Brazilian Soldiers occupy Rio de Janeiro slums ahead of World Cup debut

Rio de Janeiro, 6 April-2014(ANI): More than 2,000 Brazilian soldiers stormed into a Rio de Janeiro slum complex yesterday with armoured personnel carriers and helicopters in a bid to improve security two months before the start of the World Cup.

Brazilian Soldiers occupy Rio de Janeiro slums ahead of World Cup debut

Soldiers occupy Rio de Janiero’s Mare slum complex. Photo: AP

As dawn broke, the heavily armed soldiers entered the sprawling Mare shantytown, considered one of the city’s most violent and dangerous, over which drug gangs have ruled for decades.

The occupation of Mare, which is controlled by two rival drug gangs and a militia made up of security personnel, began last week when more than 1,000 police officers and marines entered the shantytown. No shots were fired during the first phase of Mare’s takeover.

The complex of 15 “favela” slums that covers an area of nearly 10 square kilometres in northern Rio is strategically located along main road to the international airport and home to about 130,000 people.

The occupation is part of the government’s “pacifying police force” strategy aimed at taking over some of Rio’s more than 1,000 slums before Brazil plays host to the World Cup as well as the 2016 Olympics.

The 2,050 Army troops, 450 Marines and 200 police officers that entered the Mare slum complex early yesterday are expected to remain there until the end of July, when they are to hand control over to the police, according to the Defence Ministry.

Army General Ronaldo Lundgren recently told reporters the troops could remain in the area for a longer period of time should the state governor and President Dilma Rousseff, who signed off on the use of the armed forces to occupy the slum, request it.

The troops will patrol and “have been authorised to frisk and arrest people,” Lundgren was quoted as saying by an internet portal of the Globo television network.

Security forces will eventually establish a permanent post in Mare. Police have installed 37 such posts under the pacification programme, which began in 2008 and has so far brought policing to an estimated 1.5 million people.

In recent months, the programme has come under attack from the drug trafficking gang kingpins who once ruled the slums, where police long feared to tread, entering only on occasional raids.

A spokesman for the pacifying force said four officers from the force had been killed since the beginning of the year in a series of attacks, some thought to have been ordered by jailed gang leaders bent on stopping the spread of the programme. With each area police occupy, gangs lose valuable territory for the manufacture and sale of drugs.

The police presence has brought improvements in security, decreasing the kinds of shootouts that once ricocheted through many of the slums. But many residents complain that the police’s tactics are heavy-handed.

More than 20 officers who patrolled in Rio’s largest slum, Rocinha, are facing charges for the torture, disappearance and presumed death of a slum resident there during a police interrogation last year.

Additionally, residents say the state has been slow to follow up with education, health and social programmes aimed at improving their lives.