With the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games drawing closer (they will be held between 5-21 August) journalists all over the world are looking for things to say about them. Hyper media coverage can at worst trigger something of a feeding frenzy, where all security risks can be amplified and exaggerated. But like any event of this kind, the risks are real: here we seek to outline some of the main ones and put them in context.
At first sight, the list of threats to the Rio Olympics is daunting, and comes under at least seven major headings. In reality, some of these may sound more alarming than they actually are. The list can be summarised as follows: the public health threat of the Zika virus; the threat from international terrorism (with a particular emphasis on so-called Islamic State); high levels of local crime; Brazil’s political crisis; Rio de Janeiro’s financial crisis; and the danger of police over-reaction.
On 27 May over 100 international medical experts called for the Olympics to be postponed or moved away from Rio due to fears over the spread of the Zika virus, which has hit Brazil since last year, is carried by a particular type of mosquito, and has been shown to cause serious birth defects. But the World Health Organisation (WHO) has rejected the call. According to David Heymann, chair of the WHO panel of independent experts on Zika, high levels of globalised travel, not the Rio Olympics themselves, pose the key problem. “People go in and out of Brazil all the time for holiday, for business… The Olympics would be one-time travel. It is actually in the winter months when hopefully transmission of the virus is less. So it is just a false security to say that you’ll postpone the Olympics and postpone the globalisation of the disease,” Heymann said, calling instead for surveillance of athletes and careful consideration of the risks of travel to Brazil by individuals, especially so in the case of pregnant women.
The possibility of a terrorist attack on the games is a wild card that cannot be ruled out. Following the Islamic State attacks that killed 130 people in Paris in November 2015 and 32 in Brussels in March, concerns over the Olympics have increased. 85,000 police and soldiers will patrol Rio, over twice the size of the deployment in London for the 2012 Olympics. Robert Muggah of Rio-based security think tank Instituto Igarapé has described this as “a souped-up response that may seem disproportionate but is helpful in terms of minimising risk”.
Brazil has not been the target of a major international terrorist attack, but that does not necessarily reduce the probabilities of one happening. According to Admiral Ademir Sobrinho, chairman of the Brazilian military’s joint chiefs of staff, after the Paris and Brussels attacks “a bell went off in terms of terrorism”. The games are expected to attract 600,000 visitors. Brazil is sharing intelligence and has set up an anti-terrorism centre with the participation of experts from the US, UK, France and Spain. The authorities now acknowledge that one Islamic State source claimed last November that the organisation had established a cell in Brazil. But this is not believed to be credible. Intelligence sources say there have been no worrying signs from the “triple frontier” between Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, an area which in the past has been suspected as a potential centre for radical Islamic activity.
High levels of local crime in Rio are regarded as a serious challenge, exacerbated by economic recession and the state government’s financial difficulties. While Rio is far from being Latin America’s most violent city (a position currently held by Caracas, followed by San Pedro Sula in Honduras), homicides increased by 15.4% in the first four months of the year and armed robberies were up by nearly 25%. Two members of Spain’s Olympic sailing team were robbed at gunpoint in May. However, in the main, security experts say visitors are likely to be well protected in the safer areas of the city. There is also a threat from Brazil’s political crisis, with the possibility that the key stages of the impeachment trial of suspended President Dilma Rousseff may coincide with the games. This could potentially lead to demonstrations and disruption, but both pro- and anti-impeachment camps have little direct incentive to destabilise the Games themselves. Rio’s finances are also a potential threat – on 17 June, less than two months ahead of the games, the state government declared a financial “state of calamity”. However this is seen as a key move to unlock some US$840m in additional federal government funding. Finally, according to human rights lobby Amnesty International, there is a serious threat that Brazilian police may over-react to any public order disturbances during the Games: it accuses the police of following a “shoot first, ask questions later” policy and of regularly violating the human rights of suspects.
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