Brazil's Congress approves military intervention in Rio
Brazil's congress approved a decree to put the military in charge of Rio de Janeiro's security forces on Tuesday as soldiers and police spread out throughout in the city to combat rising crime.
The military officially took over Rio's police on Friday, but the presidential decree still needed congressional approval. Brazil's lower house approved the measure early Tuesday and the Senate closed the matter shortly before midnight.
Details of the plan are still to be announced, though, generating doubts even among supporters of the move.
Overnight, the armed forces and police spread out in Rio in the first major operation since the change in command. They took up positions on major roads that connect Rio with the rest of the country in an effort to prevent drugs, illegal arms and stolen goods from entering the city, said Col. Roberto Itamar, a military spokesman. Around 3,000 members of the armed forces were involved.
Armored vehicles rolled through the streets of one neighborhood on Guanabara Bay on Tuesday, while boats patrolled the waters. Soldiers and police set up checkpoints and searched everyone leaving or entering during the morning commute.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/brazils-lower-house-approves-military-intervention-rio-53218663
Brazil’s Military Takeover Of Security In Rio De Janeiro Is A Looming Disaster
SÃO PAULO ― Brazilian President Michel Temer made the unprecedented decision Friday to give the country’s military all public security responsibilities in Rio de Janeiro, the beleaguered city that has been plagued by rising rates of violent crime since it hosted the Olympic Games nearly two years ago.
Temer’s decision will put the military in near-total control of security in Rio through the end of the year, marking the first time a Brazilian president has mobilized the armed forces to take over a city or state’s public security efforts since the country’s military dictatorship ended in 1985.
The announcement has sent shockwaves across country, where the prospect of any sort of military intervention is already an unsettling topic for many, and yet Temer argued in an official statement and again on television Friday that it was the only possible maneuver still available in a desperate time for both Rio and Brazil.
After nearly a decade of declining crime rates, Rio has seen a dramatic spike in violent crimes and homicides in the past two years. In 2016, the Rio state was home to more than 5,000 homicides, including nearly 1,000 killings committed by police.
Though it is far from Brazil’s most violent area, the second-largest but most prominent city in the country has become a barometer for the nation as a whole, which saw its number of homicides increase nearly 4 percent, to roughly 62,000, in 2016. (By comparison, in 2016, there were around 17,000 homicides in the United States, which has roughly 100 million more people than Brazil.)
There were another 688 shootings in Rio in January, but it is no coincidence that Temer made the announcement last week, at the close of Carnival. As the annual pre-Lent festival ended, videos of tourists being beaten and robbed on Rio’s streets and beaches circulated online and on Brazilian cable news, driving home the perception that violence in the city had spiraled out of control.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/brazil-military-intervention-rio-de-janeiro_us_5a8b47efe4b0117adf71037c
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