Brazil to Indemnify Families of ''Politically Missing''
Written by Brazzil Magazine
Friday, 27 August 2004
During the military dictatorship which ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985, a number of people who opposed the regime disappeared. They are known as the "politically missing" and a commission has been set up to deal with paying their families indemnity. Known as the Special Comission for the Politically Missing and Dead, it is presently examining 13 cases.
Many of these cases are based on a new law which went into
effect in June of this year which recognizes state culpability in forced
suicides, suicides caused by psychological trauma resulting from torture and
deaths that occurred during public demonstrations against the government between
September 1961 and October 1988.
Prior to this law the government paid
indemnity only in cases of deaths which occurred while in state custody.
On August 14, 2003, the federal government reinstalled the
Commission on Dead and Missing Political Activitists, linked to the Special
Secretariat for Human Rights, for the purpose of indemnifying the relatives of
victims of the military regime.
Created in 1995, the commission has already conceded
indemnities to 280 family members, but many were excluded as a result of flaws
in criteria and information. In general, the amount of the indemnity varies
between 100,000 reais (US$ 33,000) and 150,000 reais (US$50,000).
During the period between 1964 and 1985, the military dictatorship that
took power in Brazil through a coup caused the death or disappearance of
approximately 480 people, according to investigations conducted by human rights
organizations.
Before the recent change Brazilian law only
benefitted relatives of political activitists who were killed in security
facilities, while they were imprisoned. 102 cases rejected by the
commission, some of them because of this type of restriction, will be
reevaluated.
Another new feature is the creation of a DNA bank, which
will store genetic information on the victims' relatives. This information will
be cross-checked against the skeletal remains that have been discovered.
The resuscitation of the Commission coincided with a judicial decision
that revived the discussion over victims of the military regime. On July 22 of
last year, Federal Judge Solange Salgado, from Brasília, ordered the breaking of
official secrecy on all military operations in the campaign against the Araguaia
guerrilla movement.
The Araguaia movement was organized in 1966 by the
PC do B (Partido Comunista do Brasil—Communist Party of Brazil) on the borders
between Tocantins, Pará, and Maranhão, a region known as Bico do
Papagaio (Parrot's Beak).
The guerrilla members opposed the military regime and wanted to
establish an independent state in the region. The movement was crushed by the
Armed Forces in 1974.
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Brazil received a huge boost in its international image with its selection as the host of the 2016 Olympics, but it was really just the cherry on top of the overall recognition of the country's ascension to the ranks of one of the world's most important countries. Now, as it finally takes its place on the world scene, there has been a great deal of concern about what kind of image Brazil hopes to project, now that the world is really paying attention. 
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
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