The murder of a leading Brazilian reporter who worked on a story about sex abuse and drugs in a Rio de Janeiro slum shone a spotlight on the thin line dividing the city's normal life from a macabre underworld where drug gangs reign.
Answering accusations by reporter Tim Lopes' relatives that his employer Globo television had failed to protect him, Globo editors said Lopes was reporting in a public place, in a popular neighborhood, and not on a clandestine event.
Indeed, hillside shantytowns that sprawl above the city's picturesque skyline are home to hundreds of thousands of people who live in misery but earn their bread honestly working as cleaning maids, waiters and elevator boys in the city.
But dozens of gangs of gun-toting hoodlums who run the lucrative drug and arms trade also operate in the slums.
Lopes, winner of the prestigious Esso Prize for television journalists last year for a report on an open-air drugs market, was this time investigating a tip-off from residents of a slum about drugs and sex abuse during wild dance parties.
Lopes, 51, had entered the Cruzeiro slum four times, twice reporting with a hidden camera.
On June 9, a week after Lopes went missing, Rio police said a drug lord known as Elias "the Mad" had tortured him and then shot him to death.
Police arrested four suspects last Sunday and received the evidence from them. Elias, who received his nickname for his extremely violent methods, is at large.
Charred fragments and traces of blood were found in a cave near the slum last week.
Risky assignments
Lopes' brother-in-law Andre Martins accused Globo of sending Lopes to risky assignments and failing to protect him.
"He risked a lot, but he always acted on Globo's consent, fulfilling its orders. It's the channel that has to evaluate risks, not the reporter," Martins said in tears. Workers Party parliamentary deputy Carlos Minc said some 700,000 people among Rio's 8 million live in slums run by drug gangs "in a land without a state." "They have the law of silence, curfew and have to produce foot soldiers for gang wars," he said. "It's a return to barbarian times."
Drug gangs often outnumber and outgun the police force, and police are accused of being on the bandits' payroll.
"The important thing is that residents were looking for help in the media and not public authorities ... and it seems that we now cannot do our work any more," said Francisco Otavio, a colleague of Lopes who also reports on crime.
"There used to be certain respect for journalists up the hill (in the slums) that allowed peaceful co-existence, but now we run the risk of turning into a Medellin," Otavio said, referring to the crime-ridden Colombian city notorious for being the base of a drug cartel.
Lopes' murder was the first killing of a journalist from a nationwide media outlet by drug gangs in Brazil, and prompted expressions of indignation and concern by local and international media organizations.
Killings and parties
DNA tests of the remains and blood will be ready this week, police said, but evidence points that it was Lopes' body been burnt in the cave after he was shot, police said.
Detective Sergio Falante said the cave served as the venue for killings in which victims' bodies are squeezed into several car tires filled with gasoline and set on fire.
"Bandits call it a microwave and use it quite a lot with their enemies," he said. "It was hard to tell whether we were dealing with human remains before we found teeth in the mess." Congressman Minc likened the method to those in Nazi death camps. "Those who stand up against crime are being burnt in the oven, like in Auschwitz," he said.
At the same time, police said on June 12 they had found another body in a clandestine slum cemetery and they were checking if that could be Lopes.
Globo said Lopes was investigating a tip-off from slum residents that drug gangs were hosting wild dance parties, known as "bailes funk," at which drugs and sex flowed freely to lure new clients from the city below.
"It seems they organized some kind of an erotic show in which they offered young girls from the favela," Otavio said.
Bailes features loud music similar to rap, sometimes with songs that call for killing informants or police, and youths staging mano-a-mano fights to its beat.
Lopes' colleagues and police said the journalist must have had an agreement with the drug lords in order to simply enter the slum. Strangers are not allowed in, and it is not uncommon for trespassers to never return from a slum. "You have to protect yourself by a treaty with the slum lords, but I imagine filming with a micro-camera wasn't part of any treaty," Otavio said. "Tim always worked on the edge."
Just as in the case of the drugs market, Lopes, who was married and had a son from a previous marriage, took a spy camera that can be hidden in clothes on his latest assignment, his colleagues said.
The Association of Brazilian Newspapers said Lopes' death would not stop investigative reporters from doing their jobs.
(China Daily June 14, 2002)
