Dictatorship: Amnesty Commission resumes pardoning the persecuted – 03/30/2023 – Power

“I have the honor to apologize to you, on behalf of the Brazilian State, for this persecution, so that this never happens again, and to declare you political amnesty.”

Thus, and with her hands on her face, Cláudia Arruda Campos received from the president of the Amnesty Commission, Eneá de Stutz e Almeida, the granting of her claim for compensation for having been politically persecuted and imprisoned during the military dictatorship.

This was the second time that Campos’ case went to trial. In the first, in 2019, compensation was denied by the Damares Alves administration, then Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights in the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government. On that occasion, the winning vote was cast by General Rocha Paiva, author of the preface to the biography of general and torturer Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra.

This Thursday’s session (30) marked the resumption of the group’s work and was full of criticism of Bolsonarist management – which equipped the group with military personnel and supporters of the dictatorial regime.

For the meeting, which took place on the eve of the anniversary of the 1964 coup, cases considered symbolic were selected, as they were requests for amnesty denied in judgments considered unfair.

Amnesty was granted to Ivan Valente, federal deputy for the PSOL-SP who was arrested and tortured, whose request was rejected by Damares Alves; José Pedro da Silva, arrested by the regime, whose application was barred during the Temer government; and Romário Schettino, kidnapped and arrested, who even had compensation approved by the commission in 2018, but it was never published in the Official Gazette and, therefore, was never carried out — Schettino is hospitalized and undergoes surgery to resolve a cerebral edema.

In the new regiment of the collegiate, in addition to the unprecedented forecast of granting amnesty to collectives, the duty of formally registering an apology by the State for the crimes committed during the dictatorship is also resumed.

“When there is a declaration of individual or collective political amnesty, the Chair of the session will solemnly formulate, on behalf of the Brazilian State, the apology to the applicant and Brazilian society for the persecution carried out, guaranteeing that they will not be forgotten”, states the document.

The request for forgiveness was common in the commission’s statements until the Michel Temer government, when it became less and less used, until it was left aside during the Damares administration. Now, it becomes a regimental obligation.

In the session, the Minister of Human Rights, Silvio Almeida, and other authorities present stated that the work around the memory of the period of repression is essential to face the phenomenon that led to the January 8 attacks —and, above all, to combat the cases of apology to the dictatorship in the country.

“The fantasies that he was the best in that period, after all, are just that, fantasies, are easily defeated by the evidence. The lack of memory, truth and justice as State policies, however, not only allow the reproduction of these illusions, fantasies, authoritarian delusions, as well as a coup nostalgia propagated by disinformation devices that need to be faced for the good of this country”, said the minister.

The commission’s president said that the commission will now play a leading role in a process of historical reparation —and no longer a reaction to movements that deny or praise the military dictatorship.

“It is important to have a word of welcome, especially for all those who had the unfortunate and unpleasant surprise of being revictimized, of being blamed again for the persecution they suffered”, said Eneá de Stutz e Almeida, in reference to the denied amnesty requests by the Bolsonaro government.

In all four declarations of amnesty made this Thursday, the president emphasized the fact that those persecuted had previously had their compensation denied unfairly.

Repression figures are not very precise, since the dictatorship never recognized these episodes. Military Justice audits received 6,016 reports of torture. Estimates made later pointed to 20,000 cases.

Prisoners reported being hung on macaw sticks, subjected to electric shocks, strangulation, drowning attempts, blows with a paddle, punches, kicks and other aggressions. There were cases where torture sessions led to the death of victims.

In 2014, the National Truth Commission listed 191 dead and 210 missing. Another 33 disappeared had their bodies later located, for a total of 434 people.

The cases analyzed in the return of the commission

Today a federal deputy, he was a militant in the resistance to the military dictatorship, leader of the MEP (Movement for the Emancipation of the Proletariat) and founder of the PT.

Valente was persecuted by the military regime, arrested twice, passed through the DOI-Codi and Dops (Department of Political and Social Order) detention centers and was tortured. For this reason, he filed a claim for compensation, which last year was denied by the Amnesty Commission — still subordinate to Damares’ ministry.

In the vote that rejected the amnesty, the justification of Bolsonarist management was that the deputy would have been framed in the National Security Law, which was not exclusive to the dictatorship; and that, therefore, the State owed him no apology for what happened during the regime.

She was a member of the Ação Popular group —which also included names such as former Senator José Serra (PSDB-SP)— and was arrested by the DOPS.

In 2019, the case’s rapporteur even gave an opinion in favor of granting amnesty, but General Rocha Paiva, then a member of the commission, asked for rejection. “It was not possible to identify in the records any action by the State to the detriment of the applicant [Cláudia Campos] that could give rise to the rights related to political amnesty”, said Paiva. The claim for compensation was denied.

He was a member of the National Labor Front and the Metallurgists Union in the 1970s, and was arrested when he organized a protest in front of industries. According to his account, he was fired from the company where he worked in 1978 because of his performance.

He asked for compensation, as provided for in the Amnesty Law, for having had his career compromised by political persecution. Still in 2018, the commission granted him amnesty and a monthly payment of R$2,000.

However, the then Minister Gilson Libório, ran over the collegiate’s understanding and, through an ordinance, stated that there was no link between his arrest and his dismissal. Accordingly, he rejected the request. The practice was later incorporated by the Damares administration to deny compensation even in cases assessed as valid by the collegiate.

He appears in the dictatorship’s intelligence reports as a former member of a study group in Caratinga (MG), in which journalist Miriam Leitão also participated.

Schettino was a Central Bank employee in the 1970s when he was kidnapped and arrested by security forces for alleged “subversive infiltration” in the student movement in Brasília. He resigned from his job and went into exile in Europe.

His amnesty request was initially denied in 2008, but, after an appeal, it was granted in 2018. However, his amnesty ordinance was never published, either by the Temer government or by Bolsonaro.