Trial postponed in case of reporter who lost eye in demonstration

The trial of the case of photojournalist Sérgio Silva, which would take place today (29), at the São Paulo Court of Justice (TJSP), has been postponed, without setting a new date. The justification presented by the court was to define, first, what will be the composition of the division that will decide the course of the process. Silva has been waiting for a conclusion of the process for almost a decade. The reporter lost his left eye after being injured by a rubber bullet fired by a military policeman in June 2013. At the time, he was covering, as a press professional, an act against public transport fare increases, in the capital of São Paulo. As detailed by the lawyer Maurício Vasquez, who represents the reporter, what happened was that, when the request for reconsideration of the judgment reached the 9th Chamber of Public Law, its composition had changed. “New judges had entered the Chamber. The composition of the three who would judge was different and, because of that, Sérgio Silva and also the State representative intended to support orally to expose the reasons of each one. However, the rapporteur preferred to withdraw from agenda, because the previous composition could be redone, because the same members are still in the same Chamber. So, they will analyze whether it is the case to keep it as it was presented today or if they will resume the first composition and, with that, prevent oral support and judge the process in the state it is in”, he explained. In an interview with Agência Brasil, the lawyer said that there is a possibility that the process will be resumed next Wednesday, but that there is no certainty about the deadline, which could be longer. For Silva, today’s delay is “another chapter of violence”. “Each day that passes is as if those ten years have an even greater weight. It’s very violent to have to remember what happened, to keep sustaining a defense of something very obvious. This feeds a trauma that is very difficult to forget. So, , time, it perpetuates this violence that happened back there, in 2013. It is very difficult to accept a decision like this, even more so in a situation that, a long time ago, it was already clear, this formation of who would be here today, present, and, when it comes to making a decision, something different is decided”, he criticized.

Agência Brasil