{"id":24817,"date":"2015-10-16T15:16:25","date_gmt":"2015-10-16T18:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=24817"},"modified":"2023-08-23T12:21:13","modified_gmt":"2023-08-23T15:21:13","slug":"community-journalists-experience-censorship-and-threats-in-rios-favelas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=24817","title":{"rendered":"Community Journalists Experience Censorship and Threats in Rio\u2019s Favelas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas\"\"<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

This post is the final\u00a0of four RioOnWatch contributions to Blog Action Day 2015<\/a> in which\u00a0bloggers around the world reflect<\/a> on this year\u2019s theme: Raise Your Voice. Check out\u00a0our full series here<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This week, when the National Day for the Democratization of Communication<\/a>\u00a0is\u00a0celebrated, it is important to be aware of the current situation facing community journalists<\/a> in Rio de Janeiro\u2019s favelas, where censorship is one of the main problems they encounter.<\/p>\n

This year, the Rio de Janeiro Youth Forum<\/a> published a report entitled \u201cThe Militarization of Rio’s Favelas<\/a>\u201d which contains numerous allegations of journalists who were threatened, searched and removed from their homes and places of work, and that these threats have increased within Rio\u2019s favelas following\u00a0the introduction of Pacifying Police Units (UPPs)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tha\u00eds Cavalcante<\/a> is a community journalist and current coordinator of the O Cidad\u00e3o<\/a><\/em> newspaper which has been circulating for 16 years in the Mar\u00e9<\/a> favela complex, located in the North Zone<\/a> of Rio. She said that communicating within the favelas has been a very delicate operation: “The communication that takes place inside favelas is more delicate than in other places. Besides being journalists, we are residents. We take extreme care and we are involved in everything emotionally too.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Tha\u00eds, when the military occupied<\/a> Mar\u00e9\u2019s streets, journalists felt restricted from reporting from the streets and producing articles on topics related to human rights<\/a>:\u00a0“We felt limited in our ability to report and photograph what was happening, whether with respect to the army or an everyday cultural event. I’ve been shouted at by a military officer on how to talk or say good morning but I didn’t respond because no one is obliged to be polite to the oppressor. As a journalist I have always been careful about what I do when I’m near them, but often I have had to identify myself, the newspaper, show them the website, my name and so on,” she concluded.
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\"15<\/a><\/p>\n

According to the Forum report data, the types of occurrences that are taking place in Mar\u00e9 are also seen in other favelas. The story of a young community journalist participating in a project in Manguinhos<\/a> demonstrates this: “I witnessed a police officer approach a citizen who was driving by in his car listening to loud funk<\/a> music. The UPP officer accosted the citizen pointing his rifle at him and demanding that he stop. I filmed the confrontation from across the street. The policeman saw and told me I could not film them and that he would take me to the police station. Psychological pressure is characteristic of the UPP. In the end he wrote down the names of everyone, the driver of the car, his passenger and me, and registered it in some database\u00a0I don\u2019t know. In the midst of this, two more residents arrived and tried to talk to the police. The officer\u00a0said that if he caught the driver listening to indecent music\u00a0or\u00a0the person who filmed it again, both would be taken to the police station.\u201d<\/p>\n

In some favelas, searches and banning people from circulating with cell phones have increased because a cell phone can serve as an important instrument to highlight complaints and show when police officers are violating citizens\u2019 rights<\/a>. An example of this is Coletivo Papo Reto<\/a> based in Complexo do Alem\u00e3o<\/a>, also in the North Zone of Rio, who speak in the report and on social media of the times they suffer police threats and intimidation: “We’ve just left Police Station 45 here in Alem\u00e3o where our friend, photographer Carlos Cout, was released after being arrested for contempt and resisting arrest for not letting UPP officers look at his cell phone. Cout is a photographic reporter for Coletivo Papo Reto, but even upon showing identification he was driven to the police station. When he arrived there, they saw several links and repercussions [from that day’s actions] and he was given the ‘opportunity’ to ‘let it go.’ Carlos did not ‘let it go’ and proceeded with the complaint. Everything indicates this is another rights violation aimed at community media.”<\/p>\n

These incidences of intimidation are not isolated in one or two favelas occupied by the UPP. All three reports are by journalists who doing important work reporting on violations<\/a> in their local neigborhoods. There are many cases when the reporters\u2019 coverage has managed to go viral and show the real situation of their favelas: that the state is constantly threatening and violating rights on a daily basis. It is necessary that society, journalists and human rights defenders pay attention to these facts collected by community journalists who are no longer able to carry out their work in Rio de Janeiro\u2019s favelas.<\/p>\n

Paula Mairan, president of the Rio de Janeiro Journalists Union<\/a>, said: “Brazil’s dictatorship ended, but censorship hasn’t. We have a logic that maintains the political and economic power of a minority which includes some media businessmen. It is not of\u00a0interest to those who defend that political and economic system, for the people to have voice. We have cases of physical violence, we have cases of arrests. Today popular and community media act in resistance<\/a> and even underground. Because of this, the fight for the right to communication<\/a>\u00a0cannot concern just a few. It concerns everyone: society, journalists and communicators. This is a central agenda. Communication is a human right. People have to have access and express themselves through their own media channels<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Gizele Martins is a community journalist\u00a0from the Complexo da Mar\u00e9 favelas.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas This post is the final\u00a0of four RioOnWatch contributions to Blog Action Day 2015 in which\u00a0bloggers around the world reflect on this year\u2019s theme: Raise Your Voice. Check out\u00a0our full series here. […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":24853,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1294,1668,1277,1288,1328,1290,328,336],"tags":[24,1162,1013,1839,977,1303,1653,280,32,25,1117,637,15,888,1555],"writer":[1842],"translator":[1729],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-24817","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-communitymedia","8":"category-participationwatch","9":"category-uppwatch","10":"category-highlight","11":"category-by-community-contributors","12":"category-civilsociety","13":"category-understanding-rio","14":"category-violations","15":"tag-alternative-media","16":"tag-army-occupation","17":"tag-blog-action-day","18":"tag-blog-action-day-2015-raise-your-voice","19":"tag-citizen-journalism","20":"tag-communication-rights","21":"tag-community-media","22":"tag-complexo-da-mare","23":"tag-complexo-do-alemao","24":"tag-human-rights","25":"tag-journalism","26":"tag-manguinhos","27":"tag-pacifying-police-unit","28":"tag-police-intimidation","29":"tag-redes-de-desenvolvimento-da-mare","30":"writer-gizele-martins","31":"translator-sheila-taylor"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24817"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=24817"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=24817"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=24817"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=24817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}