Over the weekend a group of armed gunmen invaded a five-star hotel in Rio de Janeiro, sparking a fatal shootout that lasted over three hours and left one woman dead and a police officer wounded. The group of 10 heavily armed men managed to escape police by running to the hillside shantytown of Rocinha, Brazil’s largest slum.
The incident is expected to trigger a further police crackdown on Brazil’s most popular tourist destination; as Rio gears up for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, there will be little lenience when it comes to ridding the city of its less desirable elements. Favelas like Rocinha are likely to be targeted by a recent government scheme of ‘pacification’ – the installation of police units on a permanent basis in Rio’s slums.
Since last year, the Police Pacification Unit (UPP) has occupied up to seven of Rio’s 1,000 or so favelas, including the Morro da Providência, Ladeira dos Tabajaras, and the City of God favela, made famous by Fernando Meirelle’s film.
Presidential hopeful Dilma Rousseff has commented that the shootout outside Rocinha is proof of the need for more pacification units. By the end of this year, according to Rio’s authorities, the police force will occupy up to 59 favelas, which they say will liberate some 210,000 residents from the rule of Rio’s drug lords.
But police are unlikely to receive a warm welcome from the people of Rocinha – at least, to start. Like most of Rio’s favela-dwellers, the community has a rocky history with the long arm of the law due to the high death toll from police raids on drug-traffickers, which often leave residents caught in the crossfire. From 1998 to 2009, it was estimated that over 10,000 people were killed in Rio state from deadly police confrontations – on average, 2.4 deaths per day.
There is a worry that a permanent police presence will lead to more killings as the drug lords battle to reclaim their lost territory, but there are others who say that the situation could not get much grimmer anyway. Rio’s favelas, which account for some 20 per cent of the population, are generally ruled by Brazil’s three main drug gangs. Though, a more recent phenomenon has seen slums across Brazil come under the power of ex-cop vigilantes who have decided to administer their own controversial brand of justice. Which option is more dangerous for slum-dwellers, the drug lords or vigilante police, is hard to tell. After decades of violence, the pacification units may be a step forward.
So far, the majority of those living in favelas where the police have been placed report positive changes to their security situation. However, there have also been accounts of heavy-handed police searches and conflicts with residents accused of links to drug gangs. Meanwhile, other measures have been condemned by human rights groups, such as the prohibition of electronic funk parties.
Only time will tell if the new pacification scheme will have a lasting effect on Brazil’s infamously dangerous favelas. But already officials have pointed out that the key to its success will rest on one primary consideration: whether president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s replacement after the 3 October elections will be committed to bolstering the programme with other social projects, job growth and investment in the police force itself.
Posted August 27, 2010 at 6:45 am. Add a comment
Earlier this month, Mexico’s conservative president Felipe Calderón’s last resort suggestion to tackle the drug lords and help his country’s flailing economy was to legalise marijuana. Mexico may be more optimistic about green shoots on the horizon – with a 7.6 per cent year-on-year rise in GDP reported in the Financial Times on Friday – but perhaps it won’t be the only green to emerge in Mexico’s economy.
Last year, Mexico’s former deputy agriculture minister, Jeffrey Jones, told some of the country’s farmers that they could learn a thing or two about supply and demand from the drug traffickers – he was later forced to resign. But many have quietly agreed with him.
The Mexican illegal drug market is one of the most successful businesses in the country. Last year, it employed up to 450,000 people, and according to the Wall Street Journal, accumulated up to US$20 billion in sales, just behind the oil and automotive sectors in revenue. In 2009, Forbes counted infamous Mexican drug lord Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman as one of the world’s billionaires. If brought under the government tax system, arguably, the sale, production and distribution of drugs could provide a substantial source of income.
The US recession, swine flu and a spiralling war with the drug lords has seen Mexico take a major beating in the market; last year ended with a 6.5 per cent decline in economic activity.
Calderón has toyed with the idea of bringing marijuana under government control, as it accounts for half of the income of Mexico’s drug gangs. Though his conservative supporters may be wondering what he’s been smoking.
A staunch opponent of the narcotraffickers, many were shocked with his announcement at a security-focused round-table on 3 August calling for “a fundamental debate” on legalising cannabis.
