The Hidden Cost of The 2016 Rio Olympics
For 2 weeks in august, the eyes of the world will be turning to Rio De Janerio, Brazil as the city hosts the 2016 Summer Olympics. Much has gone into preparation for the games. Billions have been spent. Dozens of new sporting facilities have been constructed. But behind the media coverage, the majestic new stadiums and the inspiring stories of sporting glory, there lies a darker side to the games.
The 7 year long lead up to the big event was a monumental feat of engineering, logistics and construction. Some sacrifices had to be made along the way. Reports have emerged of blatant human rights abuses, corruption, forced relocation and a bloody crackdown on Brazil’s impoverished favelas.
Despite a slew of new sporting facilities and massive construction projects to revitalize Brazil’s cities, the country still suffers from persistent inequality. With a GINI Coefficient of 0.529 in 2013, Brazil is one of the most unequal countries in the world. Not far from the new Olympic park in Barra, lie the sprawling favelas of Rio De Janeiro. These are the crime ridden slums where 24% of Rio’s 6.3 million people live.
At a total cost of $12 billion, the Rio Olympics are among the priciest in history. While the rest of the city has witnessed a construction boom and a slew of new infrastructure projects, the favelas of Rio have been largely left out of the picture. Most of the infrastructure built for the games were meant for tourists and athletes. Rio has constructed a new subway line connecting the affluent district of Ipanema to the new Olympic Village. The city has also built a new Light Rail network to connect its airport to the heart of the city. In the wealthy neighborhood of Barra Da Tijuca where most of the Olympic events will be hosted, new condos, hotels and malls have been built. Once the games are over, it is the richer city folk who will benefit most from these new developments.
While Rio’s elite reap the benefits of the Olympics, it’s the favela residents who are being forced to make the sacrifices for the sake of redevelopment. In 2014, 900 families living in the Vila União Favela were displaced to make way for the Trans Olímpica rapid bus system (BRT) to be built for the 2016 Rio Olympics.
At the edge of where the Olympic Park now stands, was the small favela of Vila Autodromo home to 600 families. In 2015, its residents were served with a notice of eviction. While the local city council offered to relocate the residents to new public housing, some residents were adamant against moving. Forced evictions conducted by riot police were carried throughout 2015 and well into 2016. The forced evictions sparked violent clashes between residents and police. The images of bloodied victims and police dragging residents out were shared in social media prompting a backlash from the Brazilian public. Similar stories were repeated in favelas across Rio. Since the city won the bid to host the Olympic Games in 2009, over 22,000 families have been displaced.
When Rio was awarded the title of host city in 2009, its mayor, Eduardo Paes made a promise to “clean up the streets of Rio”. The 7 year lead up to the Olympics have witnessed a surge in police raids in an effort to clamp down on crime. Unsurprisingly, Mayor Paes’s war on crime has also brought with it thousands of reports of extrajudicial killings, police brutality and wrongful detentions.
Extrajudicial executions at the hands of police officials are frequent in Brazil. In the context of the so-called “war on drugs”, military police forces have unnecessarily and excessively used lethal force, resulting in the deaths of thousands of people over the past decade. The authorities often use the legal term of “resistance followed by death” as a smokescreen to cover up killings committed by the police officers. This report is based on a series of cases of police killings that occurred during 2014 and 2015 in the city of Rio de Janeiro, particularly in the favela of Acari.
-Amnesty International report, December 2015
From 2009–2016, there were 2,500 documented killings by Rio’s security forces and approximately 15,000 murders— the overwhelming majority of them in the city’s impoverished favelas. Deadly police raids have become common place. Just 2 days before the Olympics were scheduled to begin, a gun battle erupted between traffickers and police after they deployed some 450 officers to the Alemao favela in the north of the city.
The Olympics in Rio have come at a high political, social and economic cost to Brazil. The people of Brazil were promised that the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics would bring an end to poverty and crime and usher in a golden age of economic growth and opportunity. Far from being the great equalizer, it is Brazil’s elite that have enjoyed most of the benefits. Living in their luxury, gated communities, it will be hard to come to terms with the harsh reality of life in Rio’s favelas, just a few miles away. The games may come and go but the inequality, police brutality and rampant crime are here to stay.
