Support Brazilian Law Professor, public intellectual and LawTransform Global Fellow Conrado Hubner Mendes who is under attacks from the Attorney General for defamation. Sign the petition and spread the word (English text below the Portuguese)! The deadline for signatures is Tuesday, May 18th. But please continue to spread the word!
On May 3, the General Prosecutor of the Brazilian Republic, Mr. Augusto Aras, filed a complaint before the Ethics Commitee at USP requesting an investigation process against Prof. Dr. Conrado Hübner Mendes, from the Faculty of Law (FD-USP), due to manifestations in social networks and op-ed pieces published in the newspaper “Folha de São Paulo”.
The General Prosecutor maintains that the manifestations of prof. Hübner Mendes, especially the contentions that the prosecutor is a “servant of the President of the Republic” and a “Lightpost” (“poste”), allegedly violated articles 5, 6 and 7 of the USP Code of Ethics, which establish, among others, the duties of “encouraging respect for the truth”; of “acting in a manner compatible with morality”; and that of refraining from “disclosing information in a sensationalist, promotional or untrue manner”, and from “commenting on facts whose veracity and provenance have been not confirmed or identified”.
It is an unprecedented attack, since the Brazilian redemocratization, against the academic, scientific and intellectual autonomy of the University of São Paulo (USP). It seeks to constrain and threaten not only the inviolable right to freedom of expression of prof. Hübner Mendes, but that of all university professors, inside and outside USP, who have different types of presence in the public debate, expressing themselves on topics of general interest, contributing to the plurality of thought and critical analysis, and thus provide an invaluable service to society and our democracy. It is a strategy known in all autocratization phenomena since the 20th century: they intimidate a handful of targets in order to silence others.
For updates on the case, follow Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz on Twitter: @octavio_ferra
The omission of the Justice sytem is what our AG provides’
State of intimidation: MiliCarthyism is watching you
shows how not only the AG, but also the Minister of Justice and the Union’s Advocate General work with Bolsonaro to intimidade dissenters, in a kind of tropical Military Macarthism. Defamation?