Brazilian comedian has been sentenced to more than eight years in prison for telling offensive jokes.

Léo Lins was found guilty of inciting intolerance with a 2022 stand-up routine that made fun of black people, indigenous people, fat people, gay people, Jews, evangelicals, disabled people and those with HIV.

During the performance, which was uploaded to YouTube and has more than three million views, Lins told a 4,000-strong crowd in Curitiba, in southern Brazil: “Prejudice, to me, is a primitive thing that shouldn’t exist anymore. Just like indigenous people. Enough already.”

Wearing a bright red shirt and yellow trousers, he warned the audience that he “jokes about everything and everyone”.

‘I hired interpreter so I could offend the deaf’

He told them: “What show could be more inclusive? I even hired a sign language interpreter just to be able to offend the deaf-mute.”

However, a judge in the São Paulo state criminal court last week found that his act amounted to “practising” or “inciting” racism and religious intolerance, as well as being discriminatory towards disabled people.

His legal team has described the sentence as a threat to freedom of speech and an attempt to “criminalise comedy”. 

In addition to the prison sentence, Lin he has been ordered to pay a fine of 300,000 reais (£40,000) in collective moral damages.

Brazil has had anti-hate speech laws on the books for years but has only recently begun to aggressively enforce them.

Lins’s conviction has been criticised by sections of Brazilian society, including journalists, free speech advocates, conservative politicians and other comedians.

But others have defended the decision to jail him. Fábio de Sá Cesnik, a lawyer with the Brazilian law firm CQS/F, told the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper that there must be some limits on free speech.

“Harming the dignity of someone else is equally important,” he said.