It's About Time

Larry Rohter writes about human rights NGO's in Brazil and the pressure they are putting on the nation through the courts and by keeping the issue in the public eye to reverse the amnesty the congress - then as part of a government under control of the military - gave for “crimes related to politics or committed with a political motivation,” but which largely benefited the military at least in terms of sheer numbers of prosecutions avoided.

As Rohter notes, compared to Argentina's and Chile's military dictatorships, the number of disappearances and extra-judicial executions was significantly less, however, torture was widespread and institutionalized. Indeed the most authoritative work on the subject, Torture in Brazil, was written based on the documents obtained from the military dictatorship through a surreptitious, yet legitimate effort to obtain these records, the excellent account of which can be found in this fascinating book.

Addressing the past has been woefully inadequate in Brazil and Lula, I might add, has been an abject failure in this regard. The results of this malignant neglect appears to be the tacit if not implicit acceptance of torture as an interrogation/disciplinary tool. If torturers from the recent past face no consequences for their acts, (the bare minimum of which should be the acknowledgment in some detail asto the nature of their acts and the identities of their victims) one can only imagine the message that sends to those in the police who are poorly trained and poorly paid.

If Lula were to step up and provide some leadership on this issue, this could be one of his greatest legacies. I hold little hope for this happening as Jose Miguel Vivanco, the head of the Americas program for Human Rights Watch notes in the article.

Acknowledgment of the past can only have a salutary effect upon Brazil:

“As commander, he not only knew what was going on, but personally tortured me when I was seven months pregnant,” said Ms. Schmidt de Almeida, a former guerrilla. “He used electricity to shock me not on the anus, mouth and genitals, which was the standard practice then, but on the hands and feet, and he beat me about the head.

“It’s not just me, but Brazilian society as a whole that is living with the consequences of that repression,” she added. “It’s a difficult thing to confront, but there have been important advances in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, and for our own well-being, we need to resolve this issue, too.”

Boy, do I agree with every word of that.