Brazil’s government has launched a major crackdown on speech following an April 5th attack on a nursery in Santa Catarina when a man massacred four children with an ax. The incident marks the ninth school attack in eight months.
Authorities have already arrested over 300 people — including minors — who have been accused of hate speech online or “stoking school violence” though the charges have not been detailed and investigations are under seal. Officials within the Lula administration, in the meantime, are pushing for legislation that will make certain speech on social media illegal, though they insist this will not hamper freedom of expression.
Minister of Justice and Public Security Senator Flávio Dino claims "the idea that regulating and monitoring the internet would be against freedom of expression is false."
The Communist Party member added that censorship, in fact, is central to freedom of expression.
"It is only possible to preserve freedom of expression by regulating it," claimed Dino. "We already have, at this point, affirmed that criminal networks are strongly organized in this theme of violence against schools," added the communist politician.
Dino will create a 50-man task force to monitor online content for threats to schools and universities, which will last 90 days. Cabinet ministers will discuss a national policy to tackle school violence.
Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told reporters last week during a press conference in Abu Dhabi that he intends to propose international censorship measures at the G20 summit this September.
“We need to discuss at the G20 how we are going to deal with the digital platforms, which are not accountable for fake news, for the transmission of hate, for real terrorist practices through a digital network, which has very little of social nature today,” said Lula.
Brazilian authorities have already suspended or removed over 750 social media profiles in the last two weeks under the pretext of preventing school violence.
Supreme Court Justice and Superior Electoral Court (TSE) President Alexandre de Moraes, a known advocate for censorship, last week compared the perpetrators of school attacks to Brazilians who questioned the legitimacy of November’s presidential election.
For more than two months following the general election, civil unrest plagued Brazil’s cities and streets after voting machine audits found significant voting regularities which may have helped Lula cross the finish line with 50.7% of the vote, the narrowest margin in Brazil’s history. Some areas also reported zero votes going to Right-leaning incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.
During a January 8th protest allegedly designed to replicate the one at the United States Capitol on January 6th, Brazilian demonstrators stormed the Planalto, Alvorada and Jaburu Palaces — the seats of the country’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential office.
"The modus operandi of these instrumentalized aggressions, disseminated and encouraged by social networks in relation to schools is exactly identical to the modus operandi that was used against the electronic ballot boxes and against democracy,” said Moraes. “It is the instrumentalized modus operandi for January 8. There is no difference. The social networks still feel like a no man's land, a lawless land. We need to regulate this.”
Moraes added that had there been adequate censorship in place to suppress challenges to the presidential election, the protest on January 8th would not have happened.
The crackdown has garnered support among mainstream news outlets like NPR, which blames school attacks on “misogyny, racism, prejudice and vengeance” and “a love of firearms”.
