RIO DE JANEIRO: Police killings in the state of Rio de Janeiro have hit a record high, rising by 18% in the first three months of this year in a spike partly attributed to a zero tolerance for criminals campaign by state leaders.
Official data reviewed by The Associated Press show police forces in Rio killed 434 people during clashes in those months, compared to 368 people in same period last year.
The number, released on April 17, is the highest since record keeping began in 1998.
The rise comes under the watch of Gov. Wilson Witzel, a former marine and political ally of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. Witzel has promised a zero tolerance policy against criminals, calling drug traffickers “narco-terrorists” and vowing to ease gun possession laws.
On the campaign trail, he said he wanted to send sharp shooters aboard helicopters to target armed criminal in favelas. Weeks ago, the governor acknowledged that police were using shooters.
The police communications department declined to comment about the latest statistics.
“Even though there is no direct order (to kill), you have a governor and officials that use this language, that we should commemorate the deaths of suspects, that a (police) operation was successful when there were nine or 10 deaths,” said Felippe Angeli, a public security expert with the Sou da Paz institute in Brazil. “This ends up having an impact.”
Police killings in the state, however, did not begin with the current administration, sworn in on Jan. 1.
Last June, Orlando Dos Santos found out his 27-year-old stepson had disappeared in the wake of a police operation in the Babilonia slum, which sits on a hill behind the city’s iconic Sugarloaf mountain.
The following day, guided by local residents, Dos Santos and other people whose relatives had also disappeared, began searching with the help of the local fire department. They found seven bodies at the bottom of a cliff, which were later linked to the police operation.
Dos Santos’s stepson, whom he said had gotten involved with criminal groups not long before the police crackdown, was never found.
“The place where they were found and the way their bodies were, made it very clear that it had been an execution,” Dos Santos, a car mechanic, told The Associated Press.
Police killings have intensified in the last couple of years.
Since 2013, the number of victims in Brazilian police operations has continued to rise from 416 victims to 1,534 last year.
In 2018, the military was put in charge of Rio state’s security forces. Rates for crimes such as theft dropped, but critics say structural problems remained unsolved.
Widespread violence is a historical problem in Brazil and in Rio, one of its main tourist destinations.
Paulo Storani, former deputy commander of an elite squad of officers known by the acronym BOPE, said the increase in the number of deaths is a “natural” consequence of the police’s decision to try to recover territories abandoned by the state to organized crime for many years.
“There is no license to kill in the police. The criminals are armed with weapons of war and police are oriented to recover territories. There are violent confrontations because the criminals were strengthened by the inaction of past governments,” Storani said.
In parallel, overall homicides in the state have declined by 26% in the first three months of the year to 1,046 registered deaths.
But some experts fear the government’s rhetoric combined with their desire to pass legislation facilitating gun possession will further deepen the crisis.
“Violence engenders more violence,” Dos Santos said. “I think the duty of the police officer is to catch, apprehend and for the justice to judge.”
Police killings in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro state reach record high
Police killings in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro state reach record high
- Police forces in Rio killed 434 people during clashes in the first quarter of 2019
- The rise comes under the watch of Gov. Wilson Witzel, who calls drug traffickers “narco-terrorists”
South Sudan orders temporary ban on social media over violence in neighboring Sudan
- Many South Sudanese have been angered by footage from Sudan that purports to show killings by militia groups of South Sudanese in Gezira state
JUBA, South Sudan: South Sudanese authorities on Wednesday ordered telecoms to block access to social media for at least 30 days, citing concerns over the dissemination of graphic content relating to the ongoing violence against South Sudanese in neighboring Sudan.
The temporary ban, which could be extended to up to 90 days, will come into force at midnight Thursday, according to a directive from the National Communication Authority, NCA, to telecom companies stressing that the measure was necessary to protect the public.
“This directive may be lifted as soon as the situation is contained,” the NCA said. “The contents depicted violate our local laws and pose a significant threat to public safety and mental health.”
Many South Sudanese have been angered by footage from Sudan that purports to show killings by militia groups of South Sudanese in Gezira state. South Sudanese authorities imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on Jan. 17 after a night of retaliatory violence during which shops owned by Sudanese traders were looted.