Former president Vicente Fox quickly followed suit. Legalisation “does not mean that drugs are good… rather we have to see it as a strategy to strike and break the economic structure that allows mafias to generate huge profits in their business, which in turn serve to corrupt and to increase their power,” he was reported as saying by the Economist.
But others are not so sure. Former foreign minister Jorge Castañeda told reporters, “how would you continue with a war on drugs in Tijuana, when across the border grocery stores were selling marijuana?”
Since Calderón took office, some 28,000 people have been killed in Mexico’s narco-wars. The army has been deployed to handle what has become a national crisis, with no end in sight.
Given its vast trade links to its northern neighbour, a big question is whether Mexico’s economy can bounce back from the turmoil that has abounded since the recession in the US, and if legalising marijuana would help or hinder that process.
A further consideration is that – while perhaps not attracting the most desired clientele – Mexico’s tourism sector would certainly see a boost if legalisation were to go ahead. Few Americans are likely to book pricey getaways to Amsterdam with legal marijuana in their ‘own backyard’.
Posted August 21, 2010 at 2:15 pm. 3 comments
Can life for Haitians, most still living amid the rubble, debris and skeletons of the January earthquake, become any more nightmarish? It appears that it can, as the devastated country may soon fall into the hands of former Fugees singer and pop star Wyclef Jean- whose first policy will be to name Haiti’s towns after food stuffs.
The Haitian-born musician has cast his bid for the presidency in the country’s first elections following the earthquake, due 28 November. Jean has played a major role in delivering emergency aid to Haiti and has garnered huge popularity in his native home for his musical success.
But the prospect of the US-based rapper – who left Haiti at age 9 and has no prior political experience – guiding this broken country out of the ashes is little more than farcical. Is fame and money enough to secure a free ticket to Haiti’s crumbling presidential palace? The idea is offensive to the millions of suffering Haitians who have surely reached their height of tolerance for the cruel absurdities that fate has thrown at them.
Though you can’t fault Wyclef Jean for caring at least – a characteristic not exactly shared by another celebrity who made a strange appearance in the politics pages of the news this week for her part in the war crimes trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor.
US supermodel Naomi Campbell told the judge, as she testified against Taylor who allegedly gave her blood diamonds as a gift, that giving witness at the international war crimes tribunal was “a big inconvenience”.
But while Campbell begrudgingly entered the political sphere, many more celebrities are finding a new outlet for their creative souls that even beats yoga. Musicians like the Pixies and Elvis Costello have protested the Gaza flotilla incident by refusing to play in Israel, Oliver Stone has stuck it to the US with his new film, South of the Border, displaying his Stone-esque (mis)understanding of Latin American history and politics, and Madonna has continually made headlines through her attempts to raid African countries of their offspring.
Jean will not be the first celeb to dabble in politics; Venezuelan beauty queen Irene Saez competed against Hugo Chavez in the 1998 presidential race. And while not qualified for the US presidency due to his Austrian background, action film hero Arnold Schwarzenegger became the governor of California in 2003.
It has still not been determined whether Jean will be able to run for the presidency under the rules of the constitution, but if the pop star is given a shot at the race, it will be up to Haitians to determine whether a hip hop president is what the country needs. Haiti has fewer options than wealthier countries, and there is no doubt that it’s low GDP makes it easier for anyone with a limo and the right passport to run in the polls.
But it is up to the Haitian people to cut through the celebrity culture and misplaced idolisation, which is responsible for bringing a new breed of famous, wealthy and unqualified people into the political arena.
Posted August 7, 2010 at 6:26 am. 1 comment
If Wikileaks has ‘blood on its hands’ than I hate to think what the leaders of the UK and US are covered in.
The website which “publishes and comments on leaked documents alleging government and corporate misconduct” headed by Julian Assange, has come under fire in recent days for leaking thousands of documents providing detailed first-hand accounts of the war in Afghanistan to newspapers, the Guardian, the New York Times, and Der Speigel.
The Pentagon has come out saying that Wikileaks’ decision was irresponsible, and the lives of military personnel and Afghanis who colluded with the military are now under grave risk.
US admiral Mike Mullen was reported by the Guardian as saying: “Mr Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family.”
