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This article is more than 1 year old

As pressure grows on the authorities in Brazil to find the killers of Rio de Janeiro councillor Marielle Franco, an open letter by international activists, writers, journalists, film-makers, politicians and actors has called for an investigation of her murder by an independent commission.



Franco and her driver were shot dead on 14 March, in a targeted assassination which unleashed a wave of anger across Brazil, and provoked urgent debate on the country’s racism, violence and impunity.

Marielle Franco’s murderers must be brought to justice | Letters Read more

The human rights activist from Rio’s Maré favela complex had denounced killings blamed on police and was in charge of a city council commission monitoring the Brazilian government’s “federal intervention” which put the military in charge of policing in Rio state.



“She vehemently challenged the impunity surrounding extrajudicial killings of Black youth by security forces,” write the authors of the letter, published in the Guardian and O Globo. “Marielle’s activism earned her many powerful enemies.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ava DuVernay, Arundhati Roy, Angela Davis, Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Black Lives Matter co-founders Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, Naomi Campbell, Noam Chomsky, and actors Thandie Newton, Gael García Bernal and Narcos star Wagner Moura are among the signatories.

“Given that Marielle’s assassination bears all the hallmarks of a targeted assassination, we call for the creation of an independent commission comprised of prominent and respected national and international human rights and legal experts and tasked with carrying out an independent investigation,” they wrote.



As the letter noted, two days before her murder Franco had denounced the police’s role in the killing of a young black man named Matheus Melo, who was shot dead after leaving an evangelical church service in the Jacarezinho favela.



She had also criticised Rio’s 41st police battalion – which has been linked to numerous killings – or “terrorising and abusing” residents of the Acari favela, where two men were killed and thrown into a drainage ditch on 5 March.

The Intercept Brasil has reported that one line of inquiry involves “militias” – mafias whose members include serving and former police officers. In 2008 Franco worked on a city council commission into militias in Rio.

Rio police said they would not comment on an ongoing investigation.

Homero Freitas Filho, who leads a team of prosecutors also working on the investigation, told the Guardian that Franco’s killing was believed to be connected to her political work and denunciations.

“No hypothesis will be discarded but this is the principal one,” he said, adding that he had recently requested and been given five extra prosecutors.



Local media have reported that Franco and Gomes were shot through the back window when a car drew up near theirs. Her press assistant, who was with Franco on the back seat, described a rapid burst of fire in an anonymous television interview.



Marielle Franco: Brazil’s favelas mourn the death of a champion Read more

The 9-millimeter bullets came from a batch stolen from federal police in 2006, some of which were also used in a massacre in Osasco, near São Paulo in 2015, in which 17 people were killed. Three police officers and a municipal guard have been convicted of homicide in the case.

Freitas Filho said that 1.8m bullets were stolen in the robbery. “They could have been distributed to all kinds of criminals,” he said.

Her killers – who had followed her from a meeting in two cars – also chose a “blind spot” where street cameras were not functioning. Since the murder, the site has become a shrine, with flowers, pictures and graffiti reading “police kill”, “execution” and “Black lives matter”.



This week, Pope Francis called Franco’s mother, Marinete da Silva.

Last Sunday about 5,000 people marched in her memory in the Maré favela complex she was from. On Tuesday night thousands more paraded through central Rio streets, filling the square in front of Rio’s municipal chamber and singing along to music played by an orchestra.



Many in the crowd were black Brazilians from lower-income communities. Street vendors had decorated their cool boxes and stalls with stickers and posters with Franco’s name. “It’s important for black people to be here,” said Pedro Vidal, 26, a nurse. “We won’t accept this and we won’t let it pass.”</s>Henrique Gomes Batista, a correspondent for the Brazilian newspaper O Globo, was in St. Louis last week, researching an article about the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.

Yet in his own country, thousands were taking to the streets to protest the suspected assassination of one of Brazil’s main Black human-rights leaders, Marielle Franco, and a Rio de Janeiro councilwoman.

Franco, 38, was arguably as beloved in Brazil as Martin Luther King was in the United States.

“For Brazil, it’s a very very big issue,” Batista said.

Batista had contacted the St. Louis American to learn more about Ferguson and the Black Lives Matter movement. Franco, herself, was a prominent critic of police killings in Rio’s shanty towns, or favelas.

