Brazil’s National Union of Islamic Bodies (UNI) launched an online campaign to gather 5,000 signatures in order to sue Veja magazine for the April 6 article “Brazil’s Terror Network.”
The site is asking Muslims to sign on to a class action suit against the magazine.
The story that prompted the campaign claims that “based on official documents from the CIA, FBI, U.S. Treasury, Interpol, and the Brazilian Federal Police, Islamic extremists are using the country as a base of operations and to recruit militants.”
The UNI said that it will demand a retraction for “discrimination, libel, racism, moral damages, defamation, religious persecution, and prejudice.”
This is not the first time the organization has had problems with Veja. In 2001, UNI created a website for Muslims to publish critiques of an article in the magazine.
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.
