NATALIA VIANA
March 30, 2009
I am an investigative journalist from Brazil with nine years of experience reporting from my country and abroad. My work focuses on politics, the environment and human rights issues, and has awarded me two national prizes and three scholarships to attend international journalism schools. Last year I published my first book, Planted in the Earth, about political crime against social leaders in Brazil.
Since completing a master’s degree in Radio Journalism at Goldsmiths College, University of London, I have incorporated a multi-media approach to journalism. I am a regular contributor to Free Speech Radio News, an independent radio newscast aired by the Pacifica Network in the US, and to Panos Institute London, a UK-based organization that promotes communication for development. I am also a correspondent for Bandnews, a Brazilian TV news channel, and a freelance reporter for the Brazilian press, having written for some of the major newspapers in the country.
While living in the UK I collaborated with The Independent and The Sunday Times newspapers, and with the Brazilian section of the BBC World Service. I also researched and assistant-produced documentaries for the English section of the BBC World Service (UK), for CBC – Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CA) and for PBS – Public Broadcasting Service (US), working together with top investigative journalists such as Amnesty International Award winner Stephen Grey and Pulitzer-prize winner Lowell Bergman.
Back in Brazil, I continue to work with the foreign media, trying to establish a better flow of information between South America and Europe/US by fixing, researching, pitching stories, finding experts, and producing a variety of projects. I am also a blogger with the Frontline Club, a UK-based organization that champions independent journalism.
I am currently based in São Paulo, Brazil, the biggest city in South America. I can speak fluent English, Spanish and Portuguese. My CV and some samples of my work in English are listed below.
TV documentaries
March 30, 2009
An investigation into international bribery led by one of the world’s top investigative journalists, Lowell Bergman. Bergman and his team followed the trail of corrupt international deals from the US to UK and even Nigeria to reveal shocking details of bribe scandals such as the UK-Saudi Arabia Al Yammamah arms deal. I was a field producer for the PBS team in London.
This investigative documentary looks into the Anthrax-laced letters mailed in the US after 9/11 as a starting point to uncover an unsuspected growth in the germ weapons threat worldwide. Transfomer Films reporter Bob Coen also got a rare interview with “Dr. Death” Wouter Basson, who headed Project Coast, the South African apartheid-era bio-warfare program. I was a London-based assistant producer for the film.
Print/Online
March 29, 2009
The footprint of the UN Climate Conference in Poznan
Feature produced for the Climate Chamge Media Partnership website. The CCMP took 40 journalists from developing nations to cover the UN Climate Change conference in Poznan, Poland, last December. This article discusses the ecological footprint that the massive conference has left behind, and the offsetting programmes the Polish government aims to adopt to neutralize it.
Brazil’s deadly land wars puts indigenous leaders in firing line
I wrote this article for the Independent after the murder of an indigenous leader in Mato Grosso. Ortiz Lopes was a respected leader of the Guarani-Kaiowa community, which was expelled from their traditional land in the 1970s. Forced to live in a small area, the Guarani-Kaiowas have some of the highest rates of violence and suicide amongst the indigenous peoples. Lopez was known for his efforts to reclaim their traditional territory.
Flight logs reveal secret rendition
This article was the result of a one-month investigation that established for the first time which military flights to Guantánamo crossed Europe carrying passengers – and which passengers were on each flight. I assisted Stephen Grey by researching, contacting people, checking and cross-referencing data. Complete tables with extra info about the Guantánamo prisoners can be seen at Stephen’s website: http://www.ghostplane.net/
Brazil’s media agenda: whose news is it anyway?
This opinion piece analyses the consequences of adopting international news agencies as the sole providers of foreign news to the majority of news services in Brazil. It also covers other issues such as the death of the foreign correspondent; the lack of a Brazilian approach to international news coverage; and the public interest.
Flooding: a tale of rich and poor worlds
I wrote this feature while I was an intern at Panos Institute; it compares mitigation efforts in Mozambique and the UK, both deeply affected by floods in 2006. Contrary to the expected, the view of experts is that Mozambique has made enormous progress since then, while the UK’s response was taking longer to materialize.
