Amid Zika fears, bug repellent supplier named for Rio Games

An extra 3,000 soldiers have been drafted into the giant security operation for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, defence minister Raul Jungmann announced in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday (6 July). According to Amnesty global, “In the city of Rio alone, at least 307 people were killed by the police past year, accounting for one in every five homicides in the city”.

Despite the recent drug bust, reports suggest police in Rio aren’t actually cracking down on drugs or cartel violence ahead of the Olympic games because Rio’s government, which is now battling a major fiscal crisis, hasn’t paid them in months.

With just 30 days until the opening of the Summer Olympics in Rio, the concerns that have long overshadowed the Games linger. This comes amid worries of local crime and the potential for terror attacks. “It’s compromising any effort to improve public security and fulfill this promise for the Olympics”.

While for most the symptoms of Zika are relatively minor (less severe than the common flu), there is believed to be a correlation in Brazil between the outbreak and an increase in the number of babies born with micorcephaly.

The application, named Cross-Fire, is created to “allow people living across Rio de Janeiro to report incidents of gun violence, which have been increasing over the last few years”, according to Amnesty International (AI).

Ultimately, though, the Olympics are not going to bring an end to the problems Brazil has faced.

The New York-based rights group interviewed 34 current and former police officers who detailed a “culture of combat” that rewards them for killing instead of arresting drug-trafficking suspects.

This is how we can have a situation where bailouts for tourist safety were treated like a national emergency while the ongoing “hell” for poor and working-class people in Olympic Rio has only worsened. The 109-page report reviews 64 cases, many of which show inconsistencies between forensic evidence and officials’ accounts. Autopsies in 20 cases showed the dead had been shot at close range, something not typical of shootouts. Civil police workers, their wages in peril, have been greeting visitors at the airport with giant banners reading “WELCOME TO HELL” and warning people that they will not be safe while in the city.

Wilkinson said some recent changes in the justice system bear some promise, such as turning officer-involved killings over to the state’s homicide division instead of neighborhood precincts.