Brazil to investigate rights abuses during military era

BY ASHER LEVINE, REUTERS

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff approved on Friday 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 neighbouring countries such as Argentina and Chile.

"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."

The leftist wing of Rousseff 's Workers' Party has long pressed for the creation of a Truth Commission and even for trials, but the stillinfluential 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.

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette


(2011-11-19/The Montreal Gazette)