Feature published at the London-based magazine Jungle Drums about the future of the Brazilian Amazon. While scientists were still discussing the effectiveness of climate models and the reality of climate change, businessmen were trying to figure out a way to make conservation profitable. Kevin Conrad, one of my main sources, ended up playing a crucial part at the Bali Climate Summer by urging the Americans to make up their minds.
4 thinking minds – playing in the jungle
Article about the work of David Reeks and Renata Meirelles, researchers of traditional games and toys who have carried out a pioneer research about children’s culture in the Brazilian Amazon over the past 8 years. Just recently, Renata’s first book – about the same subject – was awarded the biggest literary prize in Brazil, Prêmio Jabuti.
A Bolivian military colonel speaks
Interview with the colonel Jaime Cruz Vera in Cochabamba, Bolivia, for the website Narconews Bulletin. Mr. Cruz Vera, commander of the Mobile Patrol Unit that conducted the forced eradication of coca, talked openly about Evo Morales, who at the time was a leader of the coca growers. He also commented on the pressure made by the US Government: “everything you see at this military base is what the Embassy has given us”.
The Brazilian military and human rights in Haiti
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An interview with James Cavallaro, president of the NGO Global Justice Centre, who had investigated allegations of human rights abuses by the Brazil-led UN peacekeeping forces in Haiti. The NGO had released the report Keeping the Peace in Haiti , bringing together for the first time shocking stories of executions, mass arrests without warrants, and other gross violations.
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A feature about Oxi, a new type of drug that had been recently found in the state of Acre. Oxi is a variant of crack obtained by adding kerosene and quicklime to cocaine hydrochloride. It is a popular drug and extremely cheap (a dollar will buy 5 yellowish rocks), and by the time I wrote the article it was rapidly spreading amongst poor youngsters of the outskirst of Acrean cities.
Radio
March 28, 2009
A 10-minute radio piece produced as part of the MA Radio Journalism curriculum. It is a sound-rich edition of a long interview with researchers Renata Meirelles and David Reeks. Half the story is told by the couple in linear narrative form and the other half unfolds via the colorful recordings of children playing in the Amazon.
A 5-minute radio piece about war reporting in which two top war correspondents opened their hearts about the thrills, the glamour and the psychology of reporting in a war environment. I must thank BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen and Frontline Club founder Vaughan Smith for their collaboration to this project – also produced during the MA Radio Journalism at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
A news piece producecd for Free Speech Radio News and the Climate Change Media Partinership during the 14 UN Climate Conference in Poznan, Poland. IPCC scientists urged world leaders to adopt tougher reduction targets and accuses them of not understanding the severity of the situation.
Indigenoug peoples feel left out
A radio feature produced for Free Speech Radio News and the Climate Change Media Partinership during the 14 UN Climate Conference in Poznan, Poland. Indigenous movements demand the creation of an Expert Group on Indigenous Peoples within the UN climate forum to ensure that their rights are taken into account in the climate change debates.
Saint Agnes rasta colony forever changed
A news piece for Free Speech Radio News about the melancholic closure of the case against the St Agnes Rastafari Centre. One year after the longest-living Rastafari centre in Europe had been demolished amid accusations that it had become a crack den, all the Rastas accused were acquitted, and the trial had collapsed in confusion. A story largely unnoticed by the UK media.
Tibetans in India Speak Out Against Chinese Detentions
I produced this radio feature in Dharamsala, northern India, where the Dalai Lama is based. The town is home to thousands of Tibetan refugees, and another 2,000 arrive every year after crossing the frozen paths of the Himalayas in search of a better life away from the Chinese rule. Many of them are children, like the 16-year-old boy interviewed, who developed a bad case of frost bite after crossing the mountains with his younger brother.
A headline about the worst natural disaster in 20 years to hit the National Park of Chapada Diamantina, in the state of Bahia, Brazil. A fore possibly started by ranchers clearing land for pasture destroyed over 50% of the vegetation of the park. Chapada Diamantina is a main touristic destination in the Northeast of Brazil.
