The wake of the four children killed in the Brazilian city of Blumenau, in the south of the country, in an attack on a nursery school this Wednesday, is marked by a climate of consternation.
Dozens of mourners gathered at the Blumenau nursery to pray, leave flowers for the victims – between five and seven years old – and mourn their death. At least four other children were injured in the attack, the second at a Brazilian school in ten days, putting pressure on the government to find solutions to contain such attacks.
Employees of the Cantinho do Bom Pastor nursery, where the four children were killed, and even residents from distant neighborhoods brought candles and prayed in front of the main door of the teaching unit.
This Thursday morning, relatives and close friends of the victims gathered downtown, in the São José cemetery, for the first three burials. The parents sat in silence most of the time by the small coffins.
The four victims were only children with no siblings, Mayor Mario Hildebrandt told reporters after the attack.
The case shocked Brazil, a country with a history of violence against blacks and the poor, which has followed in the footsteps of the United States, becoming a country where unjustified and violent attacks inside schools have increased in recent years. According to a survey by the local ‘media’, in the last 22 years there have been 24 cases of attacks on schools in the country.
One of the survivors, the teacher Simone Aparecida Camargo, recounted the desperation she experienced and what she did to save other students after the murderer, a 25-year-old man, jumped over the wall and began attacking the children for no apparent reason. with a small ax that were at the scene, killing four of them and wounding four others.
“My partner ran in saying ‘shut the door, shut the window because some guy stole the station.’ We thought it was a robbery because he invaded the school, but I locked the babies in the bathroom, then they came to the door saying that he ‘came to kill’, he went to the park to kill,” the teacher told NSC TV.
“In the little park, the gang was all in the park talking” and the murderer “had more than one weapon,” he added. Authorities have yet to provide a motive for the attack.
Within hours, the federal government sought to formulate a strategy to combat the problem.
Brazilian Justice Minister Flávio Dino met with representatives of student associations and told reporters in Brasilia that he will allocate 150 million reais (27.1 million euros) from the country’s public security fund to reinforce patrolling. police in schools.
Dino explained that the money will pay for police reinforcement and the expansion of a team, based in Brasilia, that will be established to monitor communities in deep webplaces on the internet where hate speech and violence are glorified and encouraged.
This Thursday, the minister also announced the opening of an investigation into the activities of Nazi and neo-Nazi groups in the country, after this attack on the Blumenau school and the similar episode that occurred ten days ago in São Paulo.
In this other case that took place in Brazil’s largest city, a 13-year-old boy, apparently an adherent of neo-Nazi ideology and inspired by hate speech, killed a teacher, wounded three other teachers and a student in an attack in which he used a knife as a weapon.
Source: TSF
