Rio de Janeiro's Public Safety Minister Jose Mariano Beltrame defended police operations against drug gangs in the city's slums that left 19 people dead this week, saying the road to peace "often goes through actions that bring blood." Beltrame's comments, published by the daily O Globo on Friday, came in response to complaints of police abuse during a huge operation against drug gangs in the slums area known as the Complexo do Alemao, in which 19 people were killed Wednesday, according to dpa. Complaints filed by residents to the Human Rights Commission of the state legislature say 10 of the dead were innocent bystanders and accuse police agents of looting and extortion during the operation. Joao Tancredo, the human rights representative of the Brazilian Chamber of Lawyers (OAB) in Rio, agreed, but gave different numbers, saying in media reports on Friday that at least three, but perhaps as many as 11 of the 19 casualties were innocent bystanders. "There was apparently a massacre of civilians," Tancredo said. According to reports, some police officers indiscriminately shot at civilians, and disarmed, injured people were "executed." One eyewitness quoted by the Internet news site, G1, said her son, 20, was pulled out of the house and shot on the street by police. Late Thursday, slum dwellers protested before the Public Safety Ministry. Beltrame claimed all the dead were linked to drug trafficking, including two teenagers aged 13 and 14, and stressed that the tough police action was necessary to put an end to the "parallel state" established by drug gangs in several of Rio's favelas (slums). "I can say that the remedy to bring peace very often goes through actions that bring blood," the minister said. "People are at the mercy of a parallel state in the favelas, where criminals impose their will. Close to 99.9 per cent of the 200,000 residents of the Complexo do Alemao are good people, who are not accomplices to (drug) traffic," he said. Beltrame stressed that that operation was "only the start" of a series of actions against drug gangs that will be enlarged to include at least five other poor areas of the city. Since they began on May 2, one day after the brutal murder of two militarized police agents, anti-drug operations in the Complexo do Alemao have left at least 48 people dead and more than 80 injured, including several bystanders.