On March 14, Franco and her driver Anderson Pedro Gomes were killed in Rio’s Estacio neighborhood when a car pulled up beside them and someone inside shot at them, CNN reported. A press secretary who worked for Franco was sitting the back seat and was injured.

Ten minutes before she was killed, Franco had been laughing with young Black women leaders and strategizing on ways to get more women elected into office at an event called, “Black Women Moving Structures.”

Batista said Franco was inspired by Ferguson.

“This movement and other movements in Brazil is very inspired by Black Lives Matter,” Batista said. “Black Lives Matter is very famous in Brazil. The violence in Brazil against Black people is so hard.”

In Brazil, racism is less apparent in some ways, Batista said. It’s more common to have interracial couples than in the United States, he said, but Brazil is more segregated.

“The poor people are Black,” he said. “The worst opportunities are for Blacks. The worst schools are in the Black neighborhoods or in favelas.”

Unlike King, Franco was at the start of her career.

Franco was born in one of the poorest favelas in Brazil, Batista said, the Mare community complex, which is home to approximately 140,000 residents. At 18, she became a single mother, Batista said, but she still went onto college and earned a master’s degree in public administration.

When she was elected as council woman in 2016, she received the one of the highest vote count among council members in that election.

A member of the Socialism and Liberty Party, Franco was in her first term in office. As a gay Black woman, she was an ardent fighter for equal rights.

The day before she was murdered, Franco questioned the military’s policing tactics related to the death of a young man, in a post on her personal Twitter. “How many more will have to die for this war to end?” she wrote.A few weeks ago, the federal government ordered that Brazil’s military would take over policing Rio’s streets to address the rise in violence. About 3,200 soldiers now patrol public streets in predominantly poor, working class neighborhoods, local news outlets reported.

Batista said Franco was against this move and she had just been appointed to a special commission to monitor the federal intervention.

“We must speak loudly so that everybody knows what is happening in Acari right now,” she wrote on Twitter. “The 41st Military Police Battalion of Rio de Janeiro is terrorizing and violating Acari residents. This week two youths were killed and tossed in a ditch. Today, the police walked the streets threatening residents. This has always happened and with the military intervention things have gotten worse.”

Also On New Pittsburgh Courier:</s>Brazilian authorities are facing mounting pressure to identify those responsible for the murder of Rio de Janeiro city councilwoman and rights activist Marielle Franco, who was gunned down last week in what many believe was a targeted assassination.

The shooting of Franco and her driver on March 14 prompted an outpouring of anger in grief in Brazil, with tens of thousands of protestors marching through administrative districts last week. Millions more took to social media to denounce the killing.

The U.N. has called for a “thorough, transparent and independent” inquiry, which an investigating prosecutor told the is believed to be connected to Franco’s political work.

Franco, 38, was an advocate for marginalized communities, including Afro-Brazilians, LGBTQ groups and residents of the city’s sprawling , frequently spoke out against police brutality and racial inequality.

Read more: The Assassination of Brazilian Politician Marielle Franco Turned Her Into a Global Icon

The only black female representative on Rio’s city council, she had also criticized President Michel Temer’s deployment of military forces to provide security in Rio’s most dangerous slums.

On March 22, prominent figures posted an open letter demanding an independent probe. “We call for justice for Marielle Franco and the daughter and the partner she leaves behind, and for an end to the killings and criminalization of activists, government opponents and low-income people in Brazil,” they wrote.</s>On the night of March 14, Rio de Janeiro councilwoman Marielle Franco and her driver Anderson Pedro Gomes were shot and killed in her car after leaving a black-women’s empowerment event. The killing of the human-rights activist mobilized tens of thousands of Brazilians to demand justice and sparked tributes from around the world.

Born and raised in the Maré favela, one of Rio’s most dangerous slums, 38-year-old Franco was a fierce advocate for the marginalized–including Afro-Brazilians, the poor, the LGBTQ community and women–and a critic of President Michel Temer’s federal intervention in the city. As a black, lesbian single mother, she was a minority several times over in Brazilian politics and the only black woman on Rio’s 51-member city council, having received the fifth most votes in the election that won her the seat.

