RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In an open letter published on Friday evening, February 7th, on the website of the English newspaper The Guardian, artists, intellectuals and public figures state that Brazil’s democratic institutions have been “under attack” since Jair Bolsonaro took office as President of the Republic in January 2019.
Entitled ‘Democracy and Freedom of Expression are under threat in Brazil’, the article is signed by singers Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso and Arnaldo Antunes, writers Milton Hatoum, Paulo Coelho, and Djamila Ribeiro, historian Boris Fausto, photographer Sebastião Salgado, filmmaker Petra Costa and over 2,700 people.
The campaign also earned the support of intellectuals and artists from other countries, such as philosopher Noam Chomsky, political scientist Steven Levitsky, singer Sting, actor Willem Dafoe, composer Philip Glass and author Valter Hugo Mãe.
“Brazil’s right-wing regime wants to censor textbooks, spy on teachers, and repress minority and LGBTQ+ groups. We need the international community’s support”, says the text, which calls for the support of the international community to “condemn the attempts of the Bolsonaro administration to put pressure on artistic and cultural organizations” and “to pressure Brazil to fully respect the universal declaration of human rights and thus respect freedom of expression, thought and religion”.
In the text, the authors make references to recent events of Bolsonaro’s government, such as the film shot by the former Secretary of Culture, Roberto Alvim, copying Nazi themes and textually quoting excerpts from a speech by the Nazi ideologist Joseph Goebbels.
The repercussion of the case led Alvim to be fired hours after the film was published on his social media on January 17th. “Alvim was only voicing Bolsonaro’s far-right political project, which remains in full force”, says the letter published in The Guardian.
The authors recalled yet another dismissal, Delano Valentim, former marketing director of the Bank of Brazil. In April last year, an advertising campaign representing the country’s racial and sexual diversity was taken off the air at Bolsonaro’s request.
The authors criticize the accusation made by the Federal Prosecutor’s Office against journalist Glenn Greenwald, for the alleged hacking of official’s conversations, which he denies, and the publication of a video on the official Twitter account of the Secretariat of Communication that calls film-maker Petra Costa an “anti-Brazil militant”.
They further mention a report by the National Federation of Journalists (FENAJ), which claims the attacks on the press increased 54 percent in 2019. “We fear that these attacks on democratic institutions may soon become irreversible”.
In addition to criticism of the Bolsonaro government’s cultural policy and ideology, the Amazon fires are also in the text, which led to Brazil being questioned at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month.
“The government is engaged in a dangerous cultural war against artificial internal threats. It denies global warming and the fires in the Amazon despises leaders who fight for the preservation of the environment and disrespects indigenous communities”.
Source: Estadão