One year later: Brazilian partners reflect on the importance of video cameras when a young boy was killed
April 2, 2016 marked one year since the devastating murder of a 10-year-old boy named Eduardo by Police in Rio de Janiero. Eduardo was gunned down while playing on his front porch— the police claimed they thought the bright white cell phone he held in his hand was a gun.
Our Brazilian partners, media collective Coletivo Papo Reto, were amongst the first on the scene in order to capture what happened, take testimony from witnesses, and document the crime scene to ensure that it wasn’t tampered with by police officers. To mark the one year anniversary of this tragedy that sparked a blaze of outrage and protest across the community — a collection of neighboring favelas called Complexo de Alemão — a WITNESS Team in Brazil compiled this video of Papo Reto’s reflections on the importance of video in the aftermath of Eduardo’s murder.
https://youtu.be/kAOt3R9l-QY&w=640&h=480
Police violence is a systemic issue in Brazil, almost exclusively targeting young, black men from favela communities and often with impunity. No one has yet been held accountable for Eduardo’s death.
From Amnesty International:
“Of the 56,000 homicides in Brazil every year, 30,000 are young people aged 15 to 29.That means that, at this very moment, a young person is most likely being killed in Brazil. By the time you go to bed, 82 will have died today. It’s like a small airplane full of young people crashing every two days, with no survivors. This would be shocking enough by itself, but it’s even more scandalous that 77 per cent of these young people are black.”
Check out this post or this New York Times Magazine feature on us to learn more about how we’re working to expose police violence in Brazil. We also co-authored to a report with partner organization Article 19 about how video can be better used for justice and accountability in Brazil. And here you can find a host of resources in Portuguese.