Protesters use 16,000 coconuts as symbols of violence

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Antiviolence protesters stretched out 16,000 coconuts on Brazil's world-famous Copacabana beach Saturday, each one representing a victim of urban violence. Protesters used dummies to represent victims of violence on Brazil's Copacabana beach this week. Activists from ONG Rio de Paz led a protest march Saturday morning that included residents and tourists who usually can be found on the beach on weekends.The protesters strung up a sign on the sand that said "Shame" in Spanish, Portuguese, English and French. They finished with a minute of silence for the victims of violence.

Rio de Paz said the coconuts represent victims of violence, homicides, dead police officers and those who have been shot in gunfights between authorities and gangs of narcotics traffickers.The figure itself was obtained from official information from the Rio de Janeiro governmental Institute of Public Security.

It was the second protest staged this week on Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana beach by the group Rio de Paz. On Tuesday, the group created a mock cemetery in the sand with mannequins representing 9,000 people who Rio de Paz says have been slain and secretly buried since January 2007.

Rio de Paz President Antonio Carlos Costa said he believes that about 6,000 of the missing people were killed, many by drug traffickers fighting for territory in Rio's slums and poor neighborhoods. Others, he said, were killed by hit squads and police acting on their own.

"In general, they are assassinated by police -- police acting outside of their regular work hours," Costa said Tuesday. "They are also assassinated by narcotraffickers. The bodies are disposed of in secret cemeteries in the metropolitan Rio de Janeiro area or incinerated alive by narcotraffickers in what they call 'microwaves.' "

To illustrate the point, demonstrators also constructed facsimiles of the "microwaves" that narcotics traffickers and death squads reportedly use to cremate remains of those they have abducted


Source: CNN