Protest After Dismissal of Brazilian Writer Cuenca by Deutsche Welle

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – There is worldwide protest against the decision of Deutsche Welle German public international broadcaster (DW) to part with author João Paulo Cuenca due to making a satirical statement targeting President Jair Bolsonaro.

Journalists, writers and activists now accuse the German international broadcaster of having bowed to pressure from Bolsonaro and the Brazilian right-wing.

The journalist and writer Cuenca, who also works for the investigative outlet The Intercept Brasil, wrote on his private Twitter: “Brazilians will only be free when the last Bolsonaro has been hung on the intestines of the last pastor of the Igreja Universal (Universal Church).”

The sentence is an adaptation of an 18th century diatribe from the early 18th century French philosopher Jean Meslier. Even the main ideologist of Bolsonarism, the far-right intellectual Olavo de Carvalho, has used the sentence at least twice.

As a result Cuenca was heavily attacked on social media. The President’s son Eduardo Bolsonaro accused the journalist of “lack of respect for the President” and Cuenca received hundreds of death threats. As a result of past threats, Cuenca was forced to leave the country in 2019.

The German international radio broadcaster in Brazil considered the tweet to be a crime of “hate speech and incitement to violence” and cancelled Cuenca’s column, which violated the Deutsche Welle’s standards.

The DW added that it defends freedom of the press and freedom of opinion, “but that is not the case with these statements [Cuenca’s]”. Far-right government supporters welcomed the decision, and Eduardo Bolsonaro saw “hope for certain segments of the press”. Cuenca himself described DW’s statement as “dishonest, cowardly and slanderous” and wants to file a complaint against the allegation of hate speech.

Critics accuse the DW of bowing to pressure from the Bolsonaro camp and of accepting censorship. “Dismissing journalists or columnists under the clamor of Bolsonaro’s supporters is playing by the rules of fascism,” says journalist Paulo Werneck. Globo journalist Marcelo Lins accused the DW of having made its decision based on a “superficial reading, external pressure and lack of [historical] references”. The English-language magazine Brasilwire reports on censorship.

Now Brazilians and Germans living in Germany, including the vice-president of the PEN Club Germany, Ralf Nestmeyer, the renowned writer and FAZ columnist Rafael Cardoso and the translator Michael Kegler, are calling for the return of Cuenca in an open letter to Deutsche Welle Brazil.

In the opinion of the 107 signatories, the sentence in question can in no way be interpreted as incitement to hatred. “It is debatable whether this wordplay is wrongly contextualized.” However, the dismissal of the Bolsonaro-critical essayist should be viewed as an attack on freedom of expression and censorship.

Cuenca explained his tweet to the German online magazine Telepolis as follows: “On Tuesday the week before last I read that the Brazilian government has released R$30 million Reais to radio and television broadcasters of evangelical pastors who support President Jair Bolsonaro”.

He then posted the adapted Meslier quote in the morning in inverted commas. The quote has been changed many times since it was published, Cuenca said, citing several examples. In May 1968, for instance, it could be read in the streets of Paris: “When the last bureaucrat is hanged with the guts of the last sociologist, will we still have problems?”

“Since the editorial staff in Bonn are educated adults with unlimited cognitive abilities, who have read and edited all my antifascist texts in the last months, I think they know what a metaphor is,” Cuenca continues. He also offered to write a text to explain the sentence. “But they preceded that by publishing a clumsy and dishonest note in which they accused me of a crime that I did not commit: hate speech.”

He is doubtful about the Deutsche Welle’s motivation, Cuenca continues: “Either they have given in to the pressure of the government’s hate cabinet in Brazil, or this government’s tentacles reach all the way to Germany.”