Unreported World - Brazil Slum Warfare
tags:
Stumble ThisUnreported World travels to Brazil and one of Rio De Janeiro's most notorious mega-slums, where drug lords run a parallel state.
"After negotiating with some of Rio's leading drug lords to gain permission to film on their turf, reporter Khaled Kazziha and director Tom Porter live in the world of the traffickers for three weeks. They uncover the reality of a war that is claiming the lives of innocent civilians as well as policemen and the traffickers.
Rio de Janeiro has always had a violent side to its tourist image of a paradise city, but the violence has grown to such an extent that for many of the people who now live there, conditions are warlike.
In the past twenty years half a million people have been killed in Brazil by firearms alone. There are more gun-related killings in Brazil than in many war zones - four times as many people have been killed there as the number recorded in the past 50 years of Arab-Israeli conflict.
In many of Rio's poorest neighborhoods, drug gangs rule with their own laws. The police only enter these areas heavily armed and often shoot indiscriminately, injuring children and alienating residents who are increasingly supporting the traffickers. Daily funerals of traffickers and policemen perpetuate a cycle of violence that is tearing communities apart.
Kazziha visits one Mothers' Day party organized by traffickers to highlight how the drug lords are winning over the hearts and minds of the communities they rule over, as well as talking to desperate mothers searching for their disappeared sons.
The team then meets up with one of Brazil's most celebrated policemen. A tough cop with a no-nonsense attitude, he tells them: "Human rights are for human beings. What we have to deal with are animals."
The mayor of Rio, Cesar Maia, acknowledges to Unreported World that he is not in control of the whole city, and that the traffickers are operating a parallel state. His only solution is more violence. "Traffickers need to be eliminated: either imprisoned or killed."
http://www.channel4.com/news/microsites/U/unreportedworld/brazil.html
"After negotiating with some of Rio's leading drug lords to gain permission to film on their turf, reporter Khaled Kazziha and director Tom Porter live in the world of the traffickers for three weeks. They uncover the reality of a war that is claiming the lives of innocent civilians as well as policemen and the traffickers.
Rio de Janeiro has always had a violent side to its tourist image of a paradise city, but the violence has grown to such an extent that for many of the people who now live there, conditions are warlike.
In the past twenty years half a million people have been killed in Brazil by firearms alone. There are more gun-related killings in Brazil than in many war zones - four times as many people have been killed there as the number recorded in the past 50 years of Arab-Israeli conflict.
In many of Rio's poorest neighborhoods, drug gangs rule with their own laws. The police only enter these areas heavily armed and often shoot indiscriminately, injuring children and alienating residents who are increasingly supporting the traffickers. Daily funerals of traffickers and policemen perpetuate a cycle of violence that is tearing communities apart.
Kazziha visits one Mothers' Day party organized by traffickers to highlight how the drug lords are winning over the hearts and minds of the communities they rule over, as well as talking to desperate mothers searching for their disappeared sons.
The team then meets up with one of Brazil's most celebrated policemen. A tough cop with a no-nonsense attitude, he tells them: "Human rights are for human beings. What we have to deal with are animals."
The mayor of Rio, Cesar Maia, acknowledges to Unreported World that he is not in control of the whole city, and that the traffickers are operating a parallel state. His only solution is more violence. "Traffickers need to be eliminated: either imprisoned or killed."
http://www.channel4.com/news/microsites/U/unreportedworld/brazil.html
| 8 months 2 weeks ago | CH
