"Once again the public security policy, with its logic of confrontation and slaughter, led to panic and fear among the population. The result of this criminal action was the largest slaughter (known) in the history of Rio de Janeiro. Bursts of gunfire, helicopters with snipers, armored vehicles and grenades weaved the morning scenery in Jacarezinho, added to reports of home invasions, assaults and illegal seizures of mobile phones", points out the Rio de Janeiro Regional Committee of PCB.
Indeed, the Jacarezinho massacre is the largest ever by police officers in the Brazilian metropolis, surpassing even the Vigário Geral massacre in 1993, when 21 people were killed.
"Unfortunately - reads the Communist Party statement - this episode shows yet another chapter of human rights violations of the working class, of slum dwellers, peripheries and popular neighborhoods, who live with the brutality of public security policy and its criminal incursions under the pretext of fighting organized crime".
According to the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), both the central far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro and the local Governor of Rio de Janeiro Cláudio Castro bear enormous responsibility for the Jacarezinho massacre.
"No more deaths in favelas, peripheries and popular neighborhoods!", says the PCB statement and calls for the "immediate suspension of any police operation during the pandemic and the demilitarization of public security policy". For a society without "viruses, bullets and fear", down with "Bolsonaristas".