Moussa Faki Mahamat, chairperson of the African Union Commission, condemned “the brutal killings of South Sudanese nationals” in Sudan and urged restraint.
Civil war in Sudan has created a widening famine and the world’s largest displacement crisis. Fighting between forces loyal to rival military leaders exploded in the capital, Khartoum, in April 2023 and has since spread to other areas.
The conflict has been marked by atrocities, including ethnically motivated killing and rape, according to the UN and rights groups.
Trump administration freezes many health agency reports and online posts
- Shutting down public health communication stops a basic function of public health
The Trump administration has put a freeze on many federal health agency communications with the public through at least the end of the month.
In a memo obtained by The Associated Press, acting Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services Dorothy Fink told agency staff leaders Tuesday that an “immediate pause” had been ordered on — among other things — regulations, guidance, announcements, press releases, social media posts and website posts until such communications had been approved by a political appointee.
The pause also applies to anything intended to be published in the Federal Register, where the executive branch communicates rules and regulations, and the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientific publication.
The pause is in effect through Feb. 1, the memo said. Agencies subject to the HHS directive include the CDC, the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration — entities that fight epidemics, protect the nation’s food supply and search for cures to diseases.
HHS officials did not respond to requests for comment on the pause, which was first reported by The Washington Post. Four federal health officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the issue confirmed the communication pause to the AP.
A former HHS official said Wednesday that it’s not unusual for incoming administrations to pause agency communications for review. But typically, officials working on the president’s transition team have the process for issuing documents running smoothly by inauguration day.
“The executive branch is a hierarchy,” said Steven Grossman, who now consults for food and drug companies, in an email. “Whether stated publicly or not, every new administration wants important commitments and positions to wait until new teams are in place and some semblance of hierarchy restored.”
A pause is reasonable as a changing executive branch takes steps to become coordinated, said Dr. Ali Khan, a former CDC outbreak investigator who is now dean of the University of Nebraska’s public health college.
“The only concern would be is if this is a prelude to going back to a prior approach of silencing the agencies around a political narrative,” he added.
During his first term, President Donald Trump’s political appointees tried to gain control over the CDC’s MMWR journal, which had published information about the COVID-19 pandemic that conflicted with messaging from the White House.
Fink wrote in her memo that some exceptions would be made for communications affecting “critical health, safety, environmental, financial or nation security functions,” but that those would be subject to review. The FDA on Tuesday and Wednesday posted notices about warning letters sent to companies and a drug safety notice.
A consumer advocacy group said the communications pause could still threaten public safety.
Americans depend on timely information from the CDC, the FDA and other agencies to avoid foodborne illnesses and stay aware of other health issues, said Dr. Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
“When it comes to stopping outbreaks, every second counts,” Lurie said in a statement. “Confusion around the vaguely worded gag order is likely to lead to unnecessary delay in publishing urgent public alerts during active outbreaks.”
He was echoed by Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a University of Southern California public health expert.
“Local health officials and doctors depend on the CDC to get disease updates, timely prevention, testing and treatment guidelines and information about outbreaks,” Klausner wrote in an email. “Shutting down public health communication stops a basic function of public health. Imagine if the government turned off fire sirens or other warning systems.”
Swiss prosecutors examine complaints against Israel president
- The Swiss Keystone-ATS news agency reported that one of the complaints came from an NGO called Legal Action Against Genocide
GENEVA: Swiss prosecutors said Wednesday they were examining several complaints against visiting Israeli President Isaac Herzog, as reports suggested NGOs were accusing him of “incitement to genocide” in Gaza.
The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) confirmed it had received “several criminal complaints” against Herzog, who was at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos this week.
“The criminal complaints are now being examined in accordance with the usual procedure,” the OAG said in an email sent to AFP, adding that the office was in contact with Switzerland’s foreign ministry “to examine the question of the immunity of the person concerned.”
It provided no details on the specific complaints filed.
The Swiss Keystone-ATS news agency reported that one of the complaints came from an NGO called Legal Action Against Genocide.
The NGO was calling for Herzog to be prosecuted “for incitement to genocide and crimes against humanity,” the news agency said.
