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8 de novembro de 2011A Brazilian television cameraman has been killed while filming an intense shoot-out between police and drug traffickers that claimed at least four other lives in Rio de Janeiro.
Gelson Domingos da Silva, an experienced crime photographer working for the Bandeirantes TV network, was reportedly hit in the chest by a high-calibre rifle shot while covering a dawn special forces raid on the Antares favela in western Rio.
One photograph published in the Brazilian media showed Domingos, 46, moments before he was shot, crouching behind two rifle-toting military policemen and a roadblock improvised from a tree trunk. A second photograph showed the cameraman’s lifeless body in a police car.
Authorities in Rio have earned widespread praise for their pioneering “pacification” scheme, which has seen more than a dozen slums cleared of heavily armed drug gangs.
But Sunday’s shoot-out, in which four alleged drug traffickers also lost their lives, was a reminder that outside the tourist areas and the region around Rio’s Maracanã World Cup final stadium, the situation remains critical. Gangs armed with war-grade arsenals continue to control tracts of the city and clashes with police remain commonplace.
As the weapons used in Rio’s drugs conflict have become more powerful, the risks for journalists covering police operations have grown. Yet under Brazilian law, local media workers are not permitted to use bulletproof vests capable of withstanding high-calibre rifle fire.
In an interview with one local newspaper, an unnamed journalist who witnessed Domingos’ death criticised the equipment provided to Rio’s frontline reporters: “These bulletproof vests are crap. They are [made of] paper.”
Friends and colleagues paid tribute to Domingos, a father of three, who was believed to be the first journalist killed in Rio while covering a police operation.
In a 2008 interview with the Guardian Severino Silva, a crime photographer who had worked alongside Domingos, described his gruelling daily routine.
“When I get to a story the first thing I think is: I have to make it out alive,” he said. “For you it’s your work, one more day at war, one ore day that you have to go back home.”
“The [bullet-proof] vest protects us against shrapnel, some things like that. But in truth the only thing protecting us is God,” he added.
Speaking after his colleague’s death Silva described Domingos as “an experienced guy used to covering this kind of story”.
