A group of state congressmen and representatives from the Brazilian Press Association, the National Newspaper Association and the National Students’ Union, gathered today at downtown Rio de Janeiro to rally in favor of freedom of speech (.br). According to the president of the Lawyers’ Order of Brazil, Wadih Damuz, it was an act “in defense of the Constitution”.
This time, the problem was this year’s Global Marijuana March, which was to take place in 10 Brazilian cities, on May 4th. One day before that, the state Public Ministry got the event forbidden in 9 of the cities, based on our old friend, the “apology to crime” law. Needless to say, people rallied just the same and were met by policemen on horses, wearing riot gear and in not the best of moods. A young fellow in Rio de Janeiro, whose Labrador was carrying a sign which read “stupidity is the essence of prejudice, legalize cannabis” was arrested, thus proving the dog’s point.
It should be evident that a law which considers it a crime - punishable by up to 6 months incarceration - to defend something which is itself a crime has only one use, and that is to crush dissenting speech. It is not by chance that such an abomination dates back to 1940, in the heydays of Getulio Vargas’ fascist New State.
But, once again, the protesters missed the point entirely. You see those fellows up there, holding a banner in front of the Cathedral of BrasÃlia? It reads: “No to censorship. The march is not apology”.
Mr. Damuz, instead of decrying such a stupid piece of legislation, said he would not say anything regarding the legalization of drugs, but that he defended “the right to debate”. According to him, today’s rally was an “act more of awareness, of warning the Brazilian society that we can’t recede, for democracy was a hard conquest of the Brazilian people”.
In short, according to the protesters the problem is not with the legislation used to censor their speech, but that this wasn’t apology to an illegal drug and thus there was no crime. Which is to say that I hope judges throughout the country keep judging according to the law, and prohibiting things such as the Marijuana March, until people finally realize that they’re not supposed to argue on the merits of their speech, but on the merits of a law devised exclusively to prevent free speech.
By the way, isn’t apology to apology to crime supposed to be a crime as well?
2 responses so far ↓
1 Cisco // May 13, 2008 at 1:39 am
There is a very narrow sense in which such a law could be defended, if it was interpreted as prohibiting speech such as “we should all burn that guy’s house” or “kill all the Jews!”, but even in that very narrow sense it would lead to people like Gandhi and MLK being considered criminals because they favored civil disobedience to unjust laws.
Obviously, the Brazilian law is applied in a much broader sense, but we should keep in mind that if our legal system was at all sane such excessive interpretations could have been curtailed by, e.g., a Supreme Court that actually meant something.
2 Solon Brochado // May 13, 2008 at 1:56 am
Actually, we have such a law already. Under “Title IX: of the Crimes Against Public Peace” we have:
The first case seems a whole lot more defensible, and is similar to “hate speech” provisions we see even in US law. But “apology to crime” does not refer to incitement, only to speech in favor of it. It’s the difference between “kill all the Jews!” and “I think all Jews should be killed”.
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