Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am Valeska Martins and alongside my colleagues legally defend former President Lula

As explained before, Lula was, and is continuously a victim of illegal actions by the Brazilian State, more specifically the Car Wash Operation Task Force and its judge. It is occurring in the context of reprehendable judicial activism.

We have recently identified such context as the recently studied phenomenon called Lawfare. That is the misuse of the Law and its violence to achieve political ends by delegitimizing and incapacitating a chosen political enemy.

Why do we say the law is violent? Well, it can strip one’s assets away, it can imprison and in some countries it can take your life. I would say that if it is misused it can be quite violent.

So, in Lula’s case, they have broken his and his family’s privacy, they have imprisoned him most illegally among other violations. They even monitored our offices by illegally tapping the main land line and a partner’s mobile, and went on to publicize not only the transcripts but the audios as well.

However, the worst one could take away from a man like Lula is his honor. Or even put in doubt his honor by creating an atmosphere of culpability as to induce everyone to think this man has already been convicted. Oh, they must have found millions in Swiss or Panamanian accounts …Everyone thinks…

No. They have found absolutely nothing illegal about lula’s activities in or out of government. That is a problem for them.

You may be assured that many will criticize us by being here defending Lula’s human rights.

But you see, this is what Lawfare does, and here are some identified techniques of such phenomenon:

• Manipulation of the legal system with appearance of legality to achieve political objectives;
• Use of frivolous lawsuits without any merits;
• Abuse of law to harm and delegitimize one’s adversary;
• Constant use of judicial actions to discredit the adversary;
• Attempt to influence public opinion by using the law to obtain negative publicity;
• Judicialization of politics: the law as an instrument to connect political means and ends;
• Promotion of popular disillusion;
• Criticizing the use of international law and procedures to make claims against the State;
• Blocking or retaliation of attempts by politicians to make use of available legal remedies to defend their rights;
• Accusing the adversary’s actions as immoral and illegal, thus attempting to frustrate contrary objectives;
• And finally, occupying time and financial means of the elected enemy or adversary in order to prevent him from doing politics

So, as you can see Lula is a victim of a combined criminal action in order to delegitimize him and illegally and remove him from public life.

In such context, another very powerful tool in this political war is the creation of a general feeling of undeniable guilt. That is where the media comes in.

Some sectors of the Brazilian Media have been the perfect partners for achieving their Lawfare goal.

And in this sense we have hired an expert opinion to analyse the media’s coverage regarding former President Lula.

Globo, for instance, has dedicated a lot of time and resources into demonizing former President Lula.

Jornal Nacional, Globo’s main television news program watched by one third of the Brazilian homes every day has dedicated astonishing 13 hours for the past 8 months in negative publicity towards Lula. It represents approximately 11% of their daily news.

If you multiply it by 5 which is the number of news show the number goes up to 65 hours of negative publicity.

We compared negative, neutral and favourable news and discovered first that there were no favourable news, as one might expect.

So we are left with the comparison between negative and neutral, where the ratio is 2.6.

When the news report length was considered, the bias increased to 3.2 seconds of opposing news reports compared to 1 second of neutral news reports. Thus indicating that opposing reports are on average longer than neutral reports.

Lula is accused in almost half of the news reports of Jornal Nacional.

Approximately 30% of the news in Globo leads to a presumption of guilt as opposed to 1% of presumption of innocence.

It is noteworthy that 60% of the information sources of Globo are the Federal Attorney’s Office, the Federal Police and the Judiciary thus creating the perfect partnership in delegitimizing Lula.

In this sense, the expert’s opinion states that it is possible to have a clear idea of the rhetorical articulation of news pieces saying Lula is guilty even before due legal process has taken place. The source whose number increased the most is the Federal Attorney’s Office, followed by the Federal Police and the press. If we take into account that these pieces of information are mostly product of illegal leaking from investigations and legal proceedings conducted under alleged confidentiality, we are talking about a huge scandal: a cycle of unlawful acts in which those exact institutions that are responsible for protecting the due legal process are violating it, with the press playing the role of the accomplice.

Well, in the end, every Brazilian should be asking themselves: What if this happened to me? What if my son or daughter was targeted as an enemy and suffered all of these violations?

Do I want to live in a State of Rule of Law or Rule by Law?

This is a very dangerous path we are taking and we are in the cross roads. Which path do we want to take?

History has shown what happens to States which deviate from the Rule of Law.

So, this is a fight for my family. I want my children to live in a State where individual freedoms and rights are protected. Where they can be whatever they desire…

This is a fight for all Brazilian Citizens..

Thank you.