RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – Brazil’s Tourism Minister said Tuesday he’s not worried that a recent spike in violence in Rio de Janeiro might deter visitors from attending next year’s Olympic Games.
Vinicius Lages said studies have shown that insecurity is not a major worry for visitors to the city, which has long suffered from alarmingly frequent muggings and high murder rates.
While levels of violence have dipped in recent years, Rio has seen a recent spike in insecurity, including highly publicized spates of stray bullet fatalities and mass robberies on its showcase beaches.
“We don’t think that this has any negative impact,” Lages told journalists on the sidelines of a conference on tourism and the Aug. 5-21, 2016 Olympics.
“There are other places in the world that suffer from circumstances or moments such as these without it scaring away tourists,” he said, citing one of the world’s top tourist destinations, Paris, apparently referring to last month’s terrorist attacks that mostly targeted journalists from a satirical magazine. “In all the studies we’ve done, security does not appear to be the problem.”