Police in Rio de Janeiro, many who have not received salaries in months, staged multiple protests throughout the city, demanding the government pay them and warning off Summer Olympics tourists with signs reading, “Welcome to Hell.”
The “Welcome to Hell” sign appeared this week in Rio de Janeiro’s international airport, held up by police. “Police and firefighters don’t get paid, whoever comes to Rio de Janeiro will not be safe,” the sign reads.
The airport protest was one of a succession of pop-up messages surfacing in the city warning tourists to stay away. “Welcome, we don’t have hospitals!” another graffitied sign on a highway read Wednesday, this one a reference to the siege of a major hospital by drug traffickers who were helping their boss, a gang member known as “Fat Family,” to escape after getting shot. – READ MORE