Committees and entity linked to human rights rejected the relativization made by the governor of Minas Gerais, (Novo), when dealing with the regime as “question of interpretation”. For the groups, there was disrespect for the victims and opportunism of the politician, who is trying to make a candidate for president in 2026.
In an interview with Sheet Zema wondered the dictatorship by promising pardon to the former president () if elected. “They were not granted indulgers to killers and kidnappers here, what do they call dictatorship?” He said.
The military regime (1964-1985) had one. The repression numbers are little accurate, as the dictatorship never recognized these episodes. Military Justice Audits received 6,000 complaints of torture. Estimates made later point to 20,000 cases.
Prisoners reported having been hung in Arara sticks, subjected to electric shocks, strangulation, drowning attempts, palmatic blows, punches, kicks and other aggressions. In some cases, the torture session led to death.
In 2014, the National Truth Commission listed 191 dead and 210 missing by the dictatorship. Another 33 missing ones had their bodies located later, in a total of 434 people.
President of the Amnesty Commission of the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship (MDHC), Ana Maria de Oliveira said that the Minas Gerais governor “should be more cautious when talking about a dictatorial state that killed, violated, arrested and murdered a lot of people.”
Rogério Sottili, executive director of the Vladimir Herzog Institute, noted that Zema holds an elective position, something “impossible” during the period.
“It is unacceptable that those who occupy an elected public office, something impossible during the military regime, allow themselves to relativize the horrors of a period in which the very existence of democratic policy was criminalized. Treating dictatorship as a matter of interpretation, but also possible, not only wide the opportunism and disrespect for the memory of the victims, but ignores historical processes recognized by international human rights institutions,” he said. Sottili.
Eugênia Gonçalves, who chairs the Special Commission on Dead and Missing Politicians of the Ministry of Human Rights, credited Zema’s speech to the lack of knowledge on the subject.
“It demonstrates a great ignorance, because I do not believe that he can relativize deaths of women of 18, 19 years, followed rapes, pregnant people on the macaw stick, it is not possible that he defends, that he relativize something like that,” he said.
Ana Maria de Oliveira also criticized the fact that Zema compared the amnesty and stated that there is “a brutal difference” between the two mechanisms.
Amnesty, a kind of “forgiveness”, prevents punishment to those who committed certain crimes. A, one of the milestones of the final period of the dictatorship, granted amnesty to political crimes, allowing the return of militants who lived exiles abroad, but leaving the dictatorship’s repressive agents unpunished. Last month, the former president was for her performance of confrontation to the regime.
According to Oliveira, the amnesty is granted “to those who fought against the dictatorial state and were persecuted by them.” The pardon, the prerogative of the President of the Republic who forgives people already convicted, affects the execution of the sentence, but does not nullify the conviction.
“If the governor is saying he can pardon or anything [a Bolsonaro]He can give forgiveness, but not amnesty, “she said.
