they say that
public security
is what we need.
Imagine those
who live in slums
more and more organized
and even more assuming their roles,
masters of their own lives.
The Amarildo case
was the trigger
for people from the slums,
for those from the asphalt.
Everybody should understand
that we are the power.
The response to this
is a network amongst the slums,
a network for people in a city
who question this
militarization model.
People who live in the slum
has this Gabriela syndrome.
All Brazilian does, too.
I was born like this,
I grew up like this,
I'll live like this
and I'll die like this... No!
We might even fail, man.
But the next generation will not
go through what we've endured.
We can change it
for the next generation.
We will go to every place
to create this network.
To strengthen this
link that is ours,
it belongs to the society.
Man, I was...
looking at the kids
talking one of these days,
it's the end of the year
and they have this tradition
to dye their hair.
New Year's Eve with hair dyed.
And they were saying they
wouldn't dye their hair this year.
And I asked them why not.
And they said if the policemen
grab them, they will beat them up.
Last year policemen said
they were all criminals
because they'd all
dyed their hair yellow.
And then I said
I would dye my hair too
and if the police beat them up
they will have to get me too
and we'll all go to jail together.
They all got excited and everyone
started to dye their hair.
I said: "If I do it,
will you all do it, too?"
They said: "We'll do it."
Everyone started to dye their hair,
I had to buy the dye,
hydrogen peroxide for everyone.
I even paid for them to have their
hair dyed as everyone joined in.
Breno...
All the kids around here,
Breno is there.
My next door neighbor.
Paula's son.
Everyone with their hair dyed blonde.
We'll go through the New Year
all dyed yellow, all right.
A community that lives at ease,
with more freedom will have more to gain.
Since some paths to happiness
are peace, culture and leisure.
A community that is cornered,
beaten up from all sides,
moves away from such hope
and its youngsters grow up in rebellion.
We can't fight organized crime by sending
in the armored cars into the alleys.
It will only produce more anger
in the people who live in the slum.
I live in the slum and I demand respect,
it's only my rights that I'm asking here.
Kicking doors without a warrant,
this must be punished, it cannot be.
It's all wrong,
it's even hard to explain.
But the way things are going,
it's way past the breaking point.
It's all wrong,
it's also hard to understand.
There are people sowing evil
and wishing to reap good.
Jobless mothers, children out of school,
that is the cycle we see in this place.
It's thousands of stories that are
basically the same, you can see.
I honestly can't see how
this cycle would stop,
but the way they are treating us
only helps this evil to spread.
Police dying,
criminals dying,
and a second after
another one takes the place
of the dead one,
and no one cares, to make it worse.
Now, my friend, it's all up to you,
just a warning to finish this.
The future of the slum depends
on the fruit you choose to plant.
Yes, it's all wrong.
It's even hard to explain.
But the way things are going,
it's way past the breaking point.
It's all wrong
and also hard to understand.
The Government sows evil
and wants to harvest good.
That's it.
UNTIL THE FINISHING
OF THIS FILM (JULY 2014),
MAJOR EDSON
AND 24 OTHER POLICE OFFICERS
STILL FACED CRIMINAL CHARGES
FOR THE TORTURE AND DEATH OF AMARILDO.