Juninho Pernambucano hits the nail on the head: "There are thousands of George Floyds in Brazil"

By Cynara Menezes, for the Journalists for Democracy 

Former player Juninho Pernambucano gave an important interview to reporter Thiago Rabelo of The Guardian newspaper, touching on a wound that his football colleagues have chosen to ignore: police violence against black people in the Brazilian peripheries. "There are thousands of George Floyds in Brazil and thousands more who have suffered in silence and whom we don't know about," said the current sporting director of Lyon, referring to the black man suffocated to death by a police officer in the middle of a street in Minneapolis, which sparked mass protests in the US and around the world.

“How is it possible that an 8-year-old child is killed by the police, as happened last year in Complexo do Alemão?” Juninho asked the British publication, referring to Agatha Félix, the girl shot by military police officers while she was with her mother inside a van. “How is it possible to live after that? Unbelievable. Look at George Floyd. He couldn't breathe. He is a human being. I can't imagine how the police can do that. It's racism, and it's very, very sad.” 

“It’s inhumane to say that we don’t have George Floyds in Brazil. Shootings happen every day. Homosexuals are persecuted too, and that’s one of the things that makes me angriest about people who support Bolsonaro.” He said he had to break with “80% or 90%” of his family and friends because of their support for the president. “It was my decision to distance myself from them.”

In June, Bolsonaro's son, federal deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro, despite the thousands of innocent deaths that occur every day at the hands of the police in the favelas and peripheries, said that there is no reason for black people to protest because here "there are no cases like that of George Floyd".

“If you look at what’s happening in the US, the protests… They call them demonstrations, I’d call them riots. They say they’re against racists… They’re trying to import that here to Brazil even though there aren’t cases like Floyd’s, who unfortunately died, nobody wants that to happen. But they’re trying to bring that kind of ‘protest’ here,” he said during a virtual event of the American far-right.

The statistics support Juninho's claim, not Bananinha's. Police killings have been increasing since Jair Bolsonaro took power. Last year, 5.804 people were killed in "confrontations" with police, and often these "confrontations" involve only one side with weapons. Rio de Janeiro, where Agatha was killed, had the highest number of police killings in 22 years in the first five months of 2020: 741 victims. And in 2019, 80% of those killed by Rio de Janeiro police were Black or mixed-race. Therefore, logically, it's impossible that there aren't several George Floyds being killed daily at the hands of police.

In 2016, the Senate's Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry investigating the murder of young people in Brazil concluded that a genocide of black youth is underway in our country. Every 23 minutes, a young black person is murdered in Brazil; every year, 23.100 young black people aged 15 to 29 are killed; the homicide rate among young black people is almost four times that of white people – these are the figures indicated by the report. You can't argue with the numbers, and you can't sugarcoat the reality.

Among the reasons for the genocide of Black people are the infamous "resistance reports," which favor impunity by presenting only the official version of the alleged "confrontations," in which the police officer claims to have shot because the deceased "offered resistance." According to the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI), due to these "resistance reports," 99% of deaths at the hands of police officers are filed away without investigation, and in 21% of cases the victims were under 15 years old.

When George Floyd was killed, star player Neymar was criticized for not speaking out and ended up posting a black screen with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on Instagram. However, there has never been a single statement from the player criticizing police violence in his country of origin. Juninho, in fact, takes a dig at Neymar as immature in an interview with The Guardian. "He needs to question himself and grow," he said.

Juninho Pernambucano not only dismantled a narrative designed to discourage Black people from taking to the streets to demand their rights, but also exposed the lack of commitment from his fellow players, many of whom come from the peripheries, to the police violence committed against their own people. We need thousands reacting to the murders of our thousands of George Floyds, a reaction that should also come from within football.