WikiLeaks had withheld about 15,000 intelligence reports to protect the identity of informants, according to the Guardian. But some of the published documents do contain information about Afghanis who cooperated with coalition forces.
Perhaps Wikileaks could have taken more precaution to strike the names of informants from the documents. But then again, couldn’t the Guardian, Der Speigel and the New York Times have done the same?
Funny, how the major media publications responsible for bringing the secret war logs into the public eye have not heard a peep of disapproval from US authorities. Yet the small, somewhat unknown media site with far less resources, cash and prominence shoulders all of the blame.
Their security policy may have been dealt a blow, but the US military’s PR strategists are savvy enough to focus their efforts on discrediting Assange, a much easier target than the respectable news sites that, just like Wikileaks, published documents that were leaked to them.
Meanwhile, the US government has failed to acknowledge the hundreds of unreported civilian deaths that have been revealed by the documents, and Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has made no official statement concerning claims that two UK military units had caused an ‘exceptional’ amount of civilian casualties.
In November 2007, civilians were shot on four separate occasions in Kabul by a newly deployed detachment of Coldstream Guards. Royal Marine troops are also alleged to have shot civilians who came ‘too close’ to convoys or patrols on eight occasions in Helmand province during a six-month period in 2008. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported 828 civilian deaths in the same year as a result of “pro-government forces”.
UNAMA says that these incidents, “are of continuing concern”, where unarmed drivers, car passengers and motorcyclists continue to come under fire.
It is pretty rich for the US military, UK military and their political leaders to single out Wikileaks as having responsibility for the deaths accruing in Afghanistan. If the military did not have such a shocking record of civilian casualties to hide, then such ‘leaks’ would have far less gravitas, and would not need to happen.
Posted July 31, 2010 at 2:14 pm. 2 comments
BP, the current whipping boy of US public opinion after the Gulf of Mexico disaster, has managed to ingratiate itself even further into America’s bad books for its alleged lobbying campaign over the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi – the only man to be convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
As the spluttering British oil giant gasps for breathing space, some on the other side of the Atlantic question whether the US interrogation and media storm is justified.
Megrahi was released from prison last year by the Scottish executive on compassionate grounds, as it was believed that the Libyan national had only three months left to live. Today, he is still alive. And Washington, which was far from pleased with the decision at the time, is now even less pleased. To add insult to injury, the oil company responsible for destroying the entire Lousiana coastline supposedly had a hand in Megrahi being set free, admitting that it lobbied for a fast-track approach for a prisoner transfer with Libya to promote its commercial interests in the country.
The story does not exactly leave BP smelling like roses, but it does beg a much bigger question about the role of private companies in politics and whether lobbying a government over political decisions for commercial gain is fair play. It also brings into question whether this blame game, in light of the evidence that Megrahi may have been wrongly convicted, is justified at all.
This matter aside, there is still the point that a. lobbying is not, and is unlikely to ever become, illegal and b. the US would never have cared about BP’s ties to Libya were it not for the black slick covering its once-pristine beaches and oiled pelicans blasting the front page of the papers for the past three months.
“If that [lobbying for the prison transfer] is the extent of BP’s involvement, it has no reason to apologise,” writes Daily Telegraph commentator Tracy Corrigan. “In fact, as oil-industry lobbying goes, this seems a rather benign example. Oil is a particularly political industry. Many big oil companies are an arm of their respective governments, and energy security is a legitimate national interest.”
Though, the argument swings both ways. If an oil company has enough political clout to act as an “arm of its respective government” then surely it has the potential to become a more dangerous adversary? This feeds into the thinking in the US, as the scandal has led to an investigation into BP’s dealings with the ‘rogue state’ and its role in Megrahi’s release.
The former MI6 officer Sir Mark Allen, a special adviser to BP after leaving the intelligence services, has been summoned by the Senate to give evidence over BP’s role in the prisoner transfer, and BP executive and America’s most hated, Tony Hayward, has also been asked to appear.
While hardly rallying to the defense of big oil, holding BP accountable for its alleged support for the release of Megrahi at the very least lacks consistency. In the US, where lobbying is the cornerstone of its free, fair and industry-financed elections, America’s agenda toward BP seems about as clean and clear as the Gulf waters.
Posted July 22, 2010 at 5:30 pm. 1 comment
