The shooting of two young Black girls – who had between them enjoyed fewer than 11 years of life – has sparked outrage in Brazil and intensified the debate over police violence and structural racism in a country still grappling with the legacy of slavery.
Emily Victoria Moreira dos Santos and Rebeca Beatriz Rodrigues Santos, cousins aged four and seven, were killed on Friday night as they played outside their grandmother’s home in Barro Vermelho, a redbrick favela on Rio’s rundown northern fringe.
Their deaths took the number of children killed in Rio this year to eight, nearly all of them Black, like most Brazilian murder victims.
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Editor’s Note: The Brazilian authorities claim this shooting was not perpetrated by police. However, witnesses say police bullets did in fact lead to the deaths of these two little Black children. Moreover, Brazil, just like America, and the U.K., has a serious racial policing problem.
