AD: March 2021 marked three years since Marielle Franco’s assassination. What’s your view of the way the inquiry into her murder has progressed? And how do you intend to press for justice?
MB: I think that my election campaign was a beautiful and powerful sign, because Marielle’s partner won. That keeps Marielle’s memory alive. And, in the midst of a pandemic, and with very little money, the fact that we won so big is in itself a kind of message and a demand for justice. So we will not accept a non-response from those who ordered the assassination of Marielle and Anderson (her driver, who was also shot dead).
Regarding the investigations, I think the situation is very worrying. There have been arrests of people accused of being the perpetrators of the crime. But they have not been brought before a jury. So it is important that we demand this happens as soon as possible. We want to see them held accountable, and not only them. We want all those involved [to be held accountable]: the intermediaries, and, especially, the people who ordered this crime against democracy.
In January, a new investigating prosecutor and Rio de Janeiro public prosecutor were appointed. Last year, too, there was a change of prosecutor and public prosecutor. So there have been many changes, but inevitably there is a lot of concern because we are talking about a three-year-old investigation. I follow it very carefully, very closely. We are talking about a murder that, unfortunately, was very sophisticated and very well carried out. There were mistakes in the investigation at the beginning, which are now proving to be damaging.
This is no reason to be discouraged or to wonder if we will ever find the ringleaders. On the contrary, the more pressure we bring, the more we keep this investigation going. What personally worries me a little, considering Brazil is a country known for having a short memory, is that at some point, Marielle becomes only a resistance fighter to be mourned and there is no will to force out the truth on who ordered those murders. It is important not to lose sight of this. And at this point the situation is very delicate, because there have been changes [in the Public Prosecutor’s Office team].
Until the new investigators, prosecutors and the attorney general himself become acquainted with the entire investigation, there is a lot of work to be done. The impression I get now is that very little has been done since the change, that there is now inertia regarding the investigation. In any investigation, the more time goes by, the more difficult it becomes to reach a result. It is important that we keep up the pressure to reveal who was behind it and that this investigation does not lose steam. This is very important.
AD: Rio de Janeiro is a barometer of national politics. Bolsonaro’s family is from Rio and he started his political career on the city council. And Rio is also emblematic of Brazil’s record of political violence against women. How have you been dealing with security issues now that you are a councillor?
MB: This issue of political violence against women is a theme that needs to be debated and denounced, as we have been doing. What we have today is a politics that is not ashamed of oppressing women. Marielle was a democratically elected councillor, a Black woman who was in a lesbian relationship. She represented the LGBTQ+ agenda, the minority agenda, she denounced the killing of Black youth. But that’s what the council does not want to talk about. When such a woman is executed, in a political crime, the message is that her politics cannot occupy this space.
The message that society sends is precisely the opposite of that, because there has been no retreat: on the contrary, there has been progress. In 2018, more women put themselves forward and were elected, and this is growing. When society takes all this barbarism, all this pain, and turns Marielle into a symbol of the resistance, this is a response and is not merely symbolic. It should be understood as resistance in itself.
However, without knowing who the people behind [Marielle’s murder] were, we have to assume that what we have today, in Rio de Janeiro and in Brazil as a whole, is a group capable of murder as a way of doing politics. Therefore, the murder of female councillors and parliamentarians in the interior of Rio and elsewhere in the country is not surprising.
What was different in the case of Marielle was that she was murdered in one of the largest capital cities in the world, at nine o’clock at night, while returning from a work meeting, and that she was executed as a political warning. So that makes us understand what is in dispute – it is democracy vs barbarism, it’s not the Left or the Right. Until we respond to Marielle’s murder, it becomes legitimate to perpetrate violence against women, especially in politics. After all, there is a sense of impunity.
Of course there was a debate about my security, about whether I should be a candidate at all but this was never a question for me. I would never refuse because of that. But we did it with responsibility and also the understanding that my security is a collective responsibility. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the OAS [Organization of American States] has issued a resolution, which means that if something happens to me, it becomes a problem for the Brazilian state and I become a diplomatic incident.
In addition, I am part of the Program for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders in Brazil. We also take security measures. In short, thinking about security is important for all women in politics. We even saw right-wing women being attacked, but mainly, those at risk are women in the progressive camp, who are fighting for democracy and are defenders of human rights.
[Look at] the violence against Benny Briolly, who is a Black trans woman, in Niteroi, an extremely conservative city. Issues of race and class must be factored into the debate on security and politics, because they are fundamental markers and because attacks on women are Bolsonarist politics. This is what we need to confront.
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Debora Britto | Radio Free (2021-04-16T00:00:00+00:00) ‘Bolsonaro’s politics of hate wants to destroy all that Marielle represents’. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2021/04/16/bolsonaros-politics-of-hate-wants-to-destroy-all-that-marielle-represents/
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