“I condemn the killing of Renato Machado Gonçalves,” the Director-General said. “I invite the authorities to investigate this crime and bring the culprits to justice. Providing media workers with a reasonably safe working environment, in which crimes against journalists do not go unpunished is indispensable for sustaining independent and pluralistic media.”

            Renato Machado Gonçalves was killed on the evening of 08 January. He was shot four times near the building of Radio Barra FM where he also lived in the city of São João da Barra.

            Gonçalves is remembered on UNESCO’s dedicated page UNESCO Condemns the Killing of Journalists alongside the five journalists who were killed in Brazil in 2012.

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            Media contact: Sylvie Coudray, s.coudray(at)unesco.org,  +33 (0)1 45 68 42 12

UNESCO is the United Nations agency with a mandate to defend freedom of expression and press freedom. Article 1 of its Constitution requires the Organization to “further universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms which are affirmed for the peoples of the world, without distinction of race, sex, language or religion, by the Charter of the United Nations.” To realize this the Organization is requested to “collaborate in the work of advancing the mutual knowledge and understanding of peoples, through all means of mass communication and to that end recommend such international agreements as may be necessary to promote the free flow of ideas by word and