{"id":49135,"date":"2013-07-11T13:01:49","date_gmt":"2013-07-11T12:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=49135"},"modified":"2015-02-05T10:55:22","modified_gmt":"2015-02-05T10:55:22","slug":"brazilian-writer-convicted-for-fictional-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=49135","title":{"rendered":"Brazilian writer convicted for fictional story"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"brazil-flag\"Journalist Jos\u00e9 Cristian G\u00f3es\u00a0says case brought against him is a “direct attack on free speech. Rafael Spuldar reports<\/strong>
\n
\nA Brazilian journalist was convicted for slander after publishing a fictional article was deemed too offensive by a judge.<\/p>\n

Journalist Jos\u00e9 Cristian G\u00f3es<\/a> from Sergipe<\/a> — Brazil’s smallest state, and one of the poorest — wrote a piece called Eu, o coronel em mim<\/a> (“The colonel in me”), in reference to the historical figure of “coronel”, powerful landowners from the region’s countryside, who hold political and economic power and often use violence to enforce their will.<\/p>\n

The article is written as the confession of a fictional coronel from the slavery period in Brazil, who is surprised by the upcoming democracy and is forced to behave as a democrat.<\/p>\n

In his article, G\u00f3es used the expression jagun\u00e7o das leis, which could be translated as “thug of the law” (jagun\u00e7o being a kind of thug that works for a coronel). G\u00f3es’s piece was published on May 2012 by website Infonet<\/a>, where he works as a regular columnist.<\/p>\n

Judge Edson Ulisses from Sergipe’s State Court of Justice<\/a> felt attacked by the “thug of the law” quote and charged the journalist with\u00a0slander and defamation\u00a0last December.<\/p>\n

G\u00f3es was convicted of slander, and on 4 July\u00a0he was sentenced<\/a> to 7 months and 16 days in prison. The sentence has been commuted to community service.<\/p>\n

Brazil’s National Association of Newspapers<\/a> (Associa\u00e7\u00e3o Nacional de Jornais, ANJ) and Reporters Without Borders<\/a> denounced the court’s ruling.<\/p>\n

G\u00f3es says he will appeal. He claims the article makes no reference to any specific place or date, neither cites names or clear characteristic of real people.<\/p>\n

The journalist says the prosecution is \u201can attempt to make a direct attack” against free speech.<\/p>\n

“A large part of the local press is extremely dependent of [the public] power and is captive to this logic which is perverse for democracy”, he told website Portal Imprensa<\/a> last December, when he was charged. “Freedom of speech and freedom of the press here are presents from Santa Claus.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jos\u00e9 Cristian G\u00f3es<\/strong>\u00a0says case brought against him is a “direct attack on free speech. Rafael Spuldar reports<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":156,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[744,4880],"tags":[7396,241,5636,165],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49135"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/156"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49135"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49739,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49135\/revisions\/49739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}