Tens of thousands of people have protested Franco’s death in cities across the country, as well as in New York City, Paris, Berlin and elsewhere. Her name was mentioned in more than 3 million tweets in 54 countries over the two days following her death, often with the hashtags #MariellePresente (Marielle Is Here) and #SayHerName, the latter borrowed from Black Lives Matter activists. Some demonstrators have also used her death as a rallying cry to call for an end to systemic racism in Brazil.

What happens next

Some activists believe Franco was killed for speaking out against abuses of military and police power in Brazil, and human-rights observers have criticized what they call a culture of impunity in Brazilian law enforcement. The protests, led largely by young Brazilians, have highlighted their demands for legitimate leadership and their broader dissatisfaction with the nation’s political system. As the police continue their investigation into the apparent hit, many of Franco’s followers are looking to the October elections as an opportunity to continue her struggle.

This appears in the April 02, 2018 issue of TIME.</s>Last week one of Brazil’s most courageous social leaders was brutally assassinated on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Marielle Franco, a city councilwoman and human rights defender, was shot four times in the head by unknown assailants in a passing vehicle shortly after leaving a gathering of young black activists. Her driver, Anderson Pedro Gomes, was also killed (Report, 16 March).

Long before being elected to Rio’s city council in 2016, Marielle was widely known as a tireless and fearless advocate for the rights of Afro-Brazilians, LGBT people, women and low-income communities. A gay black woman born and raised in one of Rio’s poorest neighbourhoods, she campaigned relentlessly against spiralling police violence in the city’s favelas.

Marielle’s activism earned her many powerful enemies. She vehemently challenged the impunity surrounding extrajudicial killings of black youth by security forces and, two days before her death, had denounced the police’s role in the killing of a young black man named Matheus Melo. She was a leading critic of the military intervention in Rio de Janeiro and was the head of a city commission tasked with monitoring the intervention.

We are deeply concerned and shocked by this commando-style killing of a woman who was a voice for the voiceless and a symbol of resistance to state-perpetrated violence, militarisation and anti-democratic forces. Given that Marielle’s murder bears all the hallmarks of a targeted assassination, we call for the creation of an independent commission comprised of prominent and respected national and international human rights and legal experts and tasked with carrying out an independent investigation of the murder of Marielle Franco with the full cooperation of state judicial and police authorities.

Shortly before her death, Marielle asked: “How many others will have to die before this war will end?” We call for justice for Marielle Franco and the daughter and the partner she leaves behind, and for an end to the killings and criminalisation of activists, government opponents and low-income people in Brazil.

Ava DuVernay Film-maker

Rev Jesse Jackson Civil rights activist 

Anielle Silva Sister of Marielle Franco

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Author

Arundhati Roy Author

Angela Davis Distinguished professor emerita, University of California, Santa Cruz

Janelle Monáe Singer and actress 

Edward Snowden Whistleblower and president of the Freedom of Press Foundation 

Shami Chakrabarti UK shadow attorney general

Naomi Campbell Model and activist

Ta-Nehisi Coates Author and journalist

Noam Chomsky Professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT, political theorist

Patrisse Cullors Co-founder of Black Lives Matter, LGBT activist

David Miranda First LGBT Rio city councillor, PSOL

Glenn Greenwald Journalist

Bertha Zúñiga Cáceres Daughter of the late Berta Cáceres, general coordinator of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras (COPINH)

Wagner Moura Brazilian actor and director

Luciana Genro Founder of PSOL, former presidential candidate, Brazil

Marcelo Freixo Rio state representative, PSOL, Defence of Human Rights & Citizenship chair

Linda Sarsour National co-chair of the Women’s March on Washington, former executive director of the Arab American Association of New York

Ayo Obe President of Nigeria’s Civil Liberties Organisation

Baltasar Garzón International human rights lawyer

Thandie Newton Actress and activist 

Celso Amorim Former Brazilian foreign minister

Danny Glover Actor, film director, and activist 

Naomi Klein Author and journalist

Gael García Bernal Actor and director 

Shaun King Journalist and civil rights activist 

Pamela Anderson Actress and activist 

Alfonso Cuarón Film-maker

Opal Tometi Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter, executive director at Black Alliance for Just Immigration 

Oliver Stone Film-maker

Yanis Varoufakis Former Greek finance minister

Viggo Mortensen Actor

Renata Avila Guatemalan human rights lawyer 

Owen Jones Journalist

Slavoj Žižek Philosopher, Birkbeck Institute for Humanities</s>Last week’s murder of black Rio de Janeiro city councilwoman Marielle Franco has already sparked global protests and calls to hold her killers accountable ― especially if the main suspects are, as various news reports have said, members of extrajudicial militias that often include rogue current and former Rio police officers.

