Twitter Files Reporters And Congressman Persecuted In Brazil Win 2026 Westminster Free Speech Courage Award
August 3, 2026
In the Hollywood version of courage, the hero is unafraid; he can thus act without hesitation. But a person who is unafraid cannot be considered courageous. They have no need to be courageous. In real life, courageous people are frightened. They hesitate. They calculate the risks and act not because they are fearless, but because they believe in a cause greater than themselves.
Such is the case with the 2026 Westminster Free Speech Prize winners. All three are Brazilian: Congressman Marcel Van Hattem and investigative journalists Eli Vieira and David Ágape. You can see me interview the three of them in the video above, after giving them the award, which comes with $25,000, in London in June.
The three men are among the most important advocates of free speech in the world, not just in Brazil, and have paid a heavy price for their courage, namely the threat of prison.
The Supreme Court of Brazil has targeted all three of them for persecution. “The three of us here were subject to persecution by a government that uses the judicial branch to interfere in the political arena, in the journalistic world, in the academy, and wherever else, you name it,” said Van Hattem, “to maintain its agenda.”
Van Hattem, 40, faces the risk of prosecution and incarceration, even though the Brazilian Constitution guarantees members of Congress additional free speech protections. “I gave a speech on the parliament’s floor about Filipe Martins, who was unjustly imprisoned based on false information,” he explained. “After going to the house floor and talking about this case, and denouncing the federal police agent of Lula’s government… the federal police started an investigation against me and indicted me.”
Vieira and Ágape were forced to flee Brazil. “They threw the book at us,” explained Vieira, 39, “because we showed [Supreme Court Justice] Alexandre de Moraes was keeping people in prison for their opinions on social media… He’s a pseudointellectual who tried to use JS Mill to justify banning Twitter for 40 days in Brazil, as well as Rumble, the video platform.”
Van Hattem is openly defying the police. “They summoned me,” he said. “I said, ‘I’m not going. I have parliamentary immunity.’ By the way, it’s nice to receive this award in England where, for the first time in history, parliamentary immunity was put down in words in the Bill of Rights 1689.
“This is not to protect us; it is to protect those we represent. People who expect in a democracy that we are free to speak, free to talk about our ideas, to give our opinions, and if we are to be somehow punished by what we say, then we don’t get reelected.”
Ágape and Vieira did groundbreaking reporting for the Twitter Files - Brazil, and subsequent investigations into censorship in general and Supreme Court abuses of power in particular. You can read their important contributions here,here, here, and here. Since then, the Supreme Court has sought to prosecute them, unconstitutionally, for their investigative reporting.
Moraes has been repeatedly caught issuing secret orders to censor, prosecute, and persecute his enemies. Ágape, 38, says that’s the case for him. “Our work shows that Justice Moraes has secret orders against journalists, against politicians. I can’t go back to Brazil. They dismissed the action against us, but we know that there are secret orders.”
“I don’t have another option than to tell my people the truth of what’s going on,” said Ágape. “I always think of the old woman [protester] crying and praying for God in prison, and that I had the information that could help her. I don’t feel brave. I just had a duty and did my work.”
Van Hattem was a national free speech leader before the Twitter Files - Brazil, which documented his own censorship at the hand of the Brazilian Supreme Court. Van Hattem then joined me to travel Brazil to speak on the illegality and immorality of the censorship efforts led by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Since then, the Supreme Court has sought his prosecution.
Now, there is a global backlash against Moraes, and Van Hattem is ahead in the polls and poised to be elected Senator later this year.
“Our movement is growing bigger,” said Van Hattem, “and that is what makes them afraid of us. They see they cannot convince us with argument. They cannot win us with their speech and their ideas, which are not good. That’s why they have to resort to force and violence.”
The Trump administration has granted Ágape a visa so he can stay in the U.S., and, in doing so, affirmed the validity of journalists independent of the legacy news media. “I managed to have a journalist visa in the US,” he said. “We achieved a miracle because my sponsor in the US is my website.”
Said Viera, “Interpol has stopped collaborating with Moraes, and I can’t wait for to see Marcel vote for [Moraes’] impeachment when he’s there in the Senate.”
The number of prizes awarded by the Westminster Free Speech Forum, founded to advocate for the principles set out in the Westminster Free Speech Declaration, will vary each year. This is the first year. We are grateful to Jay Snider, Craig Snider, and Ben Delo for making the award possible.
We welcome nominations of future award winners. We encourage people to email Award@WestminsterDeclaration.org and include a short message explaining why they should win the prize, along with links to key materials.
We hope the prize will draw more attention to the Brazilian government’s illegal and unconstitutional censorship of investigative journalists, politicians, and citizens.
We give the prize in gratitude and solidarity, and intend to keep a close eye on the government’s illegal persecution of the recipients as they continue to embody real-world courage.
