A thirteen-year old Brazilian girl claims she has faced death threats through a Facebook community page she created to denounce problems in her school.
Isadora Faber created Diário de Classe (or “Classroom Diary”) in July 2012 to “show the truth about public schools,” as she writes on the page description, leading her to become an internet celebrity and a teen champion of free speech through new media.
Isadora filled the page with updates on life at Maria Tomázia Coelho School in Florianópolis — capital of the southern state of Santa Catarina — addressing problems in the school including exposed wires, damaged doors, transparency issues and improper teaching practice.
On 17 February, Isadora alerted her 581,000 subscribers to a message published on Diário de Classe’s wall that demanded the fan page be deleted, or Isadora and her classmate Lucas Alves — who also posts content on the website — would end up “with a bullet right on their foreheads”. The children’s parents were also threatened .
The apparent death threat was posted under the profile of teenager Bruna Meneises Silva, which is believed to be a fake one and has been deleted since. Police authorities asked Facebook to provide Bruna’s IP address, so they could trace the person who posted the message.
Isadora’s mother Mel Faber told Index her daughter would never feel intimidated by the threats. “Isadora responds the opposite way. When she’s threatened, she gets more compelled to go public and face her attackers. But I can’t say if that happens because she’s so young and incapable of measuring risks.”
Last November, the student posted a picture of her injured grandmother after her house was allegedly stoned, possibly in retaliation to the Facebook page.
On 22 February, Isadora was ranked by Financial Times in a list of 25 outstanding Brazilians in areas including politics, social work, business, sports, arts and entertainment.
In an appeal on 20 February, a judge ruled that a banned blog that criticised Brazil’s most influential daily newspaper should remain offline. The case has been deemed by critics as an example of judicial and financial harassment by big Brazilian media companies and high-profile people over their critics.
The blog — named Falha de S.Paulo — was created in 2010 to criticise newspaper Folha de S.Paulo for its coverage of that year’s general elections. A satirical take on Folha (meaning “paper”), the content of Falha (meaning “fail”) imitated the newspaper’s design and text style.
Folha filed a lawsuit against Falha, claiming the blog’s logo, content, pictures and text font imitated its graphic design, confusing web users. Besides that, the paper accused the bloggers of benefiting financially from the website.
By the end of September 2010, a judge had demanded the blog be removed and imposed a daily fine over its authors. Falha’s creators appealed, but the decision was maintained on Wednesday by another judge from the São Paulo State Court.
“It’s not a simple thing (to appeal), both STJ (Superior Tribunal de Justiça, or High Court of Justice) and the Supreme Court won’t accept any case. But we’ll study which way we could appeal. We intend to go to the highest courts”, said one of the blog’s creators, Lino Bocchini, to Rede Brasil Atual agency.
Pressure in court
Some see this case as an example of an ongoing trend in Brazil — powerful people and companies putting financial pressure on their critics by simply going to the courts against them.
“Politicians, business people and other powerful personalities found that they can silence their critics by filing lawsuits”, says journalism teacher Marcelo Träsel from PUCRS University in Porto Alegre.
“To take a lawsuit to its very final stages can cost tens of thousands of reais. One that’s involved in a scandal can create a juridical torment to its critics, if one has the financial means to do that,” he says.
“These people don’t even need to win in court. Only to impose financial damage to a whistle-blowing blogger, for example, would probably make him shut up. I believe that’s the main threat to free speech in Brazil in a near future, and I believe that cases like Falha de S.Paulo will grow in number.”
The practice of filing lawsuits to remove defamatory content from the internet also disturbs Google Brazil’s Public Policy & Government Relations Senior Counsel Marcel Leonardi.
“Internet gives you the possibility to immediately respond to anyone, and in many different ways, like posting videos or creating hyperlinks. In this case, the most intelligent way to reply to criticism would be to have an online presence, though which one could inform and reply to critics in one’s own virtual space,” he says.
In Leonardi’s opinion, Brazil will remain one of the top countries in the world in terms of digital content removal — as stated in the latest Google Transparency Report — unless this “culture of lawsuit” is somehow overcome.
Concerns about Brazil are shared by watchdogs such as Freedom House, which states on its 2012 Freedom on the Net report that actions taken by judges and other public agents could represent “a possible barrier to free speech and a means of removing content deemed undesirable.”
Last year Falha’s case was brought to Frank de la Rue, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression. While visiting Brazil, he said the situation was “terrible”.
