BRASILIA, (Reuters) – Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff approved yesterday the creation of a Truth Commission to investigate human rights abuses committed in the period during and leading up to its 1964-1985 military dictatorship.
The creation of the seven-member body is Brazil’s boldest step toward accounting for the widespread torture and violence that took place during the dictatorship, although it will not have the power to prosecute those found guilty of crimes.
That is a disappointment to some human rights activists, who wanted to see old Brazilian soldiers brought to justice as they have been in neighboring countries such as Argentina and Chile that also experienced military rule in the period.
“For generations of Brazilians that died, we honour them today not through a process of revenge, but through a process of the construction of truth and memory,” Rousseff, a former leftist activist who herself was tortured during the dictatorship, said in a ceremony at the presidential palace.
“The truth about our past is fundamental, so those facts that stain our history will never occur again,” she added.
The leftist wing of Rousseff’s Workers’ Party has long pressed for the creation of a Truth Commission and even for trials, but the still-influential military and its backers in Congress were able to prevent the bill from punishing anyone.
With a mandate of two years, the commission has the right to call witnesses to investigate abuses in the period from 1964 to 1988 perpetrated by both the government and those who opposed it.
But the process is still governed by the 1979 Amnesty Law put in place by the dictatorship, which protects suspected torturers from facing trials.
Unlike its regional neighbours, Brazil has largely avoided formal discussion of human rights crimes perpetrated during its period of military rule and has never imprisoned any military personnel for abuses.
“This development shows Brazil’s commitment to addressing human rights at home, as well as elsewhere in the world,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillai in a press release.
“It is an essential and welcome first step towards healing the country’s wounds and clarifying past wrongs.”
About 500 Brazilians were killed or disappeared during the dictatorship, while many others, mostly leftist activists, were tortured.
Rousseff also signed a freedom of information act today that reverses state secrecy laws, granting the public open access to government documents. The law mandates that while sensitive information may be kept secret for a maximum of 25 years, renewable to 50 years, no documents related to human rights may be withheld.
“These laws puts our country on a higher level — a level of subordination of the state to human rights,” said Rousseff. “It will cast light on periods of our history that society must and should know.”
