Leonardo Sakamoto is a renowned and committed human rights journalist and defender, director of the NGO Repórter Brasil, a leading Brazilian NGO to combat forced labour. Sakamoto is also a journalism professor at PUC-SP (Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo), a visiting scholar in the Department of Politics at the New School in New York, and adviser to the United Nations Voluntary Trust Fund on Contemporary Forms of Slavery. Unfortunately, again, Sakamoto claims that he suffered defamation from a printed local newspaper in Minas Gerais. The defamation contributed to increasing the number of agression and death threats the activist has been receiving. The newspaper claimed to have interviewed Sakamoto and published the piece on its front page.  Later, the paper acknowledged that the journalist had not given such interview and claimed that someone pretending to be Sakamoto’s assistant responded to the interview. But, as stated by Sakamoto, the newspaper never contacted him to check any information before putting it on the cover.

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