Court dismisses 6 defendants for calling Venezuelan indigenous people 'tramps' and 'filthy'

The Federal Court in Paraíba received a complaint from the Federal Public Ministry against six people being investigated for an alleged crime of racism, in the form of xenophobia. They are accused of comments on a post on the social network Instagram against indigenous people of the Warao ethnic group, from Venezuela.

The interactions were made in a video and photo published on an Instagram profile, according to the Prosecutor's Office. The details of the complaint were released by the MPF in Paraíba – Police Inquiry 0800035-51.2021.4.05.8200.

The Prosecutor's Office reported that the accused were charged with the crime of racism, typified in art. 20 of Law 7,716/1989, for the 'practice of discrimination and racial prejudice against the indigenous people of the Warao ethnic group'.

The expected penalty is 2 years to 5 years in prison.

Those reported may also be sentenced to pay a fine and compensation for social damages to the community. As they are accused of racial crimes, defendants cannot be offered the possibility of non-criminal prosecution agreements.

Upon receiving the complaint, the Court cited the STF decision that made the practice of racism on open social networks a non-bailable and imprescriptible crime. In that same decision, the Court defined that the principle of freedom of expression does not encompass the right to incite racism, 'as an individual right cannot serve as a safeguard for the practice of illicit acts'.

“In the conflict of these constitutional precepts, the principles of human dignity and legal equality prevail”, wrote the judge in the decision.

Prejudice and hate

The crime occurred in 2020 through comments on an Instagram post about a police approach to a house inhabited by indigenous people, in João Pessoa.

Using a video and a photo, the publication showed a Military Police vehicle in front of the house, where an agent was interrogating one of the residents, allegedly because of excessive noise coming from the residence.

In the middle of the post, the six accused made comments 'spreading intolerance, prejudice and inciting hatred against indigenous people'.

The Prosecutor's Office attributes insults to them such as 'lazy', 'slutty', 'tramps', 'filthy', and others. The comments alleged that the indigenous people did not know how to live in society and did not want to work. One of them insinuated that indigenous Venezuelans should be killed.

For Public Prosecutor José Godoy Bezerra de Souza, who signed the complaint, the dissemination of these comments 'not only harms the people directly targeted, but also weakens the fabric of society as a whole, which ends up undermining social cohesion'.

For Godoy, intolerance and prejudice are not just moral crimes, but an affront to the fundamental principles of equality and human dignity.

“As long as hate speech and xenophobia are not punished in accordance with the law, it will be possible for social media to flourish, affecting not only the direct victims, but also the very essence of our humanity”, argues the prosecutor.

Godoy highlights that social networks 'alarmingly amplify the spread of xenophobia and racism'.

The prosecutor points out that the profile that published the post, for example, had around 803 thousand followers, which generated immense repercussions among society and a flood of hate-filled speeches against the Warao indigenous people.

In the complaint, the prosecutor maintains that 'there are no biological differences between human beings, with the division into races resulting from a merely political-social process'.

“Scientifically, there are no distinctions between men, whether due to skin segmentation, eye shape, height, hair or any other physical characteristics”, he states.

Limits to free expression

The public prosecutor emphasizes, in the complaint, that freedom of expression is not an absolute guarantee, with moral and legal limits imposed on it.

“Public freedoms are not unconditional and must be exercised harmoniously, observing the limits defined in the Federal Constitution itself”, asserts Godoy.

According to him, an individual right 'cannot constitute a safeguard against illicit conduct'.

In addition to the prison sentence for those involved, the Prosecutor's Office requests the setting of a fine and an amount to repair the social damage caused by the infraction, 'taking into account the losses to the entire community'.