TIME UP FOR TORTURERS? A Human Rights Dilemma for Brazil
Dassin, Joan
In December 1985 Argentina's courts handed down sentences in the "dirty war" trials. While four out of nine former junta members were ac- quitted-at least this time around-- former president Gen....
...In the final analysis, the Federal Police still answer to the military, not to the civilian justice minister...
...Formidable Indignation" While the 1979 amnesty law holds, and as long as there is no change in how it is interpreted, there is little chance that military personnel will be removed from important posts that many still hold in the armed forces, the intelligence services, the diplomatic corps, the Federal Police and state enterprises...
...The affair was widely hailed as a "historic decision''--the first time an accused torturer had suffered harm to his career...
...The remaining 210 were military men of diverse ranks during the period under study...
...Despite the publicity, nothing much has changed...
...During the military regimes of 1976-1982, there were 9,000 documented disappearances, and some 20,000 people are estimated to have been killed...
...Lyra, who had appointed Xavier at Araripe's suggestion, at first said the terms of the 1979 amnesty prevented him from doing anything, even though the Federal Police nominally fall under the control of the Ministry of Justice...
...These constitute the complete Jimmy Carter visits Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns Dr...
...The final results, however, were ironic...
...If they are correct in their basic assertion that democracy cannot coexist with an arm of the state that is beyond society's control, then Brazil still has a long way to go before it can claim that democracy has truly been established...
...Nonetheless, now that a civilian government has taken over after ten years of gradual liberalization, Brazil has seen considerable debate over how the "New Republic" will restore human rights guarantees...
...Though many other accounts of torture and repression in Brazil have been published, both in the country and abroad, none has drawn on such extensive "inside" documentation...
...But torture centers in police stations, where common criminals and suspects are routinely tortured, continue to function throughout Brazil...
...In her January 1 inauguration speech, the city's new Workers' Party (PT) mayor, Maria Luiza Fontenelle, had denounced Xavier's past record before 30,000 people and called for a mass movement to prevent the police chief from assuming his post...
...But as political scientist Paulo Sdrgio Pinheiro brilliantly argued in an article last November in the newspaper Folha de Sdo Paulo, that outcome may be less disturbing than the parallel situation of civilian police torturers named on the list...
...Typical of Wright's position was his support for a public call by Thomas Hammarberg, Secretary General of Amnesty International, for investigations into imprisonments, torture and disappearances during the Brazilian military regime...
...The most important figure named was General Octdvio de Aguiar Medeiros, chief of the National Intelligence Service (SNI) during the 1979-1985 administration of Gen...
...The researchers on the Brasil: Nunca Mais project recognized that this material would provide a chance to prove, with unprecedented authority, that security agents had committed human rights violations in political investigations...
...Indeed, the military-civilian pact not to investigate the pre-1979 period appears unshakeable...
...While noting his support of Hammarberg's views, Wright added that since the current amnesty law prevents such investigations, it should be changed by the constituent assembly that is scheduled for 1987...
...REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 4proceedings of 707 political trials and dozens of additional fragments...
...Ustra was not recalled immediately from Montevideo...
...However, it seems unlikely that the amnesty law will be revised or interpreted differently...
...The official position is that both terrorists and those accused of human rights violations should be reintegrated into society, and that the amnesty law has helped in this, creating social and political stability and making possible the advent of democracy...
...Hermann Baeta, president of the Brazilian Bar Association, has made a slightly different case...
...The victims of the repression were far fewer, and when the military left office in March 1985 after 21 years in power, there was no stain on its record comparable to the Argentine military's disastrous conduct of the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas War...
...So far, the category of "connected crimes" has been interpreted to include human rights abuses under military rule...
...He was also strengthened by the fact that he was slated to lose his cabinet post in a major reorganization planned for mid-February...
...Civilian politicians from various parties had agreed with the military not to reopen the human rights question, either during the transition period from 1979-1985 or even after the installation of a civilian government...
...Joan Dassin studies politics and culture in contemporary Brazil...
...The delay was designed to forestall criticism that the project organizers were seeking to destabilize the political process...
...As in Argentina, the human rights question in Brazil remains unresolved...
...it remained on the bestseller list for months, and was heralded as a "major event" of 1985 by the Brazilian news magazine Afinal...
...In September 1985, President Sarney did add Brazil to the list of signatories of the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment...
...The matter is far from closed, since many appeals are expected and further trials may yet be held of other officers who commanded the "dirty war...
