this is not what democracy looks like: world cup protests, day 6

five close friends of mine were arrested at a protest on tuesday night in downtown rio, apparently becomes they were wearing facepaint and carrying empty paint cans to use as percussion instruments.  they were in the streets with the latest installment of an ongoing performance/protest that many of us have been working on for the past three years.  they had already been frisked twice at police checkpoints on their way to the protest, and cleared to go ahead both times, but within ten minutes of arriving outside candelária church, they were surrounded by a squad of riot cops, marched away from the protest, jammed together into the backseat of a sedan, and driven to a police station in the north zone, thirty minutes further up the highway (despite the plethora of police stations around rio’s downtown).  they weren’t charged with anything, but they were photographed for a registry of “people directly or indirectly involved in protests”and questioned without being allowed to speak to a lawyer present (in obvious violation of their basic rights).  more to the point, they were taken off the street for the night (they were released after about 3 hours), and warned ominously that there would be trouble if they were picked up again at any protests in the future.

confiscated cans at tuesday's protest.  photo by comitê popular rio copa e olimpiadas.

being slathered in paint and banging cans are not usually arrestable offenses in rio de janeiro, especially on empty downtown streets. actually, being slathered in paint and making too much noise seem to be hallmarks of the soccer fan experience, especially at world cup.  my friends were arrested at a march that had at most 50 other protestors and at least 200 cops, about 3.5 miles away from maracaña stadium.  during the abbreviated protest, no property was damaged, no businesses were disrupted (nothing was open downtown), and the only people on the street were drink vendors and a few facepainted, air horn-honking fans watching the game at kiosks and pushcarts.  still, cops managed to arrest at least 15 of the protestors, including all of the passengers who boarded a bus through the back door after cops insisted that the driver open it.

the cops’ conduct was arrogant, authoritarian, and also just plain stupid:  if they had just let the protestors march, entirely surrounded by several columns of police, the mainstream media would have ignored the protest or laughed it off, and everyone would have been able to go home sooner.  but individually and as an organization, the police here want to crush any and all dissidence.  in this sense, the arbitrary arrests go with the gun-waving and warning shots we saw on sunday night near maracanã:  they’re meant to scare protestors off of the street.  and it seems to be working (although it’s worth pointing out that calling a protest for downtown an hour after the brasilian team’s game began was a major scheduling fuck up).

i’ve written about police brutality before on this blog, and true to form, there were plenty of other police actions throughout brasil in recent days that completely overshadow the arbitrariness of my friends’ and other protestors’ arrests. in cidade de deus, a “pacified” favela, cops shot and killed an unarmed 13-year-old on sunday (officially he was killed in a shoot out, and no responsibility has been assigned yet, but this usually signals police culpability).  this happened again in manguinhos, another "pacified" favela, on wednesday night, this time with a 25-year-old victim.  meanwhile, in recife, in northeastern brasil, military police wounded dozens of young people occupying land at the center of a development debate.

 

comparatively, my friends had it easy:  five costumed performers getting picked up by cops is not nearly as worrying as young people getting killed, and watching high armored robocops squint carefully into paint cans in a desperate effort to invent some sort of criminal intent was at least as funny as it was infuriating.  our network of friends operated quickly enough so that there public interest lawyers waiting for them by the time they got to the police station, and 10 more of us – mostly in costume, or covered with tattoos, or both – came to support them, pass around snacks, and wait for their release.  a combination of all this attention, the fact that all of my friends are college graduates, and the flimsy logic that riot cops gave the station police to justify the arrest (that my friends’ facepaint and the single bandana among them qualified as hiding their identities, and that the paint cans they were drumming on were actually intended as projectiles) meant that the police went easy on them:  apart from the illegal interrogation, the illegal photo registry (which is apparently part of an international database), and a constant stream of harassing and provocative questions, they came and went without major problems. but the fact that the rights to free expression and free assembly, both guaranteed by brasil’s constitution, are being actively and meticulously undermined in the hopes that everyone will shut up and get back to watching the games isn’t just annoying and intimidating from where we stand:  like so much about this world cup, it ought to be alarming to anyone who cares about basic human rights.

being censored is obviously not the same as being tortured or killed, but suppression and violence go hand in hand:  both are vital to creating an atmosphere of obedience based on fear.  and policing based on personal tastes, criminalizing anything that looks wrong, is a guarantee for continued brutality in the future.  the cops who decide that costumes and paint can drums don’t belong on an empty street are relying on the same sort of logic that justifies killing young people of color in favelas.  it’s all uniformed vigilantism based on appearance, and in rio de janeiro - and throughout brasil - it seems to be getting worse.

i got news of my friends’ arrest on tuesday as i was arriving at the protest, and i stopped on a street corner to trade phone numbers with mutual friends in order to get more of us to the police station as quickly as possible. as soon as i’d said hello, a middle-aged guy with big arms and a yellow-and-green t-shirt approached me, yelling for me to move on before he beat the shit out of me.  i explained that i was on a public sidewalk, and he yelled back that he didn’t like me, that my friends and i deserved to die, and that i should get the fuck away.  (i assume this had to do with my fabulous protest outfit, which involved glitter and a raggedy red dress).  30 cops approached us, sensing a possible fight, but they weren’t about to keep the peace; they only came to shout at me and egg him on.  i got the fuck away.  (at sunday night’s protests, cops stood by calmly while local bar patrons in the vila isabel neighborhood beat two protestors bloody).

so:  i’m sorry to sound like a broken record, but as i’ve been writing for a while, this world cup is a travesty for human rights.  as you watch the games, some of us in brasil are being silenced in the name of order and good sportsmanship, and others are being beaten up or killed in the name of progress, “pacification,” and public safety.  as we welcome the world to celebrate, those who don’t fit into the idea of what a “country without poverty” (part of the federal government’s official motto) is supposed to look like are being subject to policing that recalls the military dictatorship of the 60s and 70s.  this may be what a world cup demands, but it’s not what democracy looks like.

photo by comitê popular rio copa e olimpiadas.