RIO DE JANEIRO – Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s first run-in with the military ended up giving a boost to the movement to gain access to the secret archives dating back to Brazil‘s 1964-1985 military dictatorship.
The Torture Never Again Group (GTNM) of Rio de Janeiro is demanding the immediate opening of what human rights activists refer to as the "archives of terror."
Since it was founded in 1985 by relatives of those killed, tortured, and "disappeared" in the "dirty war," the GTNM has played a key role in pressing for information on the identity, whereabouts, and fate of around 150 victims of military rule.
"What we have been denouncing since 1992 has now been proven: that the secret archives do exist," and can shed light on cases of torture and murder that the armed forces want to keep as an "eternal secret," Cecilia Coimbra, the group’s vice president, told IPS.
The London-based rights watchdog Amnesty International expressed its support for those efforts on Monday.
On Oct. 17, the newspaper Correio Braziliense, which is produced in the capital, Brasilia, published two photos that allegedly showed a local journalist, Wladimir Herzog, naked and in despair in a military prison in Sao Paulo shortly before he died there in October 1975.
At the time, the armed forces implausibly reported that Herzog had hung himself in his cell. The high-profile case had wide repercussions amidst the denunciations of torture and political repression, and led to the dismissal of the military commander of Sao Paulo.
After the photos were published, the army criticized the newspaper for "reviving the thirst for revenge and inciting a sterile debate" on the past.
The communiqué issued by the army claimed that the 1964 military coup d’etat was staged in response to "popular clamor," and that the political repression practiced by the military was "a legitimate response to the violence waged by those who refused to engage in dialogue and opted for radicalism and illegal actions."
But the declaration went even further, adding that the de facto regime led to "the construction of a new Brazil, in an environment of peace and security," and stating that in the army there has been "no change of position or conviction with regards to what occurred during that period of history."
The statement drew loud protests from members of the government and leaders of the ruling leftist Workers Party (PT), as well as from the human rights movement.
President Lula demanded that the army issue a retraction, which put Defense Minister José Viegas in a difficult position.
The chairman of the government’s Special Commission on the Death and Disappearance of Political Prisoners, Joao Luiz Pinaud, threatened to resign if the conditions making it possible to investigate the cases of forced disappearance were not guaranteed.
The crisis was overcome with a second statement, signed by army chief Roberto de Albuquerque, who admitted that the issue was not treated "in an appropriate manner." The communiqué also said "the army laments the death of journalist Wladimir Herzog" and that it defends democracy.
The man who appears in the photos published by the Correio Braziliense was apparently Canadian priest Leopold D’Astous, who was detained in 1973 by the security forces, along with a Catholic lay worker, Terezinha Sales. Both were tortured and photographed naked, as a form of pressure to force D’Astous to leave the country.
However, Herzog’s widow says that at least one of the photos is of her husband.
Regardless of the controversy over who appears in the two photos, the images made it clear that "the archives exist," said Coimbra.
The photos were in the hands of the Human Rights Commission in the lower house of Congress, but had not been made public, she said.
The army claims that all secret military archives were destroyed, but that is "only an argument to keep them hidden," said the activist.
Under pressure from the armed forces, former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2003) signed a decree in 2002 expanding the timeframe for keeping the government’s most confidential documents secret from 30 to 50 years.
The GTNM is demanding that the decree, which was ratified by Lula in February 2003, be overturned.
The military has a long tradition of keeping documents secret. The archives from the 1865-1870 War of the Triple Alliance, in which Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay fought against Paraguay, still remain closed today, said historian Denise Rollemberg, who is researching the period of the recent military regime.
But today there is greater pressure from society, the human rights movement has gained strength, and the families of the "disappeared" are actively demanding information, she commented to IPS.
"I have hopes that now things will be different," said Rollemberg.
Although the military successfully dismantled the groups that opposed the dictatorship, "they have lost the memory battle," she added, underlining the importance of salvaging that portion of the country’s recent history, to avoid a repeat of the torture, censorship and other crimes committed by the authoritarian regime.
