On this Mother’s Day, Agência Brasil heard stories of mothers who fight for the truth and for the memory of their children, lost in the veiled war that takes place every day on the outskirts of large Brazilian cities. These are emblematic cases that represent a challenge to be faced and overcome, according to experts interviewed by our report. This year’s Mother’s Day will not be celebrated by pedagogue Ana Paula de Oliveira, 46, who lives in the Manguinhos favela, in Rio de Janeiro. She is the mother of Johnatha de Oliveira Lima, who was shot in the back at the age of 19. On May 14, 9 years ago, the young man never returned home. “My son wasn’t in the wrong place, he wasn’t at the wrong time, he hadn’t done anything wrong, he was just another young black man in a favela.” And, for her, he was killed by the police because he was black, poor and a resident of the periphery. This is Ana Paula Oliveira’s biggest wound. She says that on the day of the crime, the young man was returning to his family’s house, after leaving a pavê at his grandmother’s house and taking his girlfriend home. The journey was short, as they all lived in the same community, but what happened along the way changed their lives forever. A discussion between military police from the Pacifying Police Unit (UPP) and residents of the community, outraged by the brutality of the police, ended with shots being fired in the air and in the direction of the protesters. The young man, who was just passing by, without even being involved in the conflict, was hit and died. “And then when I get this news I keep asking why? Why did the police kill my son?”, tells his mother Ana Paula Oliveira. Apparently, there was no reasonable explanation for such a banal death. It took a while for her to get back on her feet to fight for justice for her son. When participating in the first acts against police lethality in the state of Rio de Janeiro, the pedagogue realized that there was something in common among so many mothers, from so many different communities, not only in Rio, but throughout Brazil: black mothers wearing t-shirts with pictures of black children killed by the police. It was not a mere coincidence. After 9 years of the crime, Ana Paula is still waiting for a response from the Justice for the crime. “Since the murder I found other mothers and driven by the same struggle, which is the search for truth and justice, for our children, we ended up forming the Mães de Manguinhos movement”, explains the pedagogue. Brasília (DF) – Gabriela Ashanti supports a mother Photo: Personal Archive Support network The number of collectives of mothers who had their children murdered by the State is an indicator that there is structural prejudice in society, whether due to police brutality or the connivance of the Judiciary with so many unpunished deaths. This is what Maíra de Deus Brito, a journalist and doctoral student in Human Rights and Citizenship at the University of Brasília (UnB), claims. “There is structural racism and police brutality that the State allows to happen. From the moment we don’t see serious investigations, we don’t see punishment. As a society, we are letting this happen. We are literally losing our future when we allow these young people to leave so soon, in such a violent and abrupt way”, concludes Maíra Brito. In Bahia, this support network for mothers who lost their children to police lethality is also very present. The Minha Mãe Não Dorme project, by the Odara group – Instituto da Mulher Negra, based in Salvador, seeks to sensitize Brazilian and Bahian society to the damage and impacts caused by both police violence and drug trafficking in the lives of adolescents, young blacks , their mothers and family members. The action focuses on support, articulation, strengthening and dialogue with the mothers of young people murdered as a result of urban violence. “It is important that young people and mothers are aware of their reality because we cannot naturalize these levels and these types of violence that have been perpetrated against the black community historically. So, it’s not because the violence has been going on for a long time, I would even say that it’s secular violence, that they should be normalized, naturalized”, says Gabriela Ashanti, coordinator of the Minha Mãe Não Dorme project. When these mothers meet others who lost children in very similar circumstances, explains Gabriela Ashanti, they realize that it was not an isolated case, it was not an accident or something random. “They begin to realize or become more aware of this police violence and this lethality as a social phenomenon that needs strategies to be fought”. Another objective, according to the project coordinator, has a subjective and psychosocial dimension, as they seek strategies to emotionally strengthen themselves precisely at a time when they are weakened by the loss and, above all, by the way in which they suffered this loss. “The way these children are taken away from them makes them emotionally more fragile, with a grief that is gradually increased by indignation, revolt, a series