The complaint, it said, deemed he had played “an active role in the ideological justification of genocide and war crimes in Gaza, by erasing all distinction between the civilian population and combatants.”
Israeli officials have repeatedly denied allegations of war crimes and genocide, accusing Hamas of using civilians as human shields.
Herzog spoke at Davos on Tuesday and held meetings on Wednesday morning but it was unclear if he was still in Switzerland.
Complaints were also filed against him when he attended the Davos meeting a year ago but the OAG refrained from opening an investigation that time, Keystone-ATS reported.
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, the deadliest in Israeli history, resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
It sparked a war that has levelled much of Gaza and, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, killed more than 47,100, a majority of them civilians, figures the United Nations has said are reliable.
Trump halts refugee arrivals in crackdown
- The memo asked the UN International Organization for Migration not to move refugees to transit centers
- Refugees already resettled in the United States will continue to receive services as planned, it said
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump has halted arrivals of refugees already cleared to enter the United States, according to a memo seen Wednesday, as he quickly pursues a sweeping crackdown on migration.
Following an executive order signed Monday hours after Trump took office, “all previously scheduled travel of refugees to the United States is being canceled,” said a State Department email to groups working with new arrivals.
The memo asked the UN International Organization for Migration not to move refugees to transit centers and said that all processing on cases has also been suspended.
Refugees already resettled in the United States will continue to receive services as planned, it said.
Trump in each of his presidential campaigns has run on promises to crack down on undocumented immigration.
But the refugee move also targets a legal pathway for people fleeing wars, persecution or disasters.
In his executive order, he said he was suspending refugee admissions as of January 27 and ordered a report on how to change the program, in part by giving “greater involvement” to states and local jurisdictions.
It also revoked his predecessor Joe Biden’s decision to consider the impact of climate change in refugee admissions.
New Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, said Wednesday that the State Department will “no longer undertake any activities that facilitate or encourage mass migration. “
“Our diplomatic relations with other countries, particularly in the Western Hemisphere, will prioritize securing America’s borders, stopping illegal and destabilizing migration and negotiating the repatriation of illegal immigrants,” Rubio said in a statement.
Biden had embraced the refugee program as a way to support people in need through legal means.
In the 2024 fiscal year, more than 100,000 refugees resettled in the United States, the most in three decades.
The Democratic Republic of Congo and Myanmar have been among the top sources of refugees in recent years.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voiced alarm at Trump’s moves and said that acceptance of refugees was “a core American value.”
“The US Refugee Admissions Program has a long history of bipartisan support and is a life-saving tool for the most vulnerable refugees, all while making Americans safer by promoting stability around the world,” she said.
The State Department memo said that Afghans who worked with the United States until the collapse of the Western-backed government in 2021 could still arrive through their separate resettlement program.
But Shaheen voiced concern that Afghans were also being left in limbo with flights canceled.
China families appeal to free relatives held by scam gangs in Myanmar
BEIJING/BANGKOK: The abduction and cross-border rescue had all the makings of the kind of action script struggling Chinese actor Wang Xing had hoped to land — only not as a reality star.
Wang, 22, flew to Bangkok earlier this month after getting an unsolicited offer to join a film that was shooting in Thailand.
There was no movie. Instead, like hundreds of other Chinese men, Wang had been duped by a job offer that he later acknowledged appeared too good to be true, as part of a trap set by a criminal syndicate.
Like others desperate for work, he was kidnapped and put to work in one of the online scam centers that operate just across the Thai border in Myanmar, according to his account and statements by police in China and Thailand.
But unlike most trafficked Chinese whose families wait in quiet anguish, Wang had a powerful advocate back home. His girlfriend, who goes by the nickname Jiajia, broadcast details of Wang’s abduction and started a social media campaign documenting her battle to get him back to China, picking up millions of followers and the support of Chinese celebrities.
When Wang was freed on Jan.7 by Thai police, who said he had been found in Myanmar but gave few details about his release, frustrated families of other Chinese people still detained in the Myanmar scam centers began to post details of their own cases in an attempt to capitalize on the attention.
Within days, the rare grassroots effort had collected the names of nearly 1,800 Chinese nationals that family members said had been trafficked into Myanmar from border areas of China and Thailand.
