A wave of violence in Rio de Janeiro has already led to the deaths of five children and gunshot wounded 11 others children in 2019, says NGO Fogo Cruzado; Friday, a Rio Military Police rifle shot, according to locals, hit the back of an 8-year-old girl, Ágatha, who couldn't resist her injuries and died

According to the Brazilian NGO Fogo Cruzado (Cross-fire, in English), last Friday Ágatha (8 years old) became the 16th child shot this year in the Greater Rio and the 5th who did not resist injuries and died. She was with her grandmother in a van when she was hit in the back yesterday at Complexo do Alemão.

Agatha's death sparked a wave of revolt in the country against the security policy of current Rio de Janeiro Governor Wilson Witzel, who is in the same political party as President Jair Bolsonaro.

Some Brazilian journalists are calling the Witzel government of necropolitical. Journalist Flávia Oliveira of O Globo wrote that "there is no shortage of complaints, images or figures confirming the escalation of state violence in the favelas."

The continuous scenes of children throwing themselves on the ground of Rio de Janeiro's public schools to avoid being the target of shootings is constant.

Politicians, journalists, artists and civil society institutions have condemned the security policy of the current governor of Rio de Janeiro. During the campaign, Witzel, in an interview with the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, even said: "The police will aim at the little head and ... fire!"

The current governor of Rio de Janeiro has already descended from a helicopter publicly celebrating when a sniper killed a man who had hijacked a bus on the Rio-Nitéroi bridge.

Then, the governor, when asked about the deaths of innocents during Rio Police operations in state slums, said that the responsibility for such killings rested with Human Rights NGOs, a very similar stance to President Bolsonaroc with NGOs who work in the Amazon because Bolsonaro accused NGOs of setting fire to the forest.

This absurd accusations only show that the PSL, the party of Bolsonaro and Witzel, is rooted in state violence, in the proximity to outlaws (loggers and prospectors in the Amazon; and the militia in Rio de Janeiro) and in condemning all that represents Western civilization and liberal democracy. To claim that innocent deaths are the fault of NGOs is as unrealistic and absurd as blaming NGOs for the thousands of fires in the Amazon.