Brazilian opposition leaders, press associations and legal and judicial groups on Wednesday protested their government's decision to expel a New York Times correspondent for a report critical of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, but da Silva said he would not consider revoking the action.
Speaking in Brasilia at a breakfast of political party heads allied to his government, da Silva said he would oppose any appeal of the order. "This journalist will not stay in the country," he said. "He will be legally forbidden to enter."
The article, written by Larry Rohter, the Rio de Janeiro bureau chief for The Times, and published on Sunday, reported publicly expressed concerns about da Silva's drinking habits. It said, "Some of his countrymen have begun wondering if their president's predilection for strong drink is affecting his performance in office."
Brazil's Justice Ministry said that Rohter's banning was justified because the article was "lightweight, lying and offensive to the honor of the president."
Da Silva said that the article represented "a malicious assault on the institution of the presidency."
Roberto Busato, president of Brazil's national bar association, protested that da Silva was resorting to a repressive law that had last been used during the 1964 to 1985 military dictatorship. Da Silva's left-leaning government contains many ministers who fought the nation's military rulers. Da Silva himself, then an outspoken labor leader, was imprisoned.
In an open letter to the government, the Foreign Correspondents Association of Sao Paulo said, "We do not understand how a democratic government that had many of its leaders persecuted and censured can take such an authoritarian decision, especially since it was the foreign press during the years of military regime that was responsible for attracting international attention to denunciations of the dictatorship."
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, da Silva's predecessor as president, said at a breakfast meeting of foreign correspondents in Sao Paulo on Wednesday that while he found the New York Times article superficial and frivolous, he was surprised and disappointed by the reaction to it.
"There are frivolous stories published every day," he said. "The expulsion is an overreaction; it goes against democratic principles."
The Forca Sindical, the country's second-largest labor union, which on Monday had urged the government to declare Rohter "persona non grata," issued a statement Wednesday condemning the government's effort to throw him out.
"The action taken by the government worries us because it is a reaction typical of authoritarian governments that don't like contrary voices," the union's president, Paulo Pereira da Silva, said.
The New York Times said it would oppose the move to expel Rohter.
"Based on consultations with Brazilian legal counsel, we believe there is no basis for revocation of Rohter's visa and would take appropriate action to defend his rights," said Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for the newspaper.
Bill Keller, the executive editor, said on Tuesday that if Brazil "intends to expel a journalist for writing an article that offended the president, that would raise serious questions about Brazil's professed commitment to freedom of expression and a free press."
"No one can call this an attack on the freedom of the press," Amorim told a Senate committee in Brasilia. But Paulo Sotero, the Wasington correspondent of the Estado de Sao Paulo, disagreed and said that Brazilian journalists were consequently uniting behind Rohter.
"We fought too hard for freedom of the press in this country to allow this kind of nonsense," he said in a telephone interview.
"If the government was worried that Larry Rohter was having a bad affect on the image of the country," he said, "this is much more of a disaster in that sense."
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