Now, more than three dozen prominent actors, authors, politicians and activists are joining the cause. On Thursday, the group penned an open letter that demands justice for Franco’s murder and calls for an independent investigation to help solve it.

“We are deeply concerned and shocked by this commando-style killing of a woman who was a voice for the voiceless and a symbol of resistance to state-perpetrated violence, militarization and anti-democratic forces,” says the letter, which was published in and first reported by The Guardian and Brazil’s Globo News.

Franco, a 38-year-old first-term councilwoman, was a crusader against police violence in Rio, where one of the world’s deadliest police forces killed more than 900 people ― the majority of them black ― in 2016. A native of Complexo da Mare, a network of informal favela neighborhoods on Rio’s north side, she was also a type of advocate for the city’s poorest residents that they have rarely had before.

Widespread and persistent street protests in Rio de Janeiro and other cities across Brazil have put pressure on police to solve the case. But the possibility of police involvement in the death has also created skepticism among many Brazilians that Rio officials will actually bring Franco’s killers to justice. The bullets that killed Franco were linked to a cache purchased by the federal police in 2006, and militiamen are said to be key suspects in what appeared to be a professional-style killing.

“Given that Marielle’s murder bears all the hallmarks of a targeted assassination,” the letter states, “we call for the creation of an independent commission comprised of prominent and respected national and international human rights and legal experts and tasked with carrying out an independent investigation of the murder of Marielle Franco with the full cooperation of state judicial and police authorities.”

The letter is the latest and loudest call for an independent investigation instead of the probe Rio police are leading, and it comes from a number of prominent celebrities and activists.

We call for justice for Marielle Franco and the daughter and the partner she leaves behind, and for an end to the killings and criminalization of activists, government opponents and low-income people in Brazil.

“We call for justice for Marielle Franco and the daughter and the partner she leaves behind, and for an end to the killings and criminalization of activists, government opponents and low-income people in Brazil,” the letter concludes.

Before taking office, Franco had worked on an official investigation into killings by the informal militias, many of which include current or former police officers, that operate across Rio.

In 2016, she won an improbable election to Rio’s city council as a member of the leftist Socialism and Freedom Party, or PSOL. Her victory made her the only black woman on the 51-member council and a powerful voice for Rio’s favela residents ― for whom she was a staunch advocate and defender.

Franco opposed President Michel Temer’s decision to put the military in charge of public security in Rio de Janeiro, and she had recently been appointed to a commission to oversee military intervention. Just days before her murder, she had called attention to the police killings of two young, black Brazilians.

Her sudden murder ― and her status as a black lesbian from the favelas who fought for racial, gender and LGBTQ equality, for an end to police violence, and against Rio and Brazil’s entrenched political establishment ― quickly brought international attention to her cause.

Protests that broke out in Rio and Sao Paulo immediately after her death soon spread to New York, Paris, Buenos Aires, and other cities across Europe and Latin America. In Washington, more than 40 people ― many of them Brazilian expatriates ― staged a vigil outside the White House last week.

An unseasonable snowstorm had shut down much of Washington for the day and nearly led the activists to postpone the vigil meant to mark the one-week anniversary of Franco’s death.

They drew links, too, between police violence in the United States ― where police killed nearly 1,000 people in 2016 ― and Brazil ― where police killed more than 4,200 people in 2016. In the United States, black people are more than twice as likely as whites to be killed in encounters with police. More than three-quarters of the people killed by Brazil’s police in 2016, meanwhile, were black. The activists noted, too, that in both the U.S. and Brazil, women and LGBTQ people still face disproportionate levels of violence.</s>Thousands in Brazil demand justice for the murder of black activist and councilwoman Marielle Franco https://bloom.bg/2FWUcRC #tictocnews (Source: Bloomberg)</s>Fellow activist vows to fight on after Brazilian councilwoman slain

A demonstrator takes part in a rally against the shooting of Rio de Janeiro city councilor Marielle Franco in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil March 20, 2018. — Reuters picRIO DE JANEIRO, March 21 — The murder of Rio de Janeiro councilwoman Marielle Franco took away one of this city’s most prominent black voices, but her friend Taliria Petrone vows to carry on their struggle.

