Black Genivaldo de Jesus Santos suffocates in the back seat of a police car in Brazil. Officials are said to have detonated a gas grenade in it.
Umbaúba – The news of the horrific death of a black man has caused horror in Brazil: police officers are said to have held 38-year-old Genivaldo de Jesus Santos in the back seat of a police car and then detonated a tear gas grenade. The man choked.
According to his family, Santos suffered from schizophrenia. He was apparently stopped by police in the eastern Brazilian city of Umbaúba on Wednesday (May 25). What happened next can hardly be reconstructed with certainty.
Brazil: Video recordings show alleged police violence
Video footage shows two officers wearing helmets squeezing the trunk of the police vehicle. Beneath it, Genivaldo de Jesus Santos’ legs appeared to be sticking out, while clouds of smoke billowed from the vehicle. “They will kill him,” quoted the British newspaper The Guardians an eyewitness.
According to the newspaper, an autopsy report on Thursday (May 26) then confirmed what the video recordings showed: Santos suffocated. His nephew, Alisson de Jesus, is said to have been there as a close witness. He warned the police that the man was not doing well. “It was torture,” he told local press.
Brazil: “Police officers turned a car into a gas chamber”
Brazil’s population is in turmoil, with angry protests erupting after the man’s death, reports said The Independent. “Police officers turned a car into a gas chamber and executed a man with a mental disorder while his nephew looked on in broad daylight,” Renata Souza, a black activist and politician from Rio de Janeiro, wrote on the short message service Twitter. “There are no words for this inhumanity.”
A police statement in the northeastern state of Sergipe said officers had used “immobilisation techniques” as well as “instruments with low offensive potential” after Santos became aggressive. Santos was then taken to a hospital when he felt unwell on the way to the police station, it said. However, according to his family, Santos was already dead when he arrived at the hospital.
Death of Genivaldo de Jesus Santos – exactly two years after George Floyd’s assassination
The death of Genivaldo de Jesus Santos came exactly two years to the day after a police officer killed George Floyd in Minneapolis. Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. Chauvin was found guilty of murder.
Deadly police violence is the order of the day in Brazil, and the country’s black population is particularly hard hit. Very few cases are cleared up. According to research by the Brazilian Public Safety Forum, the police killed a total of 6,416 people in 2020. Almost 80 percent of the victims were black. Just a day before Santos’ death, 25 people were killed at a Police raided the Vila Cruzeiro favela in Rio de Janeiro killed.
Brazil: Population demonstrates for justice
“These two bugs know they’re being filmed, and yet they passed a death sentence. There is no more shame or embarrassment. They tortured and executed the man.” tweeted Douglas Belchior, a member of the civil rights organization Coalition for Black Rights. Meanwhile, the Brazilian police announced that they would investigate Santos’ death.
Genivaldo de Jesus Santos was buried on Thursday. As the Brazilian news portal G1 reported, locals in Umbaúba previously protested, setting fire to car tires on the street where the crime took place and demanding justice. “It was a crime. They killed him in a cruel way,” Santos’ widow, Maria Fabiana dos Santos, told local reporters. (cheese)
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