3 MILLION PEOPLE THAT BRAZIL FORGOT

Lethal police, drug lords dominate Rio's steep, stinking slums

RIO DE JANEIRO - The hillside slums of Rio are a world away from the white
sand beaches of Ipanema or the Copacabana samba clubs.

People here in the favelas will vote in today's national elections. Voting
is mandatory. But their concern isn't whether Brazil's president Fernando
Henrique Cardoso wins re-election without a runoff.

Their aim is to survive another day, to not get killed by police or drug
dealers, to muster enough energy to make it up and down the steep, stinking
hills of the favelas.

Maria AssunE7co says she'll probably vote for the Workers' Party against
Cardoso's centre-right coalition.

But she's confused about the candidates. Few politicians dare enter the
favelas. Too dangerous.

AssunE7co, 45, will spend today worrying about her son Leonardo, 18.
Police took him away May 22, 8:30 a.m. from Dona Marta favela.

Sitting on a crate by her little vegetable stand, she says four officers
beat her son for five hours, burying him alive and bagging his head in
plastic to the point of near-suffocation.

``They told me, `Shut up, lady, or we will kill you, too. You are all drug
dealers.' But that's not true.''

Police officials say her story, like other allegations of torture by
slum-dwellers, is untrue.

Her son is in jail, charged with drug offences. She sees him Mondays,
through a grille. She fears he will be killed. ``To this day, I cry all the
time.''

There's no paper trail - through birth and death statistics - for the
estimated 3 million people (one-third of the population) living in Greater
Rio's 700 favelas.

Rio's topography - beachfront flatlands punctuated by dramatic hills -
eliminates the possibility of ``misery belts'' ringing the city. Instead
the poor cling to the steep hills flush against the middle-class and
wealthy ``people of the asphalt.''

Sewage runs down the hills in rivers. The stench is overpowering. Imagine
that smell as a constant of daily life - raising your children in it.

Shacks, slapped together with bricks, concrete, plywood, tin, cardboard -
whatever's available - hang on hillsides.

Here drug lords sell marijuana and cocaine, training hundreds of slum kids
as lookout, runner, drug post captain, or dealer to sell to rich kids on
the asphalt - for money that betters the $150 monthly minimum wage.

Dona Marta's reputed king is Marcinho VP, supposedly a good guy, like the
storied Robin Hood drug lords of Mexico and Colombia. He reportedly went to
Chiapas, Mexico, to meet Zapatista rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos, or so
the myth goes.

People in Dona Marta say drug lords pay 60 per cent of their take to the
civil police for the state of Rio.

Rumour, of course.

Still, two years ago, HE9lio Luz, former state civil police chief, said:
``Nothing is trafficked in Rio without police complicity.''

Police violence is well-documented and rising. National and international
non-governmental data indicate those in the favelas are at greatest risk.

Written off as criminal elements. Dehumanized. Brazil's Untouchables.

``You go into the favelas . . . You won't see a school, you won't see a
medical clinic, you won't see a police station. It's the near complete
abandonment of the people by the state,'' says U.S. human rights lawyer
James Cavallaro.

>From May, 1995, to April, 1996, 179 police officers were promoted in
connection with incidents that killed 72 civilians and six police officers,
according to Human Rights Watch.

``I'll go out on a limb here and guess that, in all of Canada in the last
five years, police didn't kill 72 people,'' says Cavallaro, Brazil director
for the Washington-based group.

``Not only is there no investigation of what could be first-degree murder,
but guys are promoted for killing people . . . You don't have to be a
rocket scientist to figure out what's going on.''

In the first eight months of 1998, police killed 511 civilians in the state
of Rio, population 13.3 million.

A report by Brazil's Superior Institute of Religious Studies (ISER) on use
of lethal force shows Rio police kill 3.4 times as many people as they injure.

``It is extremely difficult to interpret these data in a way that does not
involve a deliberate intent to kill on the part of the police involved,''
says the institute report by social scientist Ignacio Cano.

In one case, Cano noted that auto-psy findings show the only way three
police bullets could have entered the victim's skull in such a small radius
was at close range, with the guy on the ground and his head held immobile,
probably with a boot. Otherwise, the head jerk would have spaced the
bullets farther apart.

``The ISER report equals nothing,'' says Luis Luz, communications director
for the Rio state civil police.

``These are twisted statistics. They count people who died in shootouts,
whose bodies were found in the bush, and sometimes car accidents.''

Besides, he says, ``I don't see a lot of disapproval of the police in Rio.''

He's right. One former police officer, nicknamed Siruca, is running for
re-election to the state legislature on the popular slogan: ``A Good Crook
Is A Dead Crook.''

``The story of Senhora Maria AssunE7co is the story of many Marias,'' says
Dona Marta community leader Gilson Cardoso.

``It is the story of Brazil. It is Rio's history and the history of the
favelas.''

When police came to arrest her son, they searched her house at gunpoint,
looking for drugs and guns.

They left but returned leading a man wearing a black hood - sign of an
``X-9'', slang for police informant. Informants get killed in favelas.

Under the hood was Leonardo. He had been at his girlfriend's house.

``My son started to cry . . . But they tied him up. Then they took him out
back in the bushes. I came later, and he was covered with dirt and he had
dirt in his hair, and he said they had put him in the ground and covered
him up until he thought he was going to die. He was terrified.

``They put a plastic bag over his head and took it off when he was
suffocating.

``I saw my son with his hands tied behind his back and I couldn't do
anything. A mother wants to protect her son. I couldn't.'' She weeps.

``That's a lie,'' says police communications director Luz, when asked about
this account, and others.

``It's not in the nature of police officers to harm anybody, especially
children. They are fathers, too.''

Cavallaro's rights' agency documents cases of police killings and torture.
``There are minimal rights defendants should have. Unfortunately, people
support the killings.''

Benedita da Silva, 56, is not afraid to campaign in Dona Marta. Former
senator, social worker, running for the Workers' Party for vice-governor of
Rio, she's from the favelas. In polls, she and running mate, radio
journalist Anthony Garotinho, lead rightist incumbent Governor Marcello
Alencar.

``There is no social investment in the slums of Rio,'' da Silva says.
``They don't exist, except to be invaded by police.

``In Brazil, we are going back to prehistoric times . . . to the Stone
Age.''

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski