Brazil airs state secrets (from former military dictatorship)

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Agence France-Presse

Last Updated: 08:23am 14 May 2009
Brazil airs state secrets
Article By:
Thu, 14 May 2009 08:21

Brazil has shone a light into one of the most troubled periods of its recent past, as the government published documents dating from the country's 20 years of dictatorship.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva launched a website on Wednesday containing information dating from 1964 to 1985, when the country was under the sway of the military. "We are doing Brazilian democracy a service when we unveil some of the mysteries that persist about our past," Lula said at the website's launch.

~snip~
The opening of the website comes at a time when the country's top court prepares to review a 1979 amnesty law that allowed the return of dissidents and freed from prosecution some of those responsible for crackdowns.

The military has strongly opposed any reinterpretation of the law.

President Lula, himself a former political prisoner, has so far has tried not to polemicise the issue.

Read more: http://news.iafrica.com/worldnews/1675623.htm

[Judi Lynn]

1. Brazil: Prosecute Dictatorship-Era Abuses

Brazil: Prosecute Dictatorship-Era Abuses
Landmark International Decision Provides Powerful Push for Accountability
April 14, 2009

(Washington, DC) - Brazil should prosecute human rights abuses committed during the 1964-1985 dictatorship following a landmark legal decision, Human Rights Watch said today. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights stated that amnesties and statutes of limitations cannot be applied to crimes against humanity that were committed during Brazil's military dictatorship.

The commission's conclusion, announced on April 8, 2009, marks the first international decision relating to abuses that took place during the military dictatorship in Brazil, from 1964 to 1985. The petition was brought by relatives of 70 persons forcibly disappeared by the military during its operations against the Araguaia communist guerrilla movement in the 1970s.

~snip~
The Brazilian military regime from 1964 to 1985 was responsible for systematic human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, torture, arbitrary detention, and the curtailment of free expression. According to official estimates, around 50,000 persons were detained just in the first months of the dictatorship and roughly 10,000 went into exile at some point during that period. Brazil: Never Again (Brasil: Nunca Mais), an authoritative report secretly researched using the archives of Brazil's military justice system and released by the São Paulo Archdiocese in 1985, described 1,918 accounts of torture from 1964 to 1979 and noted that its source material excluded an "incalculable" number of other cases.

More:
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/04/14/brazil-prosecute-dictatorship-era-abuses

[ashling]

2. GOP Response:

Banana Republic! :sarcasm: