by paulo eneas
Brazilian democracy is at risk due the permanent unconstitutional actions against freedom of speech carried out by the Supreme Court of Justice. The freedom of speech is assured by Brazil Federal Constitution. However, it is has been under attack at Supreme Court, whose majority of members were all nominated by the former communist presidents Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff.
The communist Lula da Silva was convicted to eleven years in prison for crimes of bribery, money laundry and corruption. But he was released recently from incarceration following decision of this very same supreme court. By her turn, Dilma Rousseff was dropped from the Presidency in 2016 for decision of the Brazilian House of Representatives, following an impeachment process due illegal management of national budget.
But since then, the Supremo Tribunal Federal (the Brazilian Supreme Court) has acted to impose the leftist agenda inherited from the previous leftist governments in all public affairs and has guided its actions accordingly. The Supreme Court has taken decisions that are far beyond its constitutional duties: the court has voted and imposed new laws by its own, and has interfered in the administrative decisions of the President Jair Bolsonaro.
Recently, the Supreme Court has filed to itself an illegal and secret lawsuit aimed allegedly to investigate fake news. Brazilian ordinary law and our Federal Constitution do not define what a fake news is. There is not even an ordinary law defining fake news as a crime. Therefore, fake news should never be a subject matter to be considered by our constitutional court.
Nevertheless, the Supreme Court has gone ahead with an unconstitutional lawsuit conducted solely by one of its members, justice Alexandre de Moraes. Within the scope of this unconstitutional and secret lawsuit, many citizens have been threatened on their right of free speech.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes has ordered the blockage of social networks accounts and has issued judicial order to Brazilian Federal Police seizure mobile devices and computers of some citizens, all of them conservative right-wing public figures influencers and political supporters of President Bolsonaro.
All these citizens are being lawsuited by justice Alexandre de Moraes. Lawyers of many of these citizen can not have access to the documents and related material of the investigation. Therefore, we have a situation in which Brazilian citizens are being lawsuited by a justice of our supreme court without knowing why and what they are being accused of.
There is no doubt that, in reality, the investigation has served as an state instrument to threaten and constrain the exercise of freedom of speech of the conservatives, right-wing activists and supporters of President Bolsonaro. That is why we understand that democracy in Brazil is at risk, since this absurd situation correspond to a dictatorship.
This week, justice Alexandre de Moraes has issued judicial orders against 29 (twenty-nine) citizens, including journalists, youtubers, blogs authors, political leaders and others. The judicial orders consisted in seizure of communications devices. All these people may have to go to the court shortly in orders to be judged solely by justice Alexandre de Moraes for alleged fake news crimes.
In a short video segment distributed on the networks, Brazilian journalist Allan dos Santos, director of Terça-Livre, a right-wing conservative news channel in Brazil, reports the moment when federal police entered his residence in Brasília (DF) today (May 27th) to execute an order issued by justice Alexandre de Moraes, member of the Federal Supreme Court.