In fact they were more than friends, they were almost like twins in a political landscape where powerful black women are few and far between.

Franco was killed March 14, aged 38, in what appeared to be an assassination. Her death prompted an outpouring of protests.

Like her, Petrone, 32, has devoted herself to feminist causes and defending the human rights of the poor in Rio’s sprawling, violent favela neighbourhoods.

In 2016, when Franco surprised many with her emphatic election to the Rio city council, Petrone was elected to the council in Niteroi, a suburb. They were both from the small PSOL leftist party.

They’d met a decade ago in the Mare favela, where Franco was bourn and where Petrone was giving history classes at a community center.

She said they used to joke that she was the “Marielle of Niteroi” and Franco “the Taliria of Rio”.

Still clearly stunned by last week’s tragedy, Petrone said that her friend’s work would go on.

“If they wanted to shut up Marielle by executing her, they made a mistake, because her voice rings out from every street. There are many of us Marielles,” she told AFP in her simple office at the city legislature, where she is the only female councilor.

Who did it?

Since the killing, Petrone has been at the forefront of street protests in Franco’s memory.

Many supporters of Franco think she was killed because she was making life too uncomfortable for certain police with her fierce criticism of alleged atrocities in the favelas.

“We want to know who ordered the killing. Why did they kill Marielle?” asked Petrone, who wears an African-style turban in the same style as Franco.

“Knowing who pulled the trigger is important, but it’s more important to know why they killed Marielle.”

Their paths were so similar in their careers that the grim question now is whether Petrone feels similarly at risk.

Since winning her election, getting more votes than any other councilor, Petrone said she has received various threats. “You deserve a 9mm (bullet) in the neck” and “whore” are among the insults she’s heard on social media.

Petrone said her staff and the PSOL are considering increased security in the wake of Franco’s death. For now, she said, her only precaution is to be with “a lot of people” when she goes out.

“To say I’m not afraid would be a lie,” she said, but that fear “gives me strength which lets me almost forget my fear.”

“Retreating is not in my plans,” she said.

“The only way to remain alive is by fighting.” — AFP</s>First, Marielle Franco was gunned down in an apparent organized hit, prompting tens of thousands of Brazilians to protest. Then came the character assassination.

The immediate reaction to the killing March 14 of the Rio de Janeiro city councilwoman was raw and spontaneous. Huge crowds took to the streets in Rio and in Sao Paulo, with smaller demonstrations in cities around Brazil and the world.

Franco was held up as an example of a black Brazilian who overcame racism and poverty, inspiring millions with her courageous stand for human rights in Rio's dangerous favela neighborhoods. She was a political martyr.

Or was she actually a drug user?

Could it be she'd once married a drug gangster called Marcinho VP? Had her much vaunted election to the city council been funded by Rio's terrifying narco group Red Command?

It took a blink of the social media eye for the narrative around Franco to switch direction.

Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp -- all hugely popular in Brazil -- lit up with claims that the 38-year-old was not the saintly figure claimed.

"Check out the left's latest myth, Marielle Franco. Pregnant at 16, ex-wife of Marcinho VP, she used marijuana..., was elected by the Red Command, had just fired six employees," tweeted congressman Alberto Fraga, from the small, rightwing DEM party.

The story about Franco's deep criminal past flooded the internet, often expressed in furious language, but lent gravitas by the likes of Fraga.

A Rio appeals' court judge called Marilia Castro Neves warned on Facebook that Franco "wasn't just a fighter."

No, she "was involved with bandits" and was killed because "she didn't carry out her promises."

The rumor mill works at lightening speed in Brazil, one of the world's most social media-addicted countries. It's also a country deeply divided between left and right, and richer whites and poorer blacks.

Franco had made plenty of enemies on the right with her prominent accusations of police brutality in the favelas. Some, for example, asked angrily why Franco and her supporters were not more concerned about the astonishing number of police officers killed in Rio -- more than 100 last year.

