José Cristian Góes, a reporter from the Brazilian state of Sergipe, was sentenced on July 4 to seven months and a week in jail for writing and posting a fictional short story on local political cronyism in May 2012 for his blog Infonet, reported the daily Conjur.
The sentence, however, was converted into community service. Góes must serve one hour each day for the period of the sentence.
The short story was told from a first person point of view and did not mention location, dates or actual names. According to the reporters' union in Sergipe, Marcelo Déda of the Workers' Party (PT), a judge and brother-in-law of Sergipe governor, alleged to have been offended by the story and sought jailtime for the reporter.
Although the entire case had been presided by Special Criminal Court Judge Brígida Declerc in Aracaju, the sentence was handed out out by Luiz Eduardo Araújo Portela, a substitute judge. Góes' lawyer, Antônio Rodrigo, said he will appeal the decision.
“Being an absurd sentence, we don't believe it will stand, but if so we will go to the Supreme Court since the decision violates the Federal Constitution. Who knows, we can go all the way to the National Justice Council and the International Courts of Human Rights," he said.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said this Monday that it received news of the ruling with "incredulity and dismay" and stated that the story in question - titled "I, the colonel in me" - was written in "literary" form. The organization considered the case "judicially insane" and an insult to the Federal Constitution of 1988.
Censorship of the press through the Ministry of Justice has turned into the main obstacle to freedom of expression in Brazil and one of the most efficient in derailing the work of media outlets, especially smaller ones, as well as silencing critical journalists and bloggers. The Knight Center recently published a timeline that shows how the country registered 16 cases in which courts were used as instruments of censorship in 2012 alone.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
