Political Assassination, State Terrorism: Marielle Franco, Still With Us!

Statement from CAB.

POLITICAL ASSASSINATION, STATE TERRORISM: MARIELLE FRANCO, STILL WITH US!

In the night of last Wednesday, March 14, after leaving a debate with other black women in the district of Lapa, downtown Rio de Janeiro, Marielle Franco was brutally executed. Anderson Pedro Gomes, the driver of the car where Marielle was in, was also assassinated.

They have executed an activist, a woman, a black, a lesbian, who was born in the Favela da Mare, an advocate for Human Rights, councilwoman for PSOL (Socialism and Freedom Party), and who recently became the rapporteur of the commission responsible for inspecting the Military Intervention in Rio de Janeiro.

For years, Marielle had been denouncing the abuses of the State Police, and was closely following the cruel unfolding of the recent federal-military intervention. Only four days before her death, Marielle had exposed the truculent action of the 41st State Police Battalion at Favela do Acari, where policemen terrorized the residents, invaded homes, and through young men dead in a ditch.

The murderers of Marielle and Anderson represent an orchestrated action by a Terrorist and Genocidal State, which doesn’t use any masks to carry out its action to decimate the black people and to send a message to all men and women who place themselves against the unrestrained massacre promoted in the periphery of the city. The death of the fellow woman is no coincidence; neither is it any mistake by the State Public Security Policy in the full validity of the federal-military intervention. The advance of repression through that measure is what authorizes this new and deep step of the State terrorism. This is clearly a planned action: nine shots were fired against the car, an explicit case of summary execution of a people’s fighter.

The State, Brazilian capitalism, and its institutions continue to work, with their historical profile of maintaining the structural inequalities and the direct or indirect perpetuation of barbarism.

In this moment of pain, sadness and hate, we are to give all solidarity to the families of Marielle and Anderson, to the fellow men and women of PSOL, and to all men and women who are daily entrenched against the genocide of the black people.

TERRORIST STATE!

DOWN WITH THE FEDERAL-MILITARY INTERVENTION!

FOR MEMORY, TRUTH AND JUSTICE!!!

MARIELLE FRANCO: STILL WITH US!