Iraqi refugees on hunger strike
A headline about a group of Iraqi refugees who went on a hunger strike at the Campsfield House detention centre. They were protesting the UK policy of deporting failed asylum seekers to Iraq. Many of them declared they would rather die than go back to their war-torn country. More than 200 Iraqi asylum seekers have been removed from the UK in 2008.
Ghana woman dies after UK deportation
Headline. Ama Sumani, a student from Ghana, died after being forcefully removed from the UK despite a general outcry by human rights groups. Sumani was gravely ill with cancer and was being treated at a Cardiff hospital before being sent back to Ghana. Different to the UK, medicine and treatment are not free in the African country.
Book
March 27, 2009
The idea for the book Plantados no Chão (Planted in the Earth) was simple: me and the editors at Conrad Editora wanted to publish a list of all the social and union leaders who were killed during the government of Luís Inácio Lula da Silva. Soon after the first inquiries, we had uncovered over 180 cases. But we also ended up finding that such stories are widely unreported, and nobody had ever looked into this problem with consistency. Plantados no Chão (Planted in the Earth) is the first book to discuss this grave issue. A good excerpt from the book was translated into English, so that international organizations could be informed of the situation. The press release was also translated to English – and can be found below.
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To view an excerpt of the book in English, click here.
To download the full book (in Portuguese), click here.….
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Planted in the Earth – press release
March 26, 2009
Planted in the Earth
Book denounces current-day political assassinations in Brazil
Jair Antônio da Costa, Anderson Amaurílio, Iraguiar Ferreira da Silva, Josenilson José dos Santos, Anderson Luís and Dorothy Stang did not know one another, but they remain forever linked by a shared destiny. Their names are part of a long list of victims of a modality of violence considered extinct in Brazil since the end of the last dictatorship: political assassination.
If political assassination was once a form of State-sponsored terrorism, the situation today is rather more complex, involving militants from social movements who clash head-on with private interests (often those of large corporations, landowners or even members of the state apparatus), whose protectors decide to silence the legitimate struggle for social rights with their own hands or with the support of corrupt sectors of the Government, sometimes even the police or Judiciary.
The journalist Natalia Viana selected six cases that, when viewed from this perspective, could indeed be considered political in nature and which serve to illustrate how the Brazilian State has chosen to handle politically-motivated killings. Three of these cases concern different perspectives and struggles related to the agrarian issue, and all came to the same tragic end: Dorothy Stang, a North-American missionary involved with the Pastoral da Terra (Earth Pastoral) in Pará, who was murdered in an ambush contracted by ranch-owners; Miguel José dos Santos, leader of the Landless Movement at the Terra Prometida encampment in Felisburgo, Minas Gerais, who was killed in a massacre that claimed four other lives and left thirteen wounded - a cruel bloodbath ordered by Adriano Chafik, owner of the Nova Alegria property; Josenilson José dos Santos and José Ademislon Barbosa, Indians of the Xukuru tribe in Pernambuco, both assassinated during a struggle for the demarcation of their homeland.
The other three accounts show that it is not only social movements from the fields that have become targets for this sort of violence. Labour unions and the student movement have their own sad tales of political assassination: Anderson Amaurílio da Silva, a militant of the Passe Livre (free transport) movement, killed during a protest at the Urban Bus Terminal in Londrina; Jair Antônio da Costa, a member of the Igrejinha shoemakers union (a CUT [the Major Central of Unions] affiliate), murdered by police after a protest against a wave of lay-offs decimating the shoe industry of Rio Grande do Sul; Anderson Luís, President of the Cold Meats and Dairy Workers’ Union of Rio de Janeiro and Baixada Fluminense (also a CUT affiliate), both mysteriously killed on their way to work.
Bringing those responsible for the crimes related in Planted in the Earth to justice has been an extremely slow process. When the investigations do actually identify the perpetrator(s) (something increasingly rare in Brazil), the characteristic sluggishness of the justice system helps maintain the impunity. The case of Dorothy Stang is an example. The coverage the crime received in the international press spurred the federal government to unprecedented action. The two gunmen charged with carrying out the crime were swiftly convicted, while the first conviction of one of their contractors was only issued as recently as May 15, 2007 – more than two years after Sister Dorothy’s death.
