“These are missing people who are never coming home,” said Antonio Carlos Costa, a pastor who has worked for years in Rio’s slums and runs the anti-violence group Rio de Paz. “We’re talking about numbers far higher than the number killed or disappeared under Brazil’s military dictatorship. These are the disappeared of democracy.”
Anderson de Souza turned back after bounding down a dark maze of passageways in Rio de Janeiro’s sprawling Rocinha slum, incandescent light illuminating his face.
It was right here, he said, pointing to a spot near his family’s shack, that the police led his father away to a brutal torture and death. And it was in the same place he said he lost all hope that Rio’s ambitious security program to pacify and permanently occupy slums ahead of the 2016 Olympics would make his city safer.
“We’re not going to get my father back alive. All I want now is justice, that’s it,” Souza said. “Things have only gotten worse since the police came here. At least when the drug gangs had control, we knew the rules. Now, there is only fear. Police are snatching people up randomly, just like my dad.”
Human rights activists and police watchdogs say the case of Amarildo de Souza, a 42-year-old construction worker who an internal police investigation found was tortured, killed and “disappeared” by officers in July, is emblematic of deeper problems with Rio’s plan to clear slums of gangs who have held sway over most of the city’s thousand shantytowns for decades.
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