Rio de Janeiro. Mike Egerton/PA Wire/PA Images. All rights reserved.In mid-May 2008, a journalist, photographer and driver were kidnapped and tortured in Batan, a favela in Rio de Janeiro's west zone. When the news of the incident emerged, it electrified the nation and sent shockwaves around the world. The team was assembling a story on the city's little known militia - self-styled vigilantes who ruled poor communities at gunpoint. Unlike the notorious drug gangs, the militia included former soldiers, police, firefighters, and prison guards.
Fast-forward to the present, and the militia are again making headlines. This time they are the chief suspects of a targeted assassination of Marielle Franco, a black city councilwoman and her driver, Anderson Gomes. Marielle was a former advisor to the very same state congressman - Marcelo Freixo, now the leader of the left-wing PSOL party - who investigated the militia a decade earlier. Yet despite their heroic efforts to curb the power of Rio's gangsters, the militia are stronger than ever.
There is some uncertainty about when or where the first militia groups first emerged. Some analysts believe that the militia were first founded in the 1990s by military police living in gang-infested communities. The militia first made headlines in early 2000, when a string of media stories reported on their illegal activities that included charging businesses and civilians for "security services". Unlike social cleansing and extermination groups, which had existed in Brazil for decades, the militia initially restricted their activities to expelling gangsters and defending neighborhoods from drug trafficking.
