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Braslia, Brazil:
The dying of a black man crushed by white safety guards at a grocery store sparked protests throughout Brazil Friday because the nation celebrated Black Consciousness Day.
A video of Thursday evening’s incident within the southern metropolis of Porto Alegre captured on a witness’s cell phone was broadcast on social networks and Brazilian media.
As the clip went viral, round 1,000 protesters in Sao Paulo marched to a department of the French-owned Carrefour grocery store chain and stoned the glass storefront earlier than storming the premises, trashing and burning items, based on an AFP photographer on the scene.
“Carrefour’s hands are dirty with black blood,” learn one banner held up by demonstrators.
Police in Porto Alegre used tear gasoline and flash bang grenades to disperse a protest that had shaped in entrance of the grocery store the place the dying occurred, based on native tv.
Protests additionally broke out within the capital Brasilia, Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro, the place a crowd picketed a Carrefour grocery store to forestall prospects from reaching the checkouts.
“Carrefour can close, it has killed our brother, it will not work!” chanted dozens of younger individuals carrying banners and masks with the slogan “Black Lives Matter”.
The video on social media exhibits 40-year-old welder Joao Alberto Silveira Freitas repeatedly being punched within the face and head by a safety guard whereas he’s being restrained by one other on the grocery store.
A lady stands beside them, filming together with her cell phone.
The navy police in Rio Grande do Sul state mentioned the person had threatened a feminine employee on the grocery store, who known as safety.
Silveira Freitas misplaced consciousness through the assault and died on the spot as medics tried to revive him.
‘Could not breathe’
A pal of the sufferer who witnessed the beating advised G1 information that because the safety guards have been hitting him, Silveira Freitas “screamed that he could not breathe,” a scene harking back to the dying of George Floyd, a black man who suffocated beneath the knee of a white US police in Minneapolis final May.
That killing sparked large protests throughout the United States.
Both the grocery store safety guards have been arrested. One of them was recognized as a member of the navy police who labored part-time on the grocery store.
In an announcement, Carrefour’s Brazilian subsidiary deplored the “brutal death” of Silveira Freitas and promised to take “appropriate measures to hold accountable those involved in this criminal case.”
Carrefour mentioned it might lower ties with the safety firm that employed the guards.
In a collection of tweets in Portuguese, the French head of Carrefour, Alexandre Bompard, expressed his condolences and mentioned the photographs posted on social media have been “unacceptable.”
“Internal measures have immediately been implemented by the Carrefour Group Brazil, principally on the question of security company contracts. These measures are insufficient. My values, and the values of Carrefour, do not allow for racism and violence,” he wrote, calling for a whole assessment of worker coaching, range and intolerance.
Structural racism
The killing sparked outrage on social networks and overshadowed Brazil’s Black Consciousness Day, a vacation in a number of states.
“From one November 20 to another, and every day, the racist structure of this country brings us brutality as a rule,” social activist Raull Santiago mentioned on Twitter.
“It seems that we have no way out… not even on Black Consciousness Day,” Brazil worldwide footballer Richarlison mentioned.
“In fact, what conscience? They killed a black man, beaten in front of the cameras. They beat him and filmed. Decency and shame have been lost to violence and hatred,” the Everton participant mentioned on Twitter.
In Brazil, the final nation within the Americas to abolish slavery — in 1888 — round 55 p.c of the inhabitants of 212 million identifies as black or mixed-race.
Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro had not commented immediately on the dying late Friday, however tweeted that the nation’s issues “go beyond racial issues” and that the “great evil” of Brazil continues to be “moral, social and political corruption.”
“As president, I am colorblind: everyone is the same color. There is no one color [of skin] better than the others. There are good men and bad men,” added Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro’s vice chairman Hamilton Mourao known as the killing “regrettable.”
Mourao mentioned it was the work of “a security agent unprepared for the work” and denied that it was a racist act.
“For me, in Brazil, there is no racism. That is something that they want to import here to Brazil. That does not exist here,” mentioned Mourao.
Philosopher Djamila Ribeiro, one of the influential voices within the struggle in opposition to racism in Brazil, advised AFP that “the naturalization and justification of the death of black people as a result of violence is present in political, legal, business and media discourses.”
(This story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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