Anti-Olympics Protests Planned across Rio de Janeiro on the Eve of “The Exclusion Games”
Over the coming week, a range of anti-Olympics protest events will take place across Rio de Janeiro, culminating in a large demonstration during the opening ceremony on Friday August 5. Under the banner “ The Exclusion Games ,” various social movements and collectives have come together to organize a series of events highlighting the problems with the city’s Olympics developments.
There’s plenty for Rio residents to protest about. Mayor Eduardo Paes ’ vanity project has changed the city, making it more unequal , more segregated , and more divided . In the name of the Games, over 77,000 favela residents have been evicted , and many more residents of favelas the formal city alike have been forced to leave through gentrification . Over 2,500 citizens have been killed by police in the city since Rio won the right to host the Games in 2009. All the grand plans for environmental legacies , including cleaning the city’s waterways, have been scrapped . Not only have the Games failed to help the environment, they’ve actively damaged it, with the golf course built in the Marapendi nature reserve just one example.
Despite the claims that the Olympics are all about sport, several community sporting facilities have been shut around the city and replaced with elite facilities from which local people are excluded. The indigenous population of Aldeia Maracanã , who were evicted from their museum near the Maracanã stadium prior to the World Cup have still not heard any news about the new museum site they were promised by the Brazilian Olympic Committee. At the national level, the Olympics will be opened by a man many in Brazil see as leading a coup against the democratically elected Dilma Rousseff, who will be absent from the Olympics.
http://www.rioonwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/13716158_362316253891956_6102037249164530047_n-300x172.png 300w, http://www.rioonwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/13716158_362316253891956_6102037249164530047_n-768x439.png 768w" alt="Map of Olympic impacts including forced evictions, urban interventions, environmental impacts and militarization. Map by Rio 2016 - Os Jogos da Exclusão" width="620" height="355">
The sheer cost of the Olympics, conservatively estimated at around R$40 billion or US$12 billion (although this is likely to rise even further after the Games), has brought public services to a standstill. The State of Rio de Janeiro recently declared a state of calamity to release extra federal funding as it couldn’t pay public servants, including the police who will protect the Games . Because of Olympic spending, cuts to education and health care have led to closures of hospitals and an education strike , supported by students occupying their schools .
A significant chunk of this Olympic spending is under investigation for corruption in the contracts as part of the nationwide anti-corruption Operation Car Wash . While the city says that most of the money for the Olympics comes from private sources, many of the contributions to the Olympic budget are from real estate developers who will be given publicly owned land once the Olympics have finished–essentially the money has been raised by selling off public assets through the backdoor at bargain basement prices.
And while there are all these issues to protest about, new laws introduced for the Olympics threaten to define political protest as terrorism , legitimizing state violence. Security staff for Rio’s metro attacked protesters and journalists when they marched against the Olympics a few weeks ago. All this adds up to denying many Cariocas the right to their city–Rio has been imagined and shaped to be a city where people invest their money, at the expense of those who live here.
Cariocas protesting against the Olympics join a rich history of protest against the local impacts of the Games. Since 1932 locals have protested Olympic spending and in recent times anti-Olympic protest has gained pace. Whether it’s activists concerned about gentrification and racial segregation in Atlanta , indigenous and environmental activists from Sydney , human rights defenders in Beijing , activists fighting for civil liberties, against gentrification and defending the environment in Vancouver and against the militarization of the city in London , Circassian activists in Sochi , or even activists fighting for the rights of the homeless in Tokyo (the next city to host the summer Olympics), activists in Rio will be watched and supported by people all over the world who have seen similar impacts in their cities. The Olympics leave a trail of exclusion, broken promises, and angry locals wherever they touch down–and further pressure here in Rio will help force the Lords of the Rings into change .
Related:
International Olympic Committee flags end of ‘universal’ Games
Several prominent members of the International Olympic Committee say the difficulty of getting Rio de Janeiro ready for the Summer Games likely means the organisation will shy away from again holding the world’s biggest sporting event in cities that exhibit any signs of instability.
The comments, among the strongest yet by IOC officials about their frustration with Rio’s preparations, show the organisation backing away from a previous goal of opening up the Games to a broader selection of cities.
Rio, the first South American city to host the event, was supposed to mark the dawn of a new, more adventurous era for the IOC. It is instead shaping up as a cautionary tale about how volatile conditions can be in developing countries.
Ambitions to hold the Olympics in Africa or India appear shelved indefinitely, according to IOC members.
Though they say they remain optimistic about the Rio Games, IOC officials say getting the city ready has been consistently tumultuous and at times nearly calamitous.
The Olympics is a spectacle that I have always thoroughly enjoyed.
Now,,, not so much,,,now,,,others pay ultimate sacrifices so I can watch athletes play games on TV.
It doesn't sound like it is going to be a happy place to be Larry.
No it sure doesn't six. I can't even imagine what it must be like to be one of the poor in Rio with the Olympics going on.
I can recall when Toronto was vying for the 2008 Summer Olympics there was considerable protest. Beijing did win that one and provided one of the most spectacular events in Olympic history. However, it, too, was not without its protests. For example, many ancient communities of vintage Chinese houkos (walled community homes) were confiscated and demolished (their owners paid miniscule compensation) to make room for the Olympic site. When lawyers tried to make claims for their homeowner clients, the lawyers were jailed. I'm happy I don't practise law in China.
I doubt that Toronto will again bid for the event.
And in addition to all of that.there's also the danger of Zika:
Brazil’s Zika problem is inconveniently not ending. The outbreak that began in the country’s northeast has reached Rio de Janeiro, where it is flourishing. Clinical studies are also mounting that Zika infection is associated not just with pediatric microcephaly and brain damage, but also adult conditions such as Guillain-Barré syndrome [1] and acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, which are debilitating and sometimes fatal. [2]
Simply put, Zika infection is more dangerous, and Brazil’s outbreak more extensive, than scientists reckoned a short time ago. Which leads to a bitter truth: the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games must be postponed, moved, or both, as a precautionary concession. There are five reasons:
(LINK)
On top of all of that, Brazil's human rights record with it's own indigenous population is horrid.