Maria José Braga

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In Brazil, outdated defamation laws and costly court cases used to pressure critics

Brazilian journalist Erik Silva never imagined that printing information from a municipal government website would see him accused of defamation and lead to a drawn-out court case. But almost a year after writing about the size of salary earned by a municipal accountant in Corumbá, a city of just under 100,000 people on Brazil’s western…

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Police cordon off the street where an officer was shot dead in 2012. Changes to how the Rio force investigates murders helped resolve the case of a journalist killed in 2013. (AFP/Yasuyoshi Chiba)

Amid rising violence in Brazil, convictions in journalists’ murders are cause for optimism

Justice delayed is justice denied, goes the legal maxim, and that has all too often been the case in Latin America. But the perseverance of lawyers and prosecutors in Brazil has resulted in a number of recent convictions in cases many thought had been buried or forgotten.

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