The Brazilian government awarded its most prestigious prize for individuals and institutions that stand up for the defense of human rights to a killed journalist. The president's Secretary for Human Rights awarded the 2012 Human Rights Prize posthumously to Tim Lopes, reported the website G1.
According to the Union of Professional Journalists of Rio de Janeiro, the reporter was selected, in part, to recognize how his "humanitarian conscience motivated his actions that eventually, contributed to raising Brazilian society's awareness of the need to respect human rights."
The Rio Metropolitan Union of Journalists and Lopes' sister, Tânia Lopes, nominated the journalist. The tribute, to be made by President Dilma Rousseff, will take place on Monday, Dec. 10, at the Planalto Palace, the president's official workplace.
Tim Lopes was brutally tortured and killed in June 2002 by drug traffickers when he investigated the sexual exploitation of minors at dances in the favela of Vila Cruzeiro, in Rio de Janeiro. In December 2010, police arrested one of the suspects of the crime.
The case mobilized the Brazilian press to speak about the risks journalists run when reporting in dangerous areas and inspired debates over the practice of journalism in Brazil, which culminated in the creation of the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism in December of that year, according to the organization.
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.
