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Amnesty PSA Calls Attention to High Murder Rate of Brazil's Black Youth

Black youth in Brazil are dying from violence at alarming rates. Amnesty International is saying "enough murder" and launched the "Jovem Negro Vivo" campaign — translated to "Young Black Live" in English — in an effort to draw attention to the deadly issue.

Black youth in Brazil are dying from violence at an alarming rate.
Amnesty International is saying "enough murder" and launched the "Jovem Negro Vivo" campaign — translated to "Young Black Live" in English — in an effort to draw attention to the deadly issue. Of the 56,000 people who were murdered in Brazil in 2012, 30,000 were aged 15-29. Blacks were 77 percent of those killed, according to Amnesty.
"Most homicides are committed by firearms, and less than 8 percent of cases are being tried," Amnesty reveals on their site.

The organization rolled out two PSA videos in their campaign: one that shows infographics of statistics and another that brings to life the experience of being a young Black growing up in Brazil.

In the video, a Black teen walks out of his home and looks across to another house to see what appears to be a clothed invisible boy walking out of his home. As the teen walks through the streets of his favela, he sees other invisible boys, who represent the voiceless many who have been killed. After leaving a party, he runs into trouble, gets shot and becomes another invisible statistic. 

According to Amnesty, the Brazilian national media ignores the topic of the murder of Black youth. These realities were recently highlighted in a recent NPR report "In Brazil, Race Is a Matter of Life and Violent Death."
"Those who are white tend to be able to afford themselves and avail themselves of greater security, and we are seeing reductions in homicides," Robert Muggah of the IGARAPE Institute, a global security think tank, tells NPR. "Those who are Black and who are unable to — as our societies become more and more unequal — are less able to secure those public goods, and as a result are seeing homicide rates going up."
Earlier this year, police in Rio de Janeiro were accused of police brutality because of their methods to pacify favelas of gangs and drug dealers in time for the influx of tourists during the World Cup. Additionally in 2012, activists in Sao Paulo were outraged at police for continuing to target Black youth with violence, calling their actions genocide. 

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(Photo: Anistia Internacional Brasil via Youtube)

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