Brazil’s Road To Truth And Justice

The creation in Brazil of a Truth Commission to investigate crimes committed from 1946 to 1988 opens the possibility of learning what happened to hundreds of forcibly “disappeared” persons during the country’s recent past. The findings of the commission, which are to be released two years from now, will allow their families not only to know the fate of their loved ones but also to bring closure to their lives.

Even though the commission’s mandate is to investigate crimes committed by military regimes during their ruling from 1964 to 1985, it also includes an investigation of the crimes perpetrated before and after the military dictatorship. It is estimated that between 1964 and 1985, 475 people were forcibly disappeared, 50,000 imprisoned and 20,000 were tortured.

A 1979 Amnesty Law passed when the military were in power protected those accused of torture and other criminal acts from facing prosecution for their crimes. According to Jarbas Passarinho, a former army colonel, senator and justice minister during the dictatorship, the amnesty’s intention was to leave the past behind. “When we made the amnesty and I was the leader for President Figueiredo, our idea was to forget – it was not a pardon,” he told the BBC.

Despite Passarinho’s assertion, however, the amnesty law hindered any attempts to bring to justice those accused of human rights abuses. The creation of the Truth Commission doesn’t circumvent that law, something that had provoked concern among the military. The amnesty law authorized the release of political prisoners, the return of exiled opponents, and gave amnesty for all political crimes and “connected crimes,” interpreted as torture.

The enactment of the 1979 Amnesty Law has been severely criticized by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In 2010 that court condemned Brazil, declared that the law was invalid and incompatible with the American Convention on Human Rights -to which Brazil is a signatory- and urged the Brazilian government to provide the victims the right to memory, as well the right to justice and to reparations.

In 2009, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva tried to create a truth commission in the country. He desisted of doing so, however, when the heads of the army, navy and air force plus the defense minister threatened to resign.

Following President Dilma Rousseff’s decision to create a Truth Commission, the Clube Militar, the association of retired members of the military, has been sharply critical of the commission. It claims that the commission will not be impartial and that it will try to rewrite history.

The military’s fears were increased when Maria do Rosario Nunes, Minister of Human Rights, declared that in the future the military could be brought to justice to answer for the torture, disappearances and killings that took place in Brazil in the 60s and 70s.

President Rousseff wasn’t swayed by pressure from the military and gave official sanction to the Truth Commission. “Learning the truth will be essential to later generations in ensuring that this stain in our country’s history will never occur again,” she said. Although the commission’s mandate doesn’t allow that its findings be used for prosecution, they could still create the political will necessary for those abuses to later be brought to justice.

“There is a need to prosecute the perpetrators of grave violations of human rights as well as establish a truth commission, because both work in different ways. A Truth Commission is focused on the institutions’ responsibility to explain to the whole country what happened, and how to move forward. The criminal process, on the other hand, focuses on the individual’s responsibility,” said Marlon Weichert, a prominent Brazilian human rights advocate, in an interview with the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ).

The trials and imprisonment in Argentina, Chile and Peru (among other countries) of former military and civilian leaders responsible for human rights violations show that it is possible to try those accused in a democratic environment. The decision by President Dilma Rousseff, although an important step towards truth-seeking, should be followed by actions aimed at ending impunity by those guilty of human rights abuses. Only when that happens will Brazil bring truth with justice.

Dr. Cesar Chelala is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award for “Missing or Dead in Argentina: The Desperate Search for Thousands of Abducted Victims.”