Protests in Londrina, Brazil, against the murder of two young men by the Military Police
The people of Londrina rebels in various parts of the city and the region in protest against the murder of two young people, aged 15 and 20 by the Military Police (MP).
As reported by the newspaper A Nova Democracia (AND), during the night of Saturday 15, the MP killed the two young men while they were in a car wash, being executed. When the AND reporters arrived at the scene, they were able to witness the protests of the neighbors, where the mother of one of the murdered, furious for the death of her son, was present, too. The police repressed them with rubber bullets, which hit the mother, and pepper spray.
The police tried to justify the terrible murder by calling it “confrontation.” Protesters responded by blocking the Avenida Brasilia, the road near the site, with fire and smashing the windows of a bus. Soon many police vehicles arrived at the scene and dispersed the rebellion.
On Monday the 17th, protests continued in rebellion against the murders of the young men. 300 protesters blocked roads for hours with barricades, set fire to a bus, made the local transport company and garbage collectors cut off service during the day, and threw stones to the press monopoly car. AND was able to document the protests while accompanying neighbors:
“Justice! It was not a confrontation, it was an execution!”, “If justice does not come! Londrina will stop!” and “No more murders! Don’t kill our children!” were some of the slogans shouted. Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Ostensive Tactical Patrols (Rotam) of the Military Police were mobilized to repress the people. During the protest, the mother of one of the murdered denounced the murder of her son, the arbitrariness of the Military Police and the violations of rights in the peripheral neighborhoods.
During the protests they also showed the work certificates of young men, thus combating the myth spread by the PM that they were “highly dangerous criminals”. It did not take long for criticism of the bourgeois parties to arrive, which described the rebellion as “vandalism and terror”.
This situation is not something special. In the State of Paraná alone, the “security” forces killed 525 people only during last year, many of them in Londrina. As AND reports, “This rebellion and wave of protests come from much accumulated outrage of poor people revolted over the deaths of their children, relatives and friends and the lack of any measures in this regard to bring justice through this Old State.”
