Amnesty International UKOn 5 August, Rio de Janeiro will welcome athletes from around the world to compete in the international spectacle that is the Olympic Games. But there is a dark problem in the city – and in the country of Brazil. The police force, supposed to be guaranteeing safety for citizens, is shooting to kill. The victims are mostly young people, and the majority of them are black.
Of the 56,000 homicides in Brazil every year, 30,000 are young people aged 15 to 29. The police are responsible for a significant percentage of the people killed in Rio. One in five people killed in the city died as a result from police interventions in 2015. The majority of those were young, black men.
In reality, the numbers could be much higher as some killings aren’t officially registered as being a result of police intervention. This was the case with 10-year-old Eduardo de Jesus, who was shot dead by the police on 2 April 2015.
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