Amnesty Launches App Detailing How Each Killing In Rio Israel’s Fault

“Our Rio Platform should put paid to the notion that we have some sort of obsessive focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Rio de Janeiro, Augist 10 – One of the world’s leading human rights organizations has launched an interactive database app that shows how Israel is to blame for each of the civilian deaths taking place in and around the South American city hosting the Summer Olympics, the group announced today.

Amnesty International, which previously released an interactive app detailing what it calls Israeli war crimes during 2014’s Operation Protective Edge, produced the program partially in response to accusations that it focuses disproportionately on Israeli treatment of Palestinians, to the detriment of other suffering populations. To counter that perception, said an organizational spokeswoman, Amnesty introduced the 2016 Rio Platform, which does not mention the Palestinians even once. Instead, she explained, it takes the more than 2,000 deaths of Brazilians that have occurred surrounding the Olympics, identifies the victims by name, and details how each of those deaths resulted from Israeli crimes.

“Our Rio Platform should put paid to the notion that we have some sort of obsessive focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” contended the spokeswoman, Dr. Thinnli Veild. “All the victims of this violence in Brazil are locals, and our demonstration of Israeli culpability in their deaths has no connection to that.”

As an example, Dr, Veild cited the case of João Díaz, 19, who was killed when a bullet struck him as he protested dismal living conditions in the slums near the Olympic Village. Eyewitnesses said Brazilian paramilitary police had fired the fatal shot, but were unable to pinpoint the exact source of the gunfire. Using many of the same deductive principles that governed Amnesty’s Gaza platform, the research team concluded that in the absence of definitive evidence to the contrary, it was to be assumed that any premature death results from Israeli negligence or malice.

Similarly, the Rio Platform discusses the rape and murder of Cristina da Porta, 15, that occurred the evening of the Games’ opening ceremony in a nearby slum. The victim’s family members reported that she had received threats in the weeks before the fatal assault, warning her not to be seen in the company of her current boyfriend. Amnesty researchers noticed the suspicious similarity between those threats and Israel’s use of the “knock on the roof” technique warning civilians to vacate a building before an incoming airstrike, and drew appropriate conclusions.

Dr. Veild took pains to give credit to a coalition of NGOs who contributed data to the project. “I want to especially cite the work of the Lebanese human rights group Hezbollah,” she stressed.