of other feelings and sensations and emotions, which makes this grief worse. , intensify, even extend. So, when they meet, they seek strategies to strengthen and support themselves, including emotionally, one supports the other and one mirrors the other in ways of emotionally resisting”, details Gabriela Ashanti. Suppression of rights One of the mothers assisted by the Instituto da Mulher Negra is Edineide Barbosa do Carmo. In 2017, she and her daughter, Mirella do Carmo Barreto, aged just 6, were hanging out clothes at home in the São Caetano neighborhood, in Salvador, when military police allegedly entered the neighborhood in search of criminals who had stolen a cell phone. Witnesses, however, allege that the police arrived shooting, for no apparent reason, and that one of the shots hit little Mirella, who died hours later at the UPA in San Martin. Brasília (DF)-Edineide Barbosa do Carmo with her daughter Mirella do Carmo Barreto. Photo: Personal Archive/Disclosure After 6 years, the crime remains unsolved and the Justice held only one instruction hearing. “The feeling of spending Mother’s Day without my daughter, in the year 2023, is something very painful. When remembering her 13th birthday, that we would be together celebrating Mother’s Day, just like all mothers. And that right was taken away from me”, says Edineide. The first instruction hearing took place in 2018, and, after a long 5 years, the second hearing should take place on May 30th. Street vendor Bruna Mozer had her 18-year-old son executed in 2018 in the Miquiço community, in Rio de Janeiro. She says that her son was shot in the shoulder, but turned himself in to the military police (PM), but even so they fired another fatal shot. In the police investigation, the PMs claimed a resistance act followed by death. “My son Marcos Luciano Mozer was murdered by the State of Rio de Janeiro. They could have taken my son away. What kind of resistance act is this where the person is shot in the back and one in the head? He didn’t die in exchange for gunshots, he died lying on the ground, having already surrendered”, she questions. To make matters worse, explains Bruna Mozer, the State buried her son as an indigent. Even presenting herself to the Legal Medicine Institute (IML) with the birth certificate and CPF, she was unable to release the body or the child’s death certificate. Therefore, she had to file a request for rectification with the support of the Rio Public Defender’s Office. “To this day, 5 years and 5 months later, they still haven’t given me this rectification and I’m still fighting and waiting”, laments Bruna Mozer. My son has a name The common point among so many stories of police violence against young black people is the attempt to dehumanize and criminalize the victims, removing basic fundamental rights, in an attempt to justify these violent practices by the state’s armed wing, says Ana Paula Oliveira. She remembers that her son has a name and a last name. “He has a mother, he remains my son, and I will fight for him until the end. We, black mothers, have already educated our children to have to go out with their identity, to have to identify themselves all the time, and to have to prove that they are productive, that they study, that they work. Look, my son, look, show your school card, show that it’s you, right? And even then they are not guaranteed a life”. Brazilian Security Forum Data from the 16th edition of the Brazilian Public Security Yearbook, released in 2022, show that at least 43,171 people were victims of actions by civil or military police across the country, since 2013, the year in which this monitoring began to be carried out. done. The numbers do not include deaths due to interventions by Federal Police and Federal Highway Patrols. The report points out that police lethality decreased by 6.5% in 2021, but the mortality of blacks increased. While the mortality rate among white victims dropped by 30.9%, the rate of black victims grew by 5.8%. According to the document, eight out of 10 victims are black people and half of them are young people between 12 and 29 years old – more than 90% are men. “The percentage of black and brown victims of police interventions is even higher than we thought, reaching 84.1% of all victims with identified race/color”, points out the 16th edition of the Yearbook. “This public safety policy is genocidal and has a target. So, I started to have this understanding, and this is causing an even greater revolt, a desire to continue the fight, to continue denouncing all this violence in the state”, says Ana Paula Oliveira, remembering that the policeman who killed her son already responded for triple homicide and two attempted homicides in Baixada Fluminense. The victim had no criminal record and was just walking down the street. In order to reduce deaths and violence against black youth, in addition to tackling structural racism, the Federal Government, through Presidential Decree No. Viva Black Youth Plan. The deadline for completing the work is 7 months.
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