Unionists, indigenous militants, agrarian reform movement leaders, students from the free transport movement – people fighting for social change that became victims of the inefficiency of the State, whether through omission when it came to protecting those under threat or its incapacity to punish those responsible for their deaths, thus paving the way for further crimes. After all, as the journalist Jan Rocha observes in his preface to the book, “the killing of a leader is not just the elimination of an inconvenient individual, but a blow against hope, against the future”.
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The six episodes Natalia Viana relates in the book are merely the tip of the iceberg. With the collaboration of the journalist Marilise de Oliveira, Natalia compiled a list of almost a hundred cases of political crimes committed in Brazil between 2003 and 2006 – all of which are presented at the end of the book in the form of police records.
The inspiration for the title came from a declaration made by Zenilda Maria Araújo during the funeral of her husband, Chief Chicão, leader of the Xukuru Indians in their struggle for the demarcation of their territory: “Mother Nature, receive your son. He shall not be buried, but planted in your shade, as he would have wished, so that from him other warriors can grow”.
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To view an excerpt of the book in English, click here.
To download the full book (in Portuguese), click here.….
My CV
March 25, 2009
55 11 8902 9077
viana.natalia@gmail.com
Natalia Viana
Born in São Paulo, Brazil, on October 2, 1979.
Education:
2006/07: M.A. Radio at Goldsmiths College, University of London
1997/01: B.A. Journalism at the Pontific Catholic University of S.Paulo
Correspondence in the UK
2007/08: Correspondent in London for:
+ Free Speech Radio News, daily newscast on the Pacifica Network in the US
+ Bandnews TV, 24-hour news TV channel in Brazil
Free-lance work in the UK
2008: Free-lance features writer for
+ BBC Brasil, the Brazilian section of the BBC World Service + Folha Universal, weekly newspaper in São Paulo, Brazil
+ Terra Magazine, monthly national magazine about travel and environmental issues
2008: Free-lance researcher/ assistant producer for
+ Transformer Films (US), on an investigative documentary on bioterrorism commissioned by the CBC
+ PBS Frontline (US), on a documentary led by US investigative journalist Lowell Bergman
+ Stephen Grey, journalist of the Sunday Times (UK), on an investigation about military flights to Guantánamo
2007: Free-lance features writer for
+ Folha de São Paulo (Brazil), the most widely read newspaper in the country
+ O Globo (Brazil), the most widely read newspaper in Rio de Janeiro
Internships in the UK
2007/08: News intern at the Panos Institute London, that promotes communication for development
2007,Jul: Work placement at the foreign desk of the Independent
2007,Jun: Work placement at radio production company Whistledown
2007,May: Work experience at the programme One Planet, of the BBC World Service, producing the radio documentary “Travels of a T-shirt”
Previous employment – Brazil
2006: Author of the book Plantados no Chão, about the murder of social leaders in Brazil, published by Conrad Editora
2002/06: Writer, reporter and assistant editor at Caros Amigos magazine, an influential monthly left-wing publication
2004/06: Correspondent in Brazil for:
+ Free Speech Radio News (US), daily newscast on the Pacifica Network
+ Narconews (US), website about Latin American issues and the war on drugs
+ Global Radio News (UK), the world’s first independent freelance news agency
Awards/Scholarships:
2008: Sponsorship by the Climate Change Media Partnership to attend and cover the UNFCCC Conference in Poznan, Poland, for Brazilian news channel Bandnews TV (1-12 December)
2007: Sponsorship by the CIJ – Centre for Investigative Journalism at City University to attend their Summer School
2006: Chevening Scholarship, by the British Council, for the MA Radio at Goldsmiths College
2006: Andifes Award of Journalism, by the Union of University Directors, for an investigation about higher education
2005: Honourable mention at the Vladimir Herzog Award for Human Rights, by the Journalists’ Union of São Paulo, for an undercover investigation about unemployment in S. Paulo
2004: Scholarship by the Fund for Investigative Journalism for a 10-day course in Cochabamba, Bolivia, within the School of Authentic Journalism
Languages:
Fluent English
Fluent Spanish
Portuguese – mother tongue
