I was approached by a campaign for a street artist named Ropi, 23 years old, Argentinean national, who is imprisoned in Pernambuco for allegedly trying to assassinate a military policeman. The only (two) media reports I have found are incomplete, but definitive in incriminating her. The campaign report, however, states that it was an act of defence. I decided to write this text because, when I came across the aforementioned campaign, I remembered three situations that lead me to lean towards the young woman’s version.
The first is the usual comments I hear about street artists. I have heard many people call the young people who make a living juggling at traffic lights, or street performers outside bars and restaurants, “bums”/”vagas”. It is an unprecedented lack of sensitivity. There are many insults, blasphemies and contempt towards those who only seek to earn their daily bread honestly. It is truly scandalous.
The second concerns the way I witnessed how several military policemen treated homeless people in the Historic Centre of Salvador (Pelourinho) during the time I worked as a teacher in a state public school in that area. They did not seem to be dealing with humans. Three days a week I would pass by the place before 7 a.m. and see public agents kicking, shouting, or pushing (or all that together) people sleeping in a square. All so that the “landscape would change” when national and foreign tourists arrived to stroll around the place.
The third and last memory refers to the stories of a former university student I had, also in Salvador de Bahia, who was a military policeman. Newly admitted to the force, he was appalled, for example, by the way many of his colleagues treated homeless children. While he tried to talk to the children, to bond with them as a way of minimising the pain of abandonment, most of his fellow police officers were contemptuous of them, sometimes kicking and insulting them.
As soon as I read the text of the solidarity campaign to help Ropi, I couldn’t help but relate this case to the three situations I have just described, which unfortunately happen every day in this country. That is why I was immediately drawn to the campaign’s narrative, according to which this young woman was violently intercepted by the law enforcement officer and defended herself with the knife. She was sleeping in an abandoned building and the policeman allegedly kicked her awake, as I witnessed in Salvador, in the city’s historic centre.
Unfortunately, the Brazilian Military Police has an aggressive history, despite having, without a doubt, officers (men and women) who carry out their duties with humanity. Every year, research and studies carried out by specialised organisations show this aggressive/violent profile of our police forces.
Brazil’s Public Security Forum, for example, recorded that in 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, 6,416 people were killed by military and civilian police officers, whether on duty or in their own free time. The Security Observatory Network found that in Pernambuco, in 2019, police actions were responsible for the deaths of 74 people, a figure that rose to 113 in 2020.
Just this Tuesday, 24 May, a police operation in Rio de Janeiro left at least 11 people dead. I could show data resulting from studies in different parts of the country, but that is not the purpose of this text. What I intend to do is to question the arrest of the young woman and also the narrative present in the two journalistic texts I found on this event, which simply expose her as a criminal, when the reality of the PM’s actions in Brazil makes us doubt.
The first, entitled “23-year-old Argentinean is arrested after trying to kill a policeman with a knife on the beach of Maracaípe, in Ipojuca”, is composed of 14 lines, illustrated by a photo showing an out-of-focus young woman being led by a law enforcement officer and another showing a hand holding a knife; photos which, by the way, are quite disproportionate to the size of the text. The second news item, consisting of 22 lines, and illustrated by an even larger photo than the first (Pernambuco Civil Police headquarters) carries the headline “Argentina is arrested in flagrante delicto after stabbing a military policeman in Pernambuco”.
Neither of the two texts presents Ropi’s testimony explaining the reason(s) for the stabbing. They are “more of the same” when we refer to the police news that usually appear in the national media, more interested in treating the facts in a spectacular way (see the headlines and the sizes of the photos), than investigating and denouncing a fact for public knowledge.
That is why I am writing this text, and I also leave the details of the campaign for those who want to collaborate with the defence of Ropi, a young woman who is imprisoned in a country that is not her own, for a crime that she supposedly committed in her own defence.
In Brazil, contributions can be made through PIX 11974647696 (Camila Dovis). In Argentina, CBU:0140025003713604346122 – Banco Provincia (Rosana Daniela Casse).
