The Minister of Justice and Public Security, Flávio Dino, announced this Tuesday (17) the creation, within the portfolio, of the National Observatory on Violence against Journalists. The proposal was taken to the minister by the National Federation of Journalists (Fenaj).
“Accepting the request of the journalists’ unions, we are going to set up the National Observatory on Violence against Journalists at the Ministry of Justice, in order to dialogue with the Judiciary and other institutions of the justice and public security system”, said the minister in a post on social networks.
Dino met yesterday (16) with the entity’s president, Samira de Castro, and representatives of the Union of Professional Journalists of the Federal District and the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji).
The announcement comes just over a week after the coup acts on December 8, in Brasilia. At the time, at least 16 cases of aggression against communication professionals were reported, according to the report by the Union of Professional Journalists of the Federal District.
“The objective of the observatory is to monitor cases of attacks on the category, mobilizing the competent bodies to curb aggression and hold the aggressors accountable, in addition to accompanying investigations of crimes committed to identify and hold the perpetrators accountable”, explains Samira de Castro.
Fenaj suggests that the body be composed of representatives of the Ministries of Justice, Human Rights and the Social Communication Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic, in addition to representatives of organized civil society, such as the federation itself, the Brazilian Press Association (ABI) , Abraji, the entity representing journalism professors and researchers, as well as employer representations, such as the National Association of Newspapers (ANJ) and the Brazilian Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters (Abert).
This is not a new proposal. Fenaj and the journalists’ unions have been trying to institute the mechanism at least since the June 2013 days, almost 10 years ago.
“Violence against the category reached record levels in the last 4 years and we witnessed an organized attack on the headquarters of the Three Powers and on the press itself so that we could finally debate this initiative”, said the president of Fenaj.
exclusive channel
Another demand from journalists’ unions is the opening of an exclusive channel for professionals to denounce cases of aggression suffered during coup acts.
According to the chief minister of Secom, Paulo Pimenta, the General Directorate of the Civil Police of the Federal District will designate a delegate specifically responsible for investigations involving attacks on communicators. The idea is to protect privacy and ensure security for press professionals to carry out their duties without risk of further reprisals.
