Top headline today in the via Folha de S. Paulo confirms a suspicion I was mentioning to my wife as we watched news of the police strike in Bahia.
I bet her that militias and death squads of the kind investigated by lawmakers in other parts of Brazil — Rio de Janeiros most notoriously, with its League of Justice, a parapolitical machine run by a corrupt city councilmember, above – would turn out to be a significant factor in the rising death toll recorded during the strike.
As a local Bahian daily reported, cribbed in part from the metrosexual O Globo – I translate:
The Bahian state military police deny the presence of militia groups in the capital city of Salvador, but a team working for the Tribuna de Bahia canvassed a number of neighborhoods and heard from a number of quase-public minivan operators that they are forced to pay bribes to military police in order to work in safety. They allege that refusing to contribute to the scheme leads to expulsion from their territory and, in some cases, death threats.
Mototaxis and other informal alt.businesses also pay tribute. Black market electricity, water, cooking gas, and cable TV and Internet are common sidelines, as in Rio de Janeiro. The Folha adds:
These armed groups target drug users, street people and those who defy their de facto authority in the most dangerous quarters of the capital city.
The Correio 24 Horas reports militia activity in other neighborhoods:
Águas Claras, Fazenda Grande do Retiro, Cosme de Faria, and nine others …
Adds the Folha:
In Bahia, militias are paramilitary groups financed by business owners to maintain order in peripheral neighborhoods.
The Polícia Civil intelligence unit has discovered such groups operating under police protection in such areas as Subúrbio Ferroviário, a complex of neighborhoods and shantytowns beside the Baía de Todos os Santos.
“These groups are taking advantage of the strike, which reduced police patrols, to cleanse these areas and execute anyone who opposes them,” said Arthur Gallas of the homicide bureau.
Gallas said there is evidence that militiamen and drug traffickers have murdered 38 persons since the strike began on 31 January.
Bahian lawmakers launched an investigation into the militia phenomenon in October of last year. A preliminary finding: that militias are rife in a number of significant state capitals and metropoles.
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