On July 13th,
agents of the Pacifying Police Unit (UPP), a special task force created by the
government of Rio de Janeiro to combat drug trafficking, arrested 48 suspects
in Rocinha, the largest favela in Brazil, with more than 70,000 residents.
Among them, was Amarildo de Souza, a 43 year-old bricklayer who lived with his
family in the slum.
Almost a
month has past from the arrest and his wife and six sons haven’t seen Amarildo
again. Officially, police denies knowing his whereabouts. In a violent city
like Rio de Janeiro, the case could have been just another example of police wrongdoing
but the engagement of Brazilians in social networks made the question
"Where is Amarildo?" hard to be ignored by the government.
Using GoogleTrends, a service from Google that shows the volume of searches for any given
term, it is possible to see a huge rise in searches for “Amarildo” keyword. In
June, before the disappearance, the word had 9 points in the volume index. The
number rose to 39 in July and has now reached the maximum limit with 100
points (see bellow). On Twitter, just over a week after the worker’s disappearance, the
hashtag #CadêoAmarildo? was in the top positions of the Trending Topics. Whenever
a new article about the case goes online, the hashtag returns to the top of the
ranking.
On YouTube,videos with Amarildo’s relatives and other Rocinha dwellers denouncing the violence of the Pacifying Police Unit had tens of thousands of views. The speeches are shocking, with direct criticism to the government and to the newspapers and television stations accused of not showing the problems of slums.
On YouTube,videos with Amarildo’s relatives and other Rocinha dwellers denouncing the violence of the Pacifying Police Unit had tens of thousands of views. The speeches are shocking, with direct criticism to the government and to the newspapers and television stations accused of not showing the problems of slums.
The viral effect of social networks has shown to the whole Brazil what happened on a dark
street in Rocinha and the indignation of the people overflowed to the streets.
In Rio de Janeiro, protesters went to the front door of Rio de Janeiro’s State governor
Sérgio Cabral’s house. They demanded a serious investigation into the
disappearance. In São Paulo, the citizens took the traditional Avenida Paulista
to protest against police violence. The local problem became national then global. Now, the
Ministry of Human Rights, part of the Federal Government, not only requires
responses from the police of Rio de Janeiro but also from Governor Cabral.
The Amarildo’s
case continues to remain unsolved, but it has shown the world the pivotal role
of technology as a tool for freedom of expression. The wide access to
information brought by low cost mobile web access, the rapid spread of footage of
police officers abuse through social networks and the dynamism of smartphones
in organizing street protests were essential to give voice to the Brazilian
people. More than that, the social engagement with the help of technology has
shown that the next generation can transform the world into a better place with
unprecedented speed.
Transparency
will be increasingly required, and with broad access to information, a good
marketing campaign will not be enough to win an election. Corrupt politicians
or those who are averse to democracy should be extinct. Before that, we need to
ensure democratic values and the free nature of the internet.
In the next
decade, 5 billion new people will join the Internet and many of them will access
the web for the first time in poor areas with serious problems of freedom of
expression. They will face violent oppression of the state and neglect from the
local authorities. For these reasons it is important to demand actions from our
representatives. The freedom enjoyed in developed countries may become a global
standard.
Today Thai citizens are prohibited from posting opinions contrary to the king of their nation,
Chinese people may not search for information about their own past and Iranian
women go to jail for fighting for better living conditions. Repressive governments
in Egypt, Turkey and North Korea also prevent the full use of the internet
using censorship and force. In Iran, the goal of one project is to isolate
citizens in a intranet-like closed network totally controlled by the censors.
We live in
a world with different cultures, but it is important that certain core values
are disseminated and reinforced. Freedom of expression is one of them. Moreover,
there is no better way to ensure this than multiplying and spreading opinions online
in an open, free and uncensored environment. Where this is not yet possible, it
is necessary to denounce the abuses and take advantage of the enormous
potential of online networks to draw attention to the problems.
This is
what the dwellers of the Rocinha slum in Rio de Janeiro did to show the
disappearance of Amarildo Souza to the world. Now even The New York Times is covering the case. With the internet committed to freedom of expression, denunciations
like this can be made any place around the globe. Surely, the world will be a
place with more space for the cultural, educational and economic development for
the next generations.
