Brazil Web site counts violent deaths in Rio
Source: Reuters
By Mauricio Savarese SAO PAULO, Brazil, Feb 4 (Reuters) - "A street person was clubbed to death at dawn on Sunday," reads the Rio Body Count Web site, which counted 38 people dead and 25 wounded since Feb. 1, when the page launched. Vinicius Costa, a 25-year-old systems analyst, and cartoonist Andre Dahmer, 32, founded www.riobodycount.com.br to capture the public's attention, which has become complacent to the daily brutality in the so-called Marvelous City. "The intention is really to shock," Costa told Reuters by telephone. "The violence in Rio has become banal -- nobody grasps the dimensions of this tragedy that we live in every day." Decades of inequality, corruption and increasingly powerful drug gangs have exposed city dwellers to regular bursts of violence that infiltrates daily life. The head of the famous Cristo Redentor statue overhanging Rio from Corcovado overlaid in red crosshairs is the first image on the site, which combs through the local papers and tallies the violent deaths with a brief recount of each event. The site received over 500 e-mails in its first two days. "Only two people are complaining, asking if we are pushing negative propaganda about the city. I say that the negative propaganda of coming to vacation here and ending up dead or assaulted, is the subject. We only collect information." Iraq Body Count (www.iraqbodycount.org), which was started after U.S. General Tommy Franks announced that the military that invaded Iraq in 2003 would not publish death counts, was the inspiration for its Brazilian counterpart. Many of the site's page viewers are asking Costa, Dahmer and their five collaborators to start similar projects in Sao Paulo, Salvador and other capitals. At least 19 were killed in Rio de Janeiro in December when drug gangs that overhang the wealthy neighborhoods from hill-top shanty towns clashed with police and civilians were caught in the cross fire. Rio is about to host the Pan American Games in July. The public security crisis prompted the state government to seek help from the National Public Security Force, elite paramilitary troops. "They (e-mailers) even suggested beginning a Brazil Body Count, but it would be an absurd amount of work," Costa said.
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