Children who carry guns in Brazil: Shocking images that show drug gangs’ brutal grip on Brazil streets where hundreds of thousands will travel for next year’s World Cup
The largest city
on Brazil’s north-east coast, Salvador is a major tourist destination and the
site of a 56,500-seat stadium being readied for next year’s World Cup. It is
also in the grip of an unprecedented wave of violence that has seen murder
rates soar by more than 250 per cent.
The dense slums
of the city, capital of Bahia state, are an impenetrable warren ruled by
gangsters, who control the terrified and impoverished residents with
intimidations, beatings and summary executions. Express kidnappings, where
individuals are abducted and forced to withdraw funds from automated teller
machines to secure their release, are common, as are muggings, robberies,
pickpocketing, bag snatching and drug dealing.
Brazilian drug
gangs regularly recruit minors to carry out their dirty work, because they go
unpunished. They never get any prison sentences, meaning that the most innocent
face can hide a deadly killer.
Underage rapists
and killers get only “socio-educational” sentences and are freed after
completing their 21-year-old birthday, with no criminal history, because Brazil
is a signatory to the UN Children Rights Convention.
Compounding the
problem, under aggressive anti-gun measures from the Brazilian government, most
Brazilian citizens have no access to legal weapons to defend themselves, while
their victimizers have plenty access to illegal heavy guns.
With just over
13 months until the start of the World Cup and an expected mass influx of
football fans, police in Salvador face a battle to take control of their city.
But in a force notorious for brutality and corruption, they face opposition not
only from criminal gangs but also a skeptical populace. These pictures show the
brutal reality of life in the streets of Salvador’s slums, which are not much different
from Rio and other Brazilian cities.
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1 comment :
We are in an epidemic of violence and killings in Brazil. Teens may not be arrested even if they commit atrocious crimes. The number of deaths has exceeded the deaths in the civil war in Syria.
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