Two weeks ago, Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, falsely accused me in his YouTube weekly address of spreading “fake news”.
I wasn’t watching, but a colleague messaged me and said Bolsonaro had mentioned my name. As I played back the video, I heard it. I had to replay the video to be sure and, as I watched, my hands trembled, my pulse quickened and I grew short of breath. His accusation, though absolutely untrue, could put my three children and me in real danger.
What prompted Brazil’s president to target me? Two days earlier, I had published an article on UOL, the largest Portuguese language website, that reviewed the evidence (displayed in a flowchart) of Bolsonaro’s links to the assassination of the Rio de Janeiro councilwoman Marielle Franco in 2018. There is compelling evidence, which Bolsonaro has repeatedly dismissed, of connections between his family and the leaders of a paramilitary group that allegedly carried out her killing.
There are many dots to connect, but just to review: one of the men who allegedly carried out the execution was Bolsonaro’s neighbor. The mother and wife of Adriano da Nóbrega, the head of a shadowy paramilitary group responsible for several murders in Rio, worked for Bolsonaro’s eldest son, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. Adriano, who feared for his life as a witness, was killed last February. On Twitter, Bolsonaro shared his concern with the possibility that Nóbrega’s phones could be tampered with and used to “accuse innocents of the Marielle case”. The brother of the man accused of ordering Marielle’s murder, Chiquinho Brazão, received a diplomatic passport that normally are given to people working for the government. Bolsonaro’s justice minister, Sergio Moro, resigned in April and accused the president of seeking to interfere in Rio de Janeiro’s federal police branch in order to protect his family and friends. The president retorted that Moro had been overly concerned with finding Marielle’s assassins.
Like Donald Trump and others, Bolsonaro’s playbook when it comes to uncomfortable evidence is to attack the facts and the people trying to unearth them. Like Trump, Bolsonaro does not like being challenged by women, especially black women. So he accused me – a black journalist and activist – of spreading fake news while brandishing a report that I did not write.
That Marielle Franco was a black, bisexual woman with a history of speaking up for the poor and marginalized is central to her murder case. Bolsonaro foments hatred against minorities. Racist comments against black and indigenous people, and the homophobic and misogynistic behavior he expresses, have become more explicit every day.
Bolsonaro’s actions are part of a trend of frightening attacks against press freedom in Brazil. Defamation campaigns and political persecution are the lifeblood of the Bolsonaro administration. They are often led by the so-called “Office of Hate”, an illicit network of bloggers, prominent businessmen and lawmakers close to Bolsonaro, who spread fake news and attack our democratic institutions. The group is currently is under investigation by Brazil’s supreme court.
According to the National Federation of Journalists, violence against press workers increased 54% in the year after Bolsonaro’s election in 2018. His supporters regularly harass journalists at the door to the president’s residence, where he often holds his impromptu press conferences. The violence is such that Folha de S Paulo and Globo – two of the largest and most respected newspapers in Brazil – recently withdrew their correspondents from the presidential palace due to safety concerns.
Meanwhile, black Brazilians – who make up about half of the total population – are experiencing the one-two punch of an epidemic of murder and the Covid-19 pandemic. In Brazil, a young black man is murdered every 23 minutes while 75% of murder victims are black. In Rio alone, the police force killed 1,800 people in 2019 – an 18% increase from a year earlier.
Now, because of Bolsonaro’s refusal to take the coronavirus seriously, a majority of the more than 36,000 deaths due to Covid-19 in Brazil are black men and women. At the same time the favelas were in lockdown, police kept killing black people. Between mid-March and mid-May, the police killed 69 people in Rio de Janeiro while the city was in coronavirus lockdown.
One 14-year-old black child was shot more than 70 times while he was inside. Three days later, a 16-year-old black child was shot at home on the east side of São Paulo.
Racism in Brazil, whether it is political intimidation from the president, bullets from paramilitary forces and now, Covid-19, makes a target of black people across Brazil. Like George Floyd, we are not allowed to catch our breath.
Bianca Santana is a Brazilian writer, researcher, journalist and teacher