So the attempt to transform her from rights campaigner to criminal sympathizer fell on fertile ground.

"This was an orchestrated campaign, not just one or two people saying bad things," said Cristiane Costa, coordinator at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro's journalism school.

Yet the reaction to the backlash was even more powerful, showing how the fake news virus can be fought.

Lawyers with Franco's leftist PSOL party have appealed online for tips on fake news posts, which they then identify and refer to the police. By the start of this week, they'd got more than 15,000 emails in response, G1 news site reported.

"Let me say a few more things," Franco's sister Anielle Silva, wrote on her Facebook page.

"Marielle was not a bandit and much less a defender bandits. Marielle was never married or involved with Marcinho VP, Marielle never was a drug user, and Marielle was not financed by any gang."

The post was liked by 140,000 people.

Franco's family also built a page on the late councilwoman's website called "The truth about Marielle," carefully rebutting each item of fake news.

And the traditional media, which Costa says has "the tools to check rumors very quickly," also joined the cause.

Globo newspaper, part of Brazil's dominant media conglomerate, ran a full page Tuesday to shoot down the rumors, under the headline: "Lies cannot stop justice."

"The regret, perhaps, is having put something that I didn't check," said Fraga. "I am a police officer, a military colonel, I should have had better information and from an appropriate source."

As for the judge, she says she wishes she had decided "to wait for the end of the investigation, so as to be able, as a citizen, to give my opinion."

Just what a manual on combating fake news might have advised.</s>Thousands of Rio de Janeiro residents took part in the latest public demonstration over the tragic death of 38-year-old councilwoman and activist Marielle Franco on March 14. The event rocked Brazil and reignited a debate over crime, police brutality and impunity in the South American nation.

Artists, activists and Franco's sister, Anielle Silva, gathered on Tuesday in Rio and called for an independent investigation into the death of the activist, a member of the socialist party PSOL.

Read more: Brazilian councilwoman and rights activist gunned down in Rio de Janeiro

A large banner highlighted several aspects that made Franco a different kind of politician: "Marielle: Woman, mother, revolutionary, feminist, black, lesbian" it read.

Silva also defended her sister and denounced what she called "fake news" online reports that alleged that Franco had ties with drug traffickers that operated in Rio.

"Marielle was never a gangster. We were never financed by drug traffickers and she never married a gangster," said Silva. "They are not going to destroy what my sister built."

Franco and her driver, Anderson Gomes, were traveling through Rio's dangerous north side when a vehicle pulled up beside them and gunned them down. Both died at the scene.

Four of the nine shots hit the councilwoman in the head, in what seemed like an assassination style killing. Rio police are currently coordinating with federal authorities in the investigation into the murder, which they believe was planned.

The authorities say two vehicles followed Franco's car, according to security footage, and the assailants knew exactly where she was seated when they fired the shots with a 9 millimeter pistol. One of the councilwoman's aides was also in the car and survived.

Read more: Brazil to create new ministry for public security

The murder sparked a wave of protests across Brazil. On Sunday, March 18, some 2,000 residents of the Mare favela expressed sorrow and defiance, vowing that "Marielle's voice will not be silent."

Many at the march in Mare believe that the activist was killed in an attempt to silence criticism of security forces. Marcelo Freixo, a Rio state legislator and fellow PSOL party member, called her killing "revenge and a message."

Franco's sister Anielle Silva told local media on Wednesday that Pope Francis had called her mother to express his condolences to her family. "She was so moved that she barely even processed what the pope said. She told me that he spoke Marielle's name, expressed his solidarity and said that he was praying for the family,' Silva said.

Gangs operate with near impunity in many favelas in Rio de Janeiro. Organized crime groups openly carry assault rifles, impose protection rackets on locals and recruit children as drug dealers.

Read more: Brazil: Army takes control of Rio security in bid to quash gang violence

While the police is supposed to help residents, they have also been accused by major human rights organizations of engaging in the violence and having carried out extrajudicial killings.

Franco, born and raised in the Mare favela, was an outspoken critic of police behavior and the militarization of poor communities like her own. She openly denounced police brutality up until her death.

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An open letter from international politicians, activists, journalists, and academics demands an independent commission be formed to investigate the assassination of Brazilian human rights activist Marielle Franco and her driver.