CV NEWS FEED // Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International has asked the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to intervene in Brazil’s censorship of the social media platform X (formerly Twitter).
On September 2, the Brazilian Supreme Court upheld Justice Alexandre de Moraes’s order for the “immediate, complete and total suspension of X’s operations” in Brazil, with a fine of R$50,000 (nearly $9,000) per day for any person or company who tries to use X through a virtual private network (VPN), according to a September 2 press release from ADF.
ADF lawyers sent a letter to the Commission calling for it to intervene.
“The blocking of X in the country is symptomatic of an endemic problem,” the letter reads:
The censorship situation is severe; it has dragged on for more than six years and has caused real damage to Brazilian democracy, producing a chilling effect on the majority of the population who, according to recent surveys, are afraid to express their opinions in public.
According to ADF’s press release, the state targeted conservative voices during the 2022 election campaign, when now-president Lula da Silva was running for office. The state blocked pro-life messages that opposed da Silva’s pro-abortion campaign.
The state has also hampered speech criticizing the president’s “promotion of sexually explicit content in school curricula,” according to ADF’s press release.
ADF states that Brazilian journalist Paulo Figueiredo and American author Michael Shellenberger “have already been targeted with secret criminal investigations for reporting on the authoritarian drift of the Brazilian courts and their censorship efforts.”
Shellenberger spoke out against the censorship in a statement included in the ADF press release.
“Under the guise of promoting democracy, and despite growing backlash from home and abroad, Brazilian authorities have created the most oppressive culture of censorship in the western hemisphere,” Shellenberger said.
“It’s not only bad policy and bad politics, it’s a blatant violation of basic human rights for authorities to ban the speech of their own citizens,” he continued, later adding, “As the situation continues to deteriorate, my hope is that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights will intervene rapidly in defense of the right of all to speak freely in Brazil.”
