Drug money to die for

During Brazil’s traditional Carnival time early this year a six-year-old boy was caught in his seatbelt and dragged beside his mother’s car for 7km through Rio de Janeiro’s streets. He finished with head, knees and fingers torn from his body.

The horrific death of little Joao occurred during a botched carjacking blamed on “cocaine trafficking and the growing firepower of drug gangs”, according to a McClatchy-Tribune report in the Brisbane Courier-Mail.

When 25-year-old Australian Van Tuong Nguyen was hanged in Singapore in December 2005 for his involvement in the illegal transporting of heroin to Australia there was a huge national outcry about the death penalty. There was, however, little said about drug trafficking itself, why people like this popular young man choose to take such huge risks.

Australian Schapelle Corby was arrested in Bali, Indonesia, found guilty of carrying into the country an illegal substance, cannabis, and in 2005, at the age of 28, was sentenced to 20 years in prison. There was considerable controversy about her guilt or innocence, but little said about the drugs market.

After the Australian “Bali Nine” were arrested in 2005 for possession of heroin in Indonesia, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were sentenced in February 2006 to death by firing squad, and life imprisonment was imposed on Renae Lawrence, Scott Rush, Michael Czugaj, Martin Stephens, Matthew Norman, Si Yi Chen and Tach Duc Thanh Nguyen.

In April 2006, the sentences of Lawrence, Nguyen, Chen and Norman were reduced to 20 years. Then in September 2006, while the sentences of Chan (death), Sukumaran (death), Czugaj (life), Stephens (life) and Lawrence (20 years) remained the same, the sentences of the others (Rush, Norman, Chen and Nguyen) were changed to the death penalty. Unlike the Singapore case there was no national outcry in Australia about the death penalty imposed on six Australians, and no comment about the origins of the money supply for which they were risking these fates.

Australian Carl Williams, 37, is currently serving a jail sentence, which may not see him released before he turns 70, for murders connected with wars between criminal gangs in Melbourne’s drugs trade.

These deaths and long prison terms are part and parcel of the ongoing struggle between dealers, gangs and the police because of the huge sums of money to be made from selling illegal substances. But little is said about the customers who provide these funds.

Back to Brazil, where in December alone gang attacks, some in Rio’s richest neighbourhoods, left 19 dead. “Scores have died in the crossfire between gang members and illegal off-duty-police militias fighting for control of the city’s slums. Brazil has the world’s highest rate of firearm deaths and one of the highest homicide rates. Criminal gangs are in virtual control of large parts of the country.” The murder rate in Rio state is 62 for every 100,000 residents compared with less than six in USA.(McClatchy-Tribune).

David Busch of ABC Radio National’s Encounter program described the 600 favelas (slum districts) of Rio as communities characterised by overcrowding, poverty, unemployment, sickness, teenage pregnancy, violence, and crime, particularly drug trafficking. Rio’s 12 million inhabitants “live in one of the world's most violent and economically divided cities”.

In Rocinha district fireworks are set off to signal where the police patrols are operating. “As we make our way through the maze of back alleys and open drains of Rio's largest favela, it's not unusual to see even teenagers sitting by their back doors holding a hand-gun”, Busch reported.

A resident of Rio's most infamous slum Cidade de Deus (ironically meaning “City of God”) reported, “At night when we come home from work we have to dodge gun fire in the streets”. A television documentary showed teenage boys bringing out their rifles and handguns to take pot shots at a rival gang for their evening’s entertainment.

Overall Brazil is not one of the world’s poorest countries but the big problem is inequality. More than 20 per cent of the people live on less than US$2 a day, the infant mortality rate of the poorest is three times that of the richest, life expectancy is 80 years for the rich, 60 for the poor. The unemployment rate among young people in the favelas is 80 per cent.

Consequently the economy of the favela is based largely on the sale of illegal drugs, which pays for the essentials of everyday living, including weapons and ammunition. In the turf wars between drug gangs and between gangs and police many boys do not survive beyond their 20s.

Those who profit are the local Mr Bigs who don’t take many risks, and greater Mr Bigs higher up the supply chain who take fewer. Other winners are the providers of weapons and ammunition, mostly manufactured in the United States where 60 per cent of the world’s arms originate.

We have daily accounts of armed struggle in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Palestine and other war zones, but less about the long-term shooting battles between police forces and drug gangs, and the turf wars between the gangs.

However, omitted from all the accounts is the essential ingredient youngsters in Brazil and men in Melbourne die for; the income they hope to make from drug sales. Mostly hidden from public scrutiny, customers may be desperate addicts forced to engage in prostitution or crime to feed the habit, unable to hold down a regular job, in and out of hospital and doctors’ surgeries, often with a short life span. In any event - supplying the funds.

Also supplying the funds are those at the other end of the social scale in the leafy suburbs where respectable middle class folk use drugs as refreshments along with cocktails as a sophisticated pastime, the necessary secrecy presumably enhancing the experience. Perhaps they don’t concern themselves with how the substances reach them, the risks and deaths of those in the supply chain.

But moral or immoral, criminal or not, at the end of the day, at the end of the money chain, it is the customer who supplies the wealth youngsters in Brazil fight and die for.