Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, one of Rio de Janeiro’s postcards, witnessed this Saturday (4) the meeting of dozens of relatives of children who were killed by stray bullets in the state over the last few years. The protest was called by the non-profit organization Rio de Paz.
Everyone held posters with portraits of 49 victims. In addition to being a cry against violence, the demonstration served to demand from the city hall the right to maintain a memorial in a tourist area, which is in the south zone, the city’s most upscale region.
Last weekend, Rio de Paz was surprised upon learning that the city hall removed the photos that were stuck in a fence and formed the memorial in the section of the Lagoa called Curva do Calombo. Posters with the names of murdered police officers, posted by the organization on the same grid, were not removed by the municipal administration.
Housewife Thamires Assis held a photo of her daughter, Ester Assis, who died after being hit in the head by a stray bullet, while returning from school on April 5, 2023, in Madureira, north of the city. The girl was only nine years old. At the time, there was a confrontation between drug dealers.
Thamires Assis, mother of Ester, victim of a stray bullet, protested at Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas – Photo: Tânia Rêgo/Agência Brasil
For Ester’s mother, keeping the tribute in Lagoa is a way of “asking for help and justice for the children”.
“It’s the only way for us parents to cry out for help. This is to show the mayor, governor, whoever [quer que seja]that our children deserve to be respected, wherever they live”, Thamires told Brazil Agency.
School blouse
Being hit by a gunshot on the stretch between school and home was also the fate of Marcus Vinicius da Silva, who was 14 years old when he died in 2018.who was 14 years old.
Bruna da Silva took her school blouse to the event that his son was wearing when he was shot. The mother says that the boy was injured during a Civil Police operation in the Maré favela complex, in the north zone. The family blames the police for the death of Marcus Vinicius.
She reinforces the request that the mayor of Rio allow the memorial to exist. “With so much for him to do, change and improve in Rio de Janeiro, he shouldn’t worry about the faces of these children. Why are these children bothering you?” he said.
Police action
Police action is also cited as the cause of death. of young Thiago Menezes Flausino, aged 13, in August 2023, in Cidade de Deus, a community in the west zone of Rio. Four police officers from the Military Police (PM) Shock Battalion were indicted for the murder during an exchange of gunfire .
The boy’s aunt, Ana Cláudia Araújo, argues that the exposure of faces in Lagoa is a way of drawing Rio society’s attention to violence. “We are here to give visibility to our relatives because we think it is important for this type of act to happen. People from the South Zone have no idea of our reality within the communities”, he declared.
Visibility
The founder of Rio de Paz, Antonio Carlos Costa, classified Mayor Eduardo Paes’ decision to remove the memorial without any prior communication with the organization or the children’s parents as a “lack of sensitivity”.
Costa explained that the exhibition had existed in Curva do Calombo for nine years, but without portraits, just posters containing the names of the victims. It was only last Saturday (28) that the names were changed for the photos.
He called the decision to remove only the photos of the children and keep the names of the dead police officers a “break of symmetry”. “We have to cry for the deaths of our police officers, but we cannot forget to cry for these children too”, he said.
For Costa, the mayor ordered the photos to be removed in less than 24 hours after experiencing some type of pressure. “The images reached people who have no interest in the lives of these children, who showed a strange concern for public order,” he said.
“It’s worse for the image of Rio de Janeiro [a série] of children killed by stray bullets in our city than the photos of children killed by stray bullets on the Rio de Janeiro postcard”, he declared.
The founder of Rio de Paz explained that choosing a postcard to make the memorial is a way for the message to reach opinion makers and representatives of public authorities. “We are deliberately creating a huge embarrassment for public authorities in our state. They need to be confronted”, he says.
Parents participated in the demonstration at Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, where the city hall removed banners. Photo: Tânia Rêgo/Agência Brasil
In addition to the photos of the 49 children killed between 2020 and 2024, Rio de Paz displayed a banner in Lagoa with the phrase “Death of children: the most hideous face of war”. At the end of the event, all the material was collected by the organizers.
“We will respect the decision that the mayor made. We will only return the photos to this location if they allow it. But here is the expression of our deepest indignation”, stated Costa.
“There is no chance of these deaths continuing with our silence,” he said, blaming the governor of Rio de Janeiro, Cláudio Castro, for deaths related to lethal operations in communities.
City hall
THE Brazil Agency requested comments from Rio city hall about this Saturday’s act, but did not receive a response until the report was completed. Last weekend, when the material was removed, the city hall informed, through a note, that it recognized the importance and need to pay homage to children who were victims of violence, but that it removed the material because it had not been consulted by the organizers to authorize the installation of the exhibition in a public place.
The city council added that it was evaluating the relevance of keeping the tribute to the murdered military police officers in the same place, “which is also fair and necessary”.
“The municipality is fully interested in combating violence, paying fair tribute to its victims and is open to discussing any type of initiative, as long as it is consulted in advance,” the statement concluded.
In addition to the demonstrations in Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas related to the deaths of police officers and children, Rio de Paz is notorious for carrying out acts of silent protests on the sands of Copacabana beach, usually with signs, posters and crosses.
According to the organization, provisional acts on the waterfront are carried out without prior authorization. Only one demonstration was resisted by the city hall, when municipal guards removed replicas that symbolized shacks, in 2016. The protest questioned the legacy of the Olympics, held in the city that year.
THE Brazil Agency He contacted the state government about the occurrence of clashes and stray bullets, but received no response. Public security is one of the responsibilities of state governments.
