Supreme Court suspends Military Police operations in Rio de Janeiro’s communities during pandemic

The injunction issued by Justice Fachin was given in response to a petition filed by a coalition of civil society organizations

Image: AlmaPreta

Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin granted an injunction this evening, June 5, banning police operations in communities of Rio de Janeiro during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The justice’s decision was in response to a petition filed last week by a coalition of civil society organizations and social movements, motivated by a series of violent Military Police operations, including one that resulted in the death of 14-year-old João Pedro Mattos in São Gonçalo, in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro.

In his decision, Fachin determined that “under penalty of civil and criminal liability, police operations shall not be conducted during the COVID-19 epidemic, except in absolutely exceptional cases that must be properly justified in writing by the competent authority and notified immediately to the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the state of Rio de Janeiro”.

“In a context in which anti-racism protests have broken out around the world, it is urgent that Brazilian institutions put an end to the genocide and the violation of the rights of black people from the favelas and urban outskirts,” said Gabriel Sampaio, coordinator of the program to Combat Institutional Violence at Conectas. “Decisions like this are very important because they save lives,” he added.

Read more:

• In Supreme Court, organizations call for suspension of police operations in Rio de Janeiro
• Even in quarantine, Military Police in Rio de Janeiro continue to claim lives in the urban outskirts

Justice Fachin also determined that, in the extraordinary cases when these operations are conducted, the police must adopt exceptional precautions, duly identified in writing by the competent authority, to avoid putting the population, the public health services and the humanitarian aid activities at even more risk.

Public security in Rio de Janeiro on trial

The petition was filed on May 27 by the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), which drafted the ADPF (Allegation of Violation of a Fundamental Precept) Case 635 in conjunction with the Public Defender’s Office of the State of Rio de Janeiro and the organizations Educafro, Justiça Global, Redes da Maré, Conectas Direitos Humanos, Movimento Negro Unificado and ISER, which are qualified as amicus curiae in the case.

Currently pending in the Supreme Court, ADPF Case 635 puts on trial the public security policy of Rio de Janeiro and the gross violations committed by police actions in the urban outskirts. As the rapporteur of the case, Justice Fachin in April accepted some of the requests related to the preservation of the crime scene, improving the work of the forensic bodies and banning the police from firing guns from helicopters.

According to the organizations, the dramatic state of human rights violations caused by Rio de Janeiro’s security policy has got worse since the justice’s vote on the case, especially given the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic in the favelas and urban outskirts of the state.

Voting on ADPF Case 635 was suspended after Justice Alexandre de Moraes requested an adjournment. According to Sampaio, the court urgently needs to resume its judgment of the case:

“The pandemic has exposed the cruelty of conducting these types of armed Military Police operations in the favelas just when families need to stay at home because of the measures to contain the virus,” said Sampaio. “However, ADPF Case 635 is not restricted to the health emergency. It challenges Rio de Janeiro’s entire public security policy that, historically, has turned communities into a stage of genocide. We ask the Supreme Court to resume the case and to question the legality of these operations,” concluded Sampaio.