RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil restored democracy in 1985 without settling accounts with history and the memory of the victims of a military regime that spanned 21 years. Unlike countries like Argentina or Chile, which took their executioners to the dock before turning the page, the country was content with the Amnesty Law, signed in 1979 by General João Batista Figueiredo.
The law ‘pardoned’ leftist militants as well as military men accused of crimes. In 2002, during the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PSDB), another small victory for those who suffered military abuses was creating the political amnesty system.
The system compensates victims of persecution and torture by the state during the military dictatorship. Ex-president Dilma Rousseff is among those who claim this benefit today, after spending two years under torture in prison during the military regime.
But after almost 20 years reparation benefits for memory are under threat. There has been a large drop in amnesty requests and a tightening of the rules for applying for the benefit during the Jair Bolsonaro administration. Only 10% of the requests made so far have been granted. The drop in approvals began during the Michel Temer (MDB) administration when 13% of the requests were approved.
Political amnesty is granted to people who suffered persecution by agencies or individuals linked to the Brazilian State between 1946 and 1988. Most of those recognized for amnesty were the target of persecution during the dictatorship between 1964 and 1985.
“Since the Temer administration, the Brazilian state no longer even asks for forgiveness from those who the Amnesty Commission understands must receive reparation,” says Eneá Stutz e Almeida, a law professor at the University of Brasília (UnB), an adviser to the commission between 2009 and 2018.
The apology was an important symbolic gesture, in which, after thoroughly analyzing the processes in which the applicants requested amnesty and assessing that the request was fair, the members of the Amnesty Commission’s Council would announce: “On behalf of the Brazilian State we ask for forgiveness.”
Since 2016, some council members have begun to insult those requesting recognition that the dictatorship persecuted them, says researcher Stutz and Almeida. Other witnesses back up the statement. “In one of the sessions, a military councilor said that the amnestied were terrorists. I rebelled and said that the military were perverts because they had the pleasure of shocking the testicles or the nipples of prisoners, as they did to my father,” says Rosa Cimiana, who today, at 61 years old, is a civil servant.
Rosa’s father, Arthur Pereira da Silva, was a railroad union leader and a member of the Communist Party in Rio Grande do Sul. These were enough credentials in those years to have his 23 years of labor rights revoked. He was arrested in 1964, along with ten other comrades. Some lost their political rights.
When he was released, Silva went underground because he was still being persecuted. He even sent his children temporarily to Argentina to pretend he had left the country, but he moved with his wife to Goiânia and then to Brasília.
In 1979 when Rosa, then 20 years old, had the joy of witnessing the first step for her father’s memory to be recognized. In October of that year, with the help of then deputy Ulysses Guimarães (MDB), she managed to enter the Chamber of Deputies for the first time to attend the session that approved the Amnesty Law.
Since then, she became a militant of the cause and witnessed all the moves that followed regarding the families harmed by the military regime. She lived the joy when in 2003, her father was officially amnestied – 21 years after his death. He also watched when the Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff governments (both from the PT) recognized 40,548 people as politically persecuted – about 62% of the amnesty requests submitted were approved in the period.
Now, the former army captain’s government is making great strides in its attempt to rewrite history and deny the existence of a dictatorship that used political persecution and torture. However, many are still fighting to have family members who died in that period recognized as victims of the state.
As reported by government interlocutors, the goal is to extinguish, by the end of 2022, the Amnesty Commission, which is the collegiate body responsible for analyzing the documentation of all requests for historical reparations made by the politically persecuted. “It is historical revisionism that can’t occur. But we couldn’t expect anything different from someone who has defended torturers of the military dictatorship in public speeches,” pondered Diva Santana, from the Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais (Torture never again)
The first steps have already been taken. Initially, Bolsonaro removed the commission from the Ministry of Justice and transferred it later in 2019 to the Ministry of Women, Family, and Human Rights.
Thus, he left it under the command of the representative of the government’s ideological wing, the pastor and attorney Damares Alves. This commission has an advisory nature, and the final decision on who should receive financial reparations or not is up to the minister.
As one of her first acts, Damares decided that among the 27 members of the commission, seven would be military or have some direct link to the Bolsonaro family. Among them, the current president of the commission, attorney João Henrique Nascimento de Freitas, advised Flávio Bolsonaro (Republicanos-RJ) when he was a state deputy in Rio and is currently deputy chief advisor in the office of Vice President Hamilton Mourão (PRTB). He has also worked as a lawyer for President Bolsonaro.
In his independent work with the Bolsonaro family, Freitas was the author of controversial requests involving amnesties. He was the one who requested and obtained, through a class action, the suspension of the payment of the pension to the widow of the leftist guerrilla and anti-regime military fighter Carlos Lamarca (1937-1971), as well as the veto of the reparations given to 44 peasants who were tortured during the Araguaia Guerrilla War (1967-1974). When contacted by the reporter, he did not comment. Neither did the ministry, despite having requested more time to gather the requested data.
“At no time does the current commission admit that there was a dictatorship. In the previous compositions, it was not like that. There was divergence among the councilors, but even those who were military recognized the regime of exception,” said Professor Stutz e Almeida, who on March 31 released her book “Justiça de Transição e Democracia” (Transitional Justice and Democracy), a work that also deals with the amnesty.
Since the beginning of the Bolsonaro administration, Minister Damares Alves has signed 3,572 ordinances dealing with amnesty recipients. She has dismissed the request of 2,402 (65%) applicants, granted 363 (1.3%), and annulled 807 (33%) amnesties that had already been granted in other governments. The annulments are what worry activists the most.
Several of those affected by it are elderly, over 75 years old, who often have as their main source and income the monthly payments they receive from the federal government – the amounts are quite varied. The report identified payments of between R$135 and R$22,000.
“We live in a moment of loss of rights. First were the labor rights, then the social security ones, now not even memory is respected,” says attorney Humberto Falrene, who acts in cases involving amnesty recipients.
Source: El Pais