Mega-Events and Human Rights Violations in Rio de Janeiro Dossier | 2015

1. Housing The sporting mega-events in Rio de Janeiro marked the return of the most violent form of disrespect of housing rights in the city. The coalition of political forces, added to the interests of large building companies, accelerated the “social cleansing” of prime locations in the city and its surrounding areas, converted into new profitable fronts for middle and upper class housing developments. Updated data reinforce what was already presented in previous Dossiers. It is a policy of relocation of the city’s poorest population in the service of real estate interests and business opportunities, accompanied by violent and illegal actions.

This chapter presents updated information on removed communities and what happened to the areas they occupied. It presents the situation of communities which are threatened, facing uncertainties, lack of information, and true psychological terrorism promoted by City Hall as a strategy to enable the removals. Projects are not presented and families do not have access to official information, even when heavy machinery is at their door pressing for their departure.

These are dramatic cases, in which City Hall tries to defeat residents through weariness, the spreading of lies, and even denying the residents the right to defence.

The data presented here, as will become clear, reveal a situation of severe violations. The lack of access to information and official data is also serious. The failure in presenting data by the public powers may come from planning errors, evidenced by changes on the developments’ blueprints after public hearings and public bidding processes, which can be interpreted as part of a strategy to increase psychological pressure as a means of hindering resistance movements, or even as a mechanism to cover up potential illegalities in transactions. Indications for these three conjectures can be found in the presented cases.

The failure in presenting data and the absence of a democratic public debate reinforce these circumstances where the most vulnerable lose the little they have achieved in the daily struggle for access to the city. This governmental attitude is, in itself, a form of rights violation.

In the case of Rio de Janeiro, it is clear that the project to attract investments, very strongly advertised by state and municipal governments with the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, has as an important component the expulsion of the poor from prime locations, such as Barra da Tijuca and Recreio districts, or from areas which will be contemplated with public investments, such as the districts of Vargem Grande, Jacarepaguá, Curicica, Centro and Maracanã. City Hall acts in these districts, expansion areas for real estate money, as a popular housing destruction machine. The majority of removals, thus, are focused on areas of extreme real 19