At dawn on 28 October, over 2,500 policemen overran the favelas of Penha and Alemão in Rio de Janeiro. They had a warrant to arrest hundreds of individuals linked to Comando Vermelho, the biggest drug trafficking militia active in Brazil, but as soon as they made contact with the gang members, the shootouts started. Police ran belligerents into planned ambushes, and it was reported that militias used suicide drones.

Until now there is no confirmation that every casualty was involved in organised crime, nor is it known how many were summarily killed. No video footage has been published. Police may have abandoned a number of corpses found in nearby woods which have been recovered by local residents. According to media, some bodies have what seem to be torture marks and knife cuts.

The favelas—slang for ghetto or slum—are overpopulated and lack planning, electricity and water supply, sewage system and proper communication systems. In these districts, hundreds of militia members oppress the working people with extortion, terror campaigns, child soldier recruitment, rape, torture and kangaroo courts.

At the UN, High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said that that, for decades, “the high level of killings associated with the police in Brazil has been normalised”, with thousands of black youths from impoverished areas being killed by police every year in the country. He called on Brazil “to end a system that perpetuates racism, discrimination and injustice”.

But anarchists in Brazil described the raids as a ‘social hygiene measure’ in the favelas, where every regime since colonial times has maintained poverty and violence.The Organização Socialista Libertária added that “The criminal overlords that control the drug and weapon trafficking in the borders—with police participation—will not be bothered or put out of business” by the raid, especially when “at this moment in time the state has found that the main protagonists in crime are from the upper classes”. It pointed out that past operations have found several multi-millionaire companies related to slush funds in São Paulo city involved in organised crime, and others have found tons of cocaine trafficked in Santos bay.