Justice in Brazil again imposed a Telegram ban

The judiciary in Brazil has temporarily blocked the Telegram news app nationwide. The agency has not handed over all data of members of neo-Nazi groups to the Brazilian Federal Police, as ordered by the court, the news portal “G1” quoted the reasoning of the federal court in the state of Espírito Santo (local time) late Wednesday night.

The federal police is therefore investigating members of chat groups who would have called for violence in schools via Telegram. In March 2022, Brazil’s judiciary had already blocked Telegram nationwide for about two days, at the time because the online network and the carrier had violated previous court rulings. Telegram’s renewed block was already noticeable on Wednesday evening, “G1” further reported.

In the largest country in Latin America, there have been a number of fatal incidents in schools and kindergartens in recent months. In early April, a 25-year-old armed with an ax broke into a nursery in Blumenau, southern Brazil, and killed four children. At the end of March, a 13-year-old attacked several teachers and a student with a knife in a school in the metropolitan São Paulo. A 71-year-old teacher was seriously injured and later died. And in November 2022, a gunman opened fire on two schools in the city of Aracruz, Espírito Santo, killing three people.

After the Blumenau incident, the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced that it would release funds to expand police academy patrols across Brazil. A working group for preventing and combating violence in schools met for the first time. (aeg/sda/dpa)