...But as a conciliatory gesture the government has invited military officials to join a special commission charged with preparing the chapter on "National Defense and Democratic Order" in the new constitution...
...This has become the standard account of the Brazilian transition...
...In Brazil, there have been no trials of former military leaders...
...Jorge Videla and Admiral Emilio Massera received life imprisonment...
...The special security units set up by the military after 1968 and responsible for carrying out political torture have closed down because there are no more political dissidents...
...A Million Pages of Records The book presents the strongest evidence ever gathered that torture was an essential part of the Brazilian military system...
...Whatever the outcome, the trials are as unprecedented in Latin America as the degree of official brutality...
...Nor were the armed groups ever accused of torturing their opponents...
...Originally planned as an appendix to the book, the list was only made public four months after publication, immediately following the November 1985 municipal elections...
...It is true that new draft legislation to replace the national security law-to be debated in the Brazilian Congress this March-limits the jurisdiction of the military courts and specifically designates the torture of prisoners and the disappearance of detainees as crimes...
...According to Pinheiro, all evidence suggests that the military torturers are no longer involved in torture...
...Most importantly, fears of a crackdown have not been laid to rest, and civilian leaders have been hesitant to speak out clearly on the military question...
...The court records also furnish valuable information about how the military justice system worked, the identity of defendants and the activities that were considered political crimes...
...Brazil's Army Minister defended Ustra, however, and the government quickly closed the matter by declaring that the 1979 amnesty law precluded further investigation...
...Early in his tenure as justice minister, in fact, Lyra had tried to have Tuma dismissed from his SLo Paulo post at the request of then-Governor Franco Montoro and the Sdio Paulo PMDB--precisely because they objected to Tuma's ties to the militarycontrolled intelligence community...
...Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra...
...Baeta argues that the amnesty law does not preclude the investigation of abduction and torture because only the courts can decide if the torture of prisoners and the disappearance of detainees are offenses "connected" to political crimes...
...Sarney apparently took the step in response to an appeal from Cardinal Arns, in his preface to Brasil: Nunca Mais, that Brazil sign the treaty...
...At stake in the final analysis is the role the military will play in the "New Republic"'-perhaps the key question affecting the prospects for Brazilian democracy...
...They hold key posts in the cabinet and the National Security Council, control the intelligence services and are able to affect policy decisions on crucial issues such as labor unrest and land reform...
...Of the 444 torturers named, 234 were members of the civilian police--chiefs, investigators, Federal Police agents, prison guards, scribes, commissioners, doctors and inspectors...
...Federal Police Chief Araripe was left with no option but to resign...
...Not a single candidate for the constituent assembly, for example, has praised the decision or discussed its consequences...
...Not only was Lyra unsuccessful at that time, but he now leaves the government with Tuma as national head of the Federal Police...
...As Sio Paulo police chief, Tuma won praise for his careful police work in the recent Josef Mengele case, but his connections -REPORT ON THE AMERICAS with the National Intelligence Service are also well known...
...There is also a widespread, implicit acceptance that both sides committed "equivalent excesses," though it could hardly be said that the guerrilla groups once active in Brazil justified the sophisticated repressive apparatus that went after active dissidents and political suspects, who in many cases were innocent of any illegal activity...
...Jodo Baptista Figueiredo, and currently the military commander of the Amaz6nia region...
...Perhaps the biggest question is whether those responsible for the repression that occurred under military rule between 1964-1979 will be held accountable...
...So far little has been done...
...Although they may never be prosecuted for crimes committed before 1979, should they remain in important positions...
...The furor over Brasil: Nunca Mais, however, indicates that the matter is not so easily resolved...
...Pinheiro has been virtually alone in publicly insisting that all the "formidable indignation" felt against the torturers of the dictatorship should now be transferred to those who continue the practice, even in the "New Republic...
...One of these was Col...
...The civilian police who had been involved in state repression are still at it, sometimes as police chiefs...
...Wright has taken on the public role of project coordinator, and has managed a masterful press campaign downplaying aspects of Brasil: Nunca Mais that the book's critics have called "acts of revenge...
...Within ten weeks, over 100,000 copies had been sold...
...Even so, the copying and subsequent analysis of the materials, which took nearly six years from 1979-1985, was done in almost complete secrecy...
...One reason is that it raises the immediate problem of what should happen to the torturers who played a key part in the repressive machinery *An English version under the title Torture in Brazil will be published by Random House in August...
