7 July 2006

Alert

Environmental journalist receiving death threats, authorities slow to react


Incident details

Vilmar Berna

journalist(s)

death threat
(RSF/IFEX) - RSF has condemned the sluggish reaction of the police in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro state, to a complaint about repeated death threats and intimidation filed by journalist and environmentalist Vilmar Berna on 7 June 2006, which was not passed on to the local judicial authorities until 5 July.

"The authorities did not take the case seriously until a national newspaper ran an article about it," RSF said. "Yet Berna is a recognised specialist in environmental issues who had already been threatened in the past and even had to leave Niterói twice. How is it that the police and judicial authorities reacted so slowly although they had to be aware of the case?"

RSF added, "As well as a judicial investigation, we call for an administrative investigation to establish exactly how these breaches of procedures occurred."

The editor of a daily newspaper about the environment, the "Jornal do Meio Ambiente", which has a magazine, "Revista do Meio Ambiente", and a website, Portal do Meio Ambiente, Berna also helped found Rebia, the Brazilian Environmental News Network. He covers water pollution, illegal fishing and threats to protected marine fauna in Rio de Janeiro bay. It was Berna who revealed that fishermen were using fine-mesh nets, which are banned.

A blood-stained, partially-charred body was left outside his home in Niterói at the beginning of May. Since then, he has been threatened repeatedly. He received many anonymous phone calls from a woman warning him that he would soon be killed. A friend told him he had heard that preparations were under way to beat him to death and throw his body in the sea. Then, six men forced their way into his home on the night of 27 May and threatened him.

After filing a complaint with the Niterói police on 7 June, Berna hired two bodyguards to protect his home. But he subsequently had to let them go because he did not have enough money to keep paying them. The daily "A Folha de Sao Paulo" ran a story about him on 2 July and the next day he wrote to national human rights secretary Paulo de Tarso Vannuchi.

Berna told RSF that the authorities finally began to take action after the media reports about his case. His complaint was finally transferred to the local judicial authorities on 5 July, a month after he had filed it.



Source:

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