Brazil’s Defense Minister claims there was no dictatorship when military ruled country

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – “No, I do not think there was a dictatorship,” Braga Netto said in his testimony to a joint hearing of three Chamber of Deputies committees.

“There was a strong regime, with excess on both sides, but this must be looked at within the historical context, with the Cold War and everything else. Not to bring something from the past to the present day. If there had been a dictatorship, maybe many people would not be here. Executions, dictatorship, as one of the deputies said, happen in other countries,” the Minister said.

This  Military-intensive period in Brazil began with a military coup in 1964 that overthrew the country’s constitutional president João Goulart.

Throughout the 21 years of the military government, the population was deprived of a number of rights, among them the direct choice of the president.

Politicians had their mandates arbitrarily revoked, regime opponents were tortured, Congress was closed at three different times, and the press was censored. Opponents of the regime were not only killed, but also disappeared.

At the peak of this period, during the term of Institutional Act number 5, AI-5, even the granting of habeas corpus to those accused of crimes against national security was banned, thereby transferring to the Military Court system the jurisdiction to judge political crimes.

On the other side, in reaction to this regime, several leftist groups joined the armed struggle, conducting a number of operations and even an attempt at rural guerrilla warfare in the north of Brazil.

Among the most famous operations against the dictatorship is the 1969 kidnapping of the then U.S. ambassador to Brazil Charles Burke Elbrick, whose ransom consisted in the release of political prisoners.

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