...Nothing Much Has Changed The only real action against a suspected torturer came in January of this year...
...In Uruguay, the outgoing military publicly announced that they would destroy incriminating archives before President Julio Sanguinetti took office...
...The two had disagreed over whether Joio Batista Xavier, named as a torturer on the Brasil: Nunca Mais list, should take office as the new police superintendent in the northeastern city of Fortaleza...
...While the majority of the military men on the list had passed into the reserves in 1984, at least 24 were still on active duty...
...In both countries, it is intimately connected to the fundamental issue of how the military should function in the new democracy...
...She is the Staff Associate to the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies at the Social Science Research Council...
...444 Torturers Named The real sticking point, though, is what should happen to those torturers who are still active in public service...
...Araripe's replacement, meanwhile, is Romeu Tuma...
...The records, which were stored in the Brasilia archives of the Supreme Military Court, were photocopied by lawyers working with the Catholic Church...
...But the list created waves anyway...
...Xavier's replacement, Geovi Cavalcante, has been accused of torturing common prisoners, and in 1970 and 1971, under his direction, the military's Federal Censorship department was at its most repressive...
...he will be transferred normally to his next post in the directorate of the Army General Staff in Brasilia...
...Questioning the Amnesty Law Even today, with a civilian government in power, the only individuals who speak for the project are two long-time human rights activists: Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, Archbishop of Sdo Paulo, and Presbyterian minister Jaime Wright...
...Curiously, the Brazilian military court records were in the public domain when they were copied...
...that the military designed to protect "national security...
...It has also challenged the terms of the 1979 "reciprocal amnesty" law, which benefited both "terrorists" accused of political crimes and security forces implicated in human rights abuses, but sought above all to avert investigations into military and police practices...
...At the same time, he has held the book very much in the public eye and deftly kept the larger issues it raises on the national political agenda...
...But under pressure from his own Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), Lyra subsequently reversed his position and insisted that Xavier should not take office...
...The incident caused a dramatic showdown between then-Justice Minister Fernando Lyra and his Federal Police Chief, Col...
...With national security legislation still on the books, and an unstable political climate, the researchers carried out their work with great caution...
...Luiz de Alencar Araripe, culminating in Araripe's resignation...
...Much of the recent controversy has been provoked by a book called Brasil: Nunca Mais (Brazil: Never Again), the most comprehensive account of torture in the period of military rule ever made public in Brazil.* Based on research sponsored by the Archdiocese of Sdo Paulo, the book was published by the Catholic press Vozes in July 1985...
...Brasil: Nunca Mais is actually a summary of an unpublished 7,000-page report called "Project A," in turn an analysis of more than one million pages of military court records...
...Why has the book caused such a stir...
...He was serving as military attach to the Brazilian embassy in Montevideo last year when a federal congresswoman on a presidential mission to Uruguay recognized him as the official who had APRIL/MAY 1986 5 APRIL/MAY 1986 5tortured her 15 years before...
...The Argentine volume Nunca Mds, published in 1984, though an exhaustive compilation of evidence of human rights violations by the security forces, is not based on military sources...
...The military also exerts direct pressure on the Brazilian Congress...
...They include defendants' testimony and related material from nearly all the political cases tried in Brazilian courts-in particular the Supreme Military Court--between April 1964, when the armed forces took power, and March 1979, when the last military government took office...
...This is a key definition, since the law specifically grants amnesty to all those who committed political or "connected" crimes between September 1961 and August 15, 1979...
...She denounced Ustra in the Brazilian media and even wrote a letter to President Jos6 Sarney...
...Observers such as Pinheiro and Brazil specialist Alfred Stepan of Columbia University argue that the military is over-represented in Brazil's National Security Council, and that the autonomy of the National Intelligence Service is unparalleled in either the capitalist or socialist world...
...In the Brazilian case, there is much less evidence that civilians have been able to impose effective political controls on the military's role in running the state...
...In numerous interviews, Wright has questioned the 1979 amnesty law, arguing that torturers commit crimes against humanity and as such cannot be amnestied...
...The question was dramatically brought to the fore when the Brasil: Nunca Mais research team released a list of 444 torturers, compiled by cross-checking the names and codenames cited by prisoners in the military court records...
...Far from being put on trial, Brazil's armed forces continue to influence politics strongly...
...But as Pinheiro points out, the signature was quickly forgotten...
Vol. 20 • April 1986 • No. 2
