As 9 Are Killed in Brazil, Tweets Accuse Police of Vigilante Justice

John Lyons – The Wall Street Journal, 11/6/2014

Not long after the shooting started in Brazil’s impoverished port city of Belém on Tuesday night, locals began issuing dire warnings on social media: Off-duty police were seeking vigilante justice for the murder of one of their own.

By Wednesday morning, at least nine people were shot dead in the northern city of 1.4 million and authorities had opened an investigation into the killings and whether police were involved. As many panicked residents followed the killings on social-media accounts, police said they called a news conference to try to calm the city.

Officials cautioned that many of the reports published on Twitter , Facebook and the instant messaging service WhatsApp, including claims of dozens dead and photographs of alleged victims, were fabrications.

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Thousands gather for protests in Brazil’s largest cities

Simon Romero – The New York Times, 06/17/2013

Protesters showed up by the thousands in Brazil’s largest cities on Monday night in a remarkable display of strength for an agitation that had begun with small protests against bus-fare increases, then evolved into a broader movement by groups and individuals irate over a range of issues including the country’s high cost of living and lavish new stadium projects.

The growing protests rank among the largest and most resonant since the nation’s military dictatorship ended in 1985, with demonstrators numbering into the tens of thousands gathered here in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, and other large protests unfolding in cities like Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Curitiba, Belém and Brasília, the capital, where marchers made their way to the roof of Congress.

Sharing a parallel with the antigovernment protests in Turkey, the demonstrations in Brazil intensified after a harsh police crackdown last week stunned many citizens. In images shared widely on social media, the police here were seen beating unarmed protesters with batons and dispersing crowds by firing rubber bullets and tear gas into their midst.

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Governance in the Amazon: Pará-statals

The Economist – from the print edition, 12/03/2011

THE state of Pará occupies a vast and woefully lawless swathe of the Amazon, forming the eastern curve of the “arc of deforestation”. On December 11th its 4.8m voters will decide whether to split Pará into three, creating two new states. Carajás, with a quarter of the territory and the world’s biggest iron-ore mine, would have in Marabá potentially Brazil’s most violent state capital with 130 murders a year per 100,000 people. Tapajós, occupying three-fifths of the current state, would be 90% forest, with just 1.2m people; it could become a loggers’ paradise, or, with luck, a state-sized national park. The rump of Pará would be limited to the area around Belém, with two-thirds of the population and most of the economic activity.

Proponents of the change argue that Pará is too big to be run from Belém. Célio Costa, an economist, says that the extra federal money the split would bring is fair reward, since so much of Pará is federal forest which Brasília should be paying to manage. He also points to two pairs of states that split previously (by government fiat, not a vote). The resulting four all saw above-average economic growth.

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