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Last
month in Brazil a journalist, Tim Lopes, was murdered
in the city of Rio de Janeiro by drug dealers he was
investigating. The eighth journalist to be murdered
in the South American country since 1995 he had went
to a dance party in early June with a concealed camera
in one of the city’s 800 slum areas, Vila de
Cruzeiro, to investigate a complaint from local people
made to TV Globo for whom he worked. The complaint
alleged that drug dealers were organising parties
at which they recruited new customers and orchestrated
paedophile activity. Vila de Cruzeiro is one of the
"favelas" in the Complexe de Alemao, a shantytown
on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro controlled by the
drug dealers.
These
'favelas', as shantytowns are known colloquially,
are said to be ruled like fiefdoms by drug lords who
incessantly fight, leaving Brazil with a murder rate
almost as bad as that of South Africa. The Brazilian
president Fernando Henrique Cardoso said the murder
of Lopes was 'an attempt to silence the press on the
issue of drugs.' The local administration has put
up almost $US 20,000 as reward money for information
that would lead to the arrest of Elias Pereira da
Silva, 35, a drug baron widely accused of being responsible
for the murder of Lopes. According to two of his alleged
gang members arrested shortly after the journalist
had disappeared, Lopez was tortured, shot in the feet
and then stabbed to death with a Samurai-style sword
by Silva before his body was burned. Brazilian police
claim that the prime suspect has ordered more than
60 killings as a result of his control of the drugs
trade in 13 of the slum areas.
His
first wife Sandra claimed that Tim Lopes was ‘inspired
by three things: journalism, being poor and being
black‘. In a statement, Globo said through its
chief editor Carlos Henrique Schroeder, '’Tim
died defending a population who lives helplessly under
the terror of drug trafficking and organized crime.'’
Lopes, who had a knack for pushing at the boundaries and who
brought together killers and the families of their
victims on a prime-time weekend news show, had fallen
foul of the drugs gangs last year by doing a TV expose
of a drugs bazaar in another slum. In August, he had
compiled a series of three reports for TV Globo which
were screened on Brazilian Television. Called "The
Drugs Fair", the reports using a hidden camera
showed how young people in one of the "favela"
in the Complexe de Alemao openly offered drugs to
passers-by in daylight hours. Lopes was awarded the
Esso Especial Prize for Television Journalism the
following December - Brazil's most important journalism
award. The reports led to an increased military police
presence in the area and a curtailing of business
for the dealers.
The
determination by reactionary elements to kill journalists
and writers is underlined by the Committee to Protect
Journalists who in a recent report alleged that during
the last decade 389 journalists were killed performing
their vocation. The ease with which the perpetrators
escape justice is evident when the Committee to Protect
Journalists show that in only twenty cases those who
ordered the murders were prosecuted - a startling
94 per cent go free.
This
underlines that in Latin America Brazil is not alone
in being a dangerous zone for journalists to ply their
trade. The organisation, Latin America of the International
Federation of Journalists has drawn attention to ongoing
harassment of journalists in Paraguay, Colombia and
Venezuela. The latter perhaps more than the rest is
all the more disappointing given that the regime of
Hugo Chavez was expected to increase rather than diminish
progress.
In
the struggle to throw light on the dark regions where
those with the power to ruin the lives of others and
keep people in permanent poverty are intent on a permanent
‘‘lights out’’ regime of fear,
writers and journalists will inevitably lose their
lives. Tim Lopes knew the risks and took them. People
like him are the true literary heroes in a world where
many masquerading as opinion writers craft little
other than pulp fiction.
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