RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In 2020, Brazil worsened its position in the annual ranking of countries with higher impunity in cases of journalists’ murders. According to a new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the country climbed from ninth place in 2019 to eighth this year.
With 15 unsolved murders of media professionals in the last decade, Brazil is ranked worse than Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Russia -respectively in ninth, tenth, and 11th place. Vladimir Putin’s country is in the habit of arresting, fining, or poisoning reporters and journalists who cover stories that run counter to the government’s interests.
The position in the ranking is determined by dividing the number of unpunished cases by the country’s population. Thus, Brazil is considered a country with a higher impunity than India, for instance, which failed to prosecute 17 murders in the last decade, but has a population of 1.3 billion.
The survey, which counted cases of impunity until August 31st this year, is led by Somalia, with 26 murders and 15 million inhabitants, Syria, with 22 cases and 17 million inhabitants, and Iraq, with 21 cases and 39 million inhabitants, respectively. In common, they have political instability and involvement in wars – which, according to the NGO, “perpetuate the cycle of violence and illegality”.
However, the CPJ alerts that violent crimes against journalists have grown in countries considered stable, but devastated by “corruption, fragile institutions and lack of political will to promote expressive investigations”. These attacks come mainly from criminal groups, politicians, entrepreneurs and other players in power positions.
As examples, the organization mentions Pakistan, Mexico and the Philippines. In 2020, Pakistani courts overturned the sentences of four men accused of murdering Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl 18 years ago. In Mexico, the federal prosecutor’s office has taken no action to shed light on the murders of journalists in the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in office since December 2018.
On the other hand, the Philippines showed an appreciable improvement, moving from fifth place last year to seventh. This is due to the fact that the Ampatuan massacre in 2009 – in which 30 journalists were killed – was excluded from the calculation’s temporal scope. Thus, the country accounted for 11 cases this year, against 41 in 2019.
On the other hand, in December last year, the principal of the crime, his brother, and 26 other accomplices were convicted and sentenced to up to 40 years in prison, and the organization began to classify the case as “partial impunity,” which would also have excluded it from the ranking.
The total number of journalists killed in retaliation for their work in 2019 was the lowest since the start of the survey in 1992. The CPJ considers this record a potential increase in self-censorship and the employment of other forms of intimidation of reporters, in addition to the high exposure of cases in the preceding year – which could discourage future murders. The organization stresses that there is no reason to celebrate, since the partial number of homicides in 2020 has already exceeded the 2019 total.
Over the past ten years, a total of 277 journalists have been murdered worldwide as a result of their work. In 83 percent of cases, there was no specific punishment of those responsible. In the most critical period, between 2004 and 2013, nine out of ten murderers went unpunished.
According to the organization, the most recent murder of a journalist as retaliation in Brazil occurred in June 2018. Jairo de Souza, a reporter for Radio Pérola in Bragança (PA), was shot twice when he reached the workplace. He had been investigating suspicions of corruption in the City Hall.
City councilor Cesar Monteiro (PR) confessed to having ordered the crime in November 2018 after a police operation arrested four suspects in the case. In January 2019, prosecutors indicted 11 people for involvement in the murder. In March that same year, Monteiro was released after a habeas corpus request. He was re-arrested in April 2020, on a precautionary basis, but has not yet been convicted.