In an appeal on 20 February, a judge ruled that a banned blog that criticised Brazil’s most influential daily newspaper should remain offline. The case has been deemed by critics as an example of judicial and financial harassment by big Brazilian media companies and high-profile people over their critics.
The blog — named Falha de S.Paulo — was created in 2010 to criticise newspaper Folha de S.Paulo for its coverage of that year’s general elections. A satirical take on Folha (meaning “paper”), the content of Falha (meaning “fail”) imitated the newspaper’s design and text style.
Folha filed a lawsuit against Falha, claiming the blog’s logo, content, pictures and text font imitated its graphic design, confusing web users. Besides that, the paper accused the bloggers of benefiting financially from the website.
By the end of September 2010, a judge had demanded the blog be removed and imposed a daily fine over its authors. Falha’s creators appealed, but the decision was maintained on Wednesday by another judge from the São Paulo State Court.
“It’s not a simple thing (to appeal), both STJ (Superior Tribunal de Justiça, or High Court of Justice) and the Supreme Court won’t accept any case. But we’ll study which way we could appeal. We intend to go to the highest courts”, said one of the blog’s creators, Lino Bocchini, to Rede Brasil Atual agency.
Pressure in court
Some see this case as an example of an ongoing trend in Brazil — powerful people and companies putting financial pressure on their critics by simply going to the courts against them.
“Politicians, business people and other powerful personalities found that they can silence their critics by filing lawsuits”, says journalism teacher Marcelo Träsel from PUCRS University in Porto Alegre.
“To take a lawsuit to its very final stages can cost tens of thousands of reais. One that’s involved in a scandal can create a juridical torment to its critics, if one has the financial means to do that,” he says.
“These people don’t even need to win in court. Only to impose financial damage to a whistle-blowing blogger, for example, would probably make him shut up. I believe that’s the main threat to free speech in Brazil in a near future, and I believe that cases like Falha de S.Paulo will grow in number.”
The practice of filing lawsuits to remove defamatory content from the internet also disturbs Google Brazil’s Public Policy & Government Relations Senior Counsel Marcel Leonardi.
“Internet gives you the possibility to immediately respond to anyone, and in many different ways, like posting videos or creating hyperlinks. In this case, the most intelligent way to reply to criticism would be to have an online presence, though which one could inform and reply to critics in one’s own virtual space,” he says.
In Leonardi’s opinion, Brazil will remain one of the top countries in the world in terms of digital content removal — as stated in the latest Google Transparency Report — unless this “culture of lawsuit” is somehow overcome.
Concerns about Brazil are shared by watchdogs such as Freedom House, which states on its 2012 Freedom on the Net report that actions taken by judges and other public agents could represent “a possible barrier to free speech and a means of removing content deemed undesirable.”
Last year Falha’s case was brought to Frank de la Rue, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression. While visiting Brazil, he said the situation was “terrible”.
Cuban dissident and blogger Yoani Sánchez is having a hard time on her visit to Brazil, facing demonstrations by pro-Castro protesters.
One of the most prominent free-speech Cuban activists, Sánchez arrived in Brazil on Sunday (17 February) for a round of conferences and events in the northeastern state of Bahia and federal capital Brasília.
On Monday 18 February, Sánchez was at Feira de Santana (in Bahia) where she would attend a presentation of a documentary about the Cuban regime, but the violence ofthe protestors caused the event to be cancelled.
The demonstrators accused Sánchez’s blog Generación Y of spreading anti-Cuban propaganda. Some of the protesters went as far as denouncing her as a representative of imperialism and a CIA agent.
Senator Eduardo Suplicy from the ruling Workers’ Party had to intervene and ask for the protesters to ease down their attacks on the Cuban blogger. Security measures have been increased for Sánchez since then.
“I regret the situation got to this point, because I’m a person who uses words, I don’t use guns”, said Sánchez, who nevertheless praised the “freedom” and “plurality” she found in Brazil. In response to protests during her visit, the blogger also said that she was “happy to visit a country where people can speak their minds freely.”
Sánchez is on her first trip abroad after the Cuban government eased travel regulations for its citizens. Before that, she had being denied a travel permit for more than 20 times.
During her 80-day tour, the activist also plans to visit the Czech Republic, Spain, Mexico, United States, the Netherlands, Germany and Peru, amongst other countries.
