[RESUMO] Amnesty Law of 1979, conceived by the dictatorship to ensure impunity to public and military agents who committed serious crimes against human rights, contributed to the permanence of authoritarian ideology in the country. Condemnation of Bolsonaro and seven more former members of his government offers a new opportunity to reject coup and defend democracy, which should not be marked by new judicial forgiveness.
and seven former member of his government brought to memory again-here, there, in the votes of the ministers and in the decision of the Court-the military dictatorship.
Reminiscence can be credited to the fact that most of the accused belongs to the Armed Forces and seek to abolish the Democratic Rule of Law to institute a regime of strength,
The association, of course, is not devoid of meaning. What lacks meaning is amnesty. To understand how the country continues to flirt with authoritarianism, in the growing mobilization surrounding the approval of a law that ensures forgiveness to the convicts in the trial of the last week, it seems appropriate to remember how we have come here.
And marked by the absence of a rule of law, the military dictatorship in Brazil operated according to the doctrine of national security, which is to say that it treated as enemies of the state those who considered in disagreement with their ideas.
In his 21 years, he practiced all kinds of repression: he suspended political rights, revoked political and trade union mandates, pursued students, workers and civil servants, baniu, exiled, arrested, disappeared and murdered civilians and military, Brazilian and foreign. Thousands were victims of torture. Many who passed through the repressive system suffered some kind of sexual violence.
In the late 1970s, in the context of – when pluripartisanship was of interest to the military regime and organized segments of civil society conquered the liberation of political prisoners, the return of banished and exiles, the end of torture, the elucidation of cases of forced disappearance and the responsibility of public agents involved in torture and murder – it has decided to take care of the issue: the issue of National Congress has made a project: Amnesty.
Under the then President, the moment was conducive to pacification, and the amnesty, the slogan of these movements, reopened the field of political action, led to the reunion, gathered and gathered for the construction of the future.
While in power, successive dictators were striking to deny the occurrence of serious human rights violations. Despite, at that time, we are already weighing on the Brazilian State the liability for (1937-1975), Figueiredo, with the “hand extended in conciliation”, managed to pass a law in the exact terms desired by the dictatorship.
Conceived to ensure impunity to public agents, in a simplified manner it can be said that the 1979 legislation contained the idea of appeasement and eventually acquired a meaning of pragmatic conciliation, capable of contributing to the transition to the democratic regime.
In no way, he has dedicated himself to establishing the truth. None of its 15 articles provided for any initiative in this regard, and society does not seem to have care about the idea of forgetting that the legislation, as the history would confirm, imposed.
The entry into force of the Amnesty Law released political prisoners and allowed the return of exiles as, and which quickly resumed the political partisan doing, but did not cease the serious human rights violations.
In 1985 ,. About the same time, the world began to show the need for states to deal appropriately with severe social trauma and legacies of violence, such as those left by Latin American dictatorships, and the consequent demand for justice that emerges in periods of political transition.
Gradually, the notion has consolidated that the construction of a democratic and peaceful future demands from states answers that confront the crimes of repressive regimes. Although frequent, and sometimes capable of contributing to political change, self-annisties, such as the Brazilian 1979, proved unsustainable before the international normative.
The state can forgive those who violated their laws, but never when they acted in the name of the state itself. That is, agents of the repression they tortured and killed must respond criminally for the violence committed.
In Brazil, despite the disinterest of society and always gradually the successive democratic governments began to deal with the legacy of these serious violations.
Since then, with the approval of laws and the adoption of public policies, the Brazilian State, through the Legislature and the Executive, has advanced in compliance with two of its main obligations: the duty to reveal the truth about the crimes of the period, contemplated with the opening of archives and the installation of the National Truth Commission, and the duty to repair the victims, their families and society, with the creation of the Special Commission on the dead and the disappeared committee Politicians and the amnesty committee, among other measures.
However, except for a single case involving 8 Army military personnel, one of them Captain, and 2 civilians, condemned in the 70’s for torturing 15 soldiers in a barracks in Barra Mansa (RJ), to this day there was no definitive determination of the criminal liability of public agents involved in such acts.
Situation completely different from that observed by the Brazilian State, whose responsibility for torture, death or forced disappearance of persecuted politicians has been recognized since the dictatorship, including the payment of indemnities by different courts.
It is clear, therefore, that it is still pending the duty to identify, process and, if the responsibility, punish the authors of serious human rights violations that occurred in the period.
Like the duty of justice, the fulfillment of what would be the fourth duty of the Brazilian state, in relation to the legacy of the military dictatorship: to transform their structures, making them democratic, remains open.
This duty, which can be done through institutional reforms, with the removal of incompetent public agents or who committed crimes during the period of agency, corresponds to the right of society to reorganized and reliable institutions. Obligations that concern, above all, to the two institutions that are at the center of the current political debate, the judiciary and the Armed Forces.
Since its entry into force, for almost five decades, the Amnesty Law-that, it should be noted, in its text does not mention torture-has been invoked to interdict the discussion around the accountability of state agents involved in the numerous and well-documented crimes of the period.
Every time the need is required to revisit the past, members of the Armed Forces, for example, resort to the law sanctioned by Figueiredo and insist on the alleged political agreement that would have the non -punishment of “both sides”.
In any case, it was from the construction of this “guarantee” of impunity that, in the 1980s, the military was willing to make a commitment to gradually withdrawal from politics. Investing in Olvida, they followed until at least 2014, when launching, at the Military Academy of the Negras, the candidacy of an army captain who, five years later,
Since then, the oblivion arrangement carefully built by the dictatorship has been completely shattered. The rupture took place at the hands of the only president of which, praising torturers, elected himself by apologizing to the exceptional regime and, surrounded by military, ruled extolling violence and demonstrating his contempt for human life.
Paradoxically, in the four years he was in power, the army captain did what no dictator dared to publicly do and, when acting, eventually rendered a service to democracy: he confirmed the violence of the period, always denied by the commanders of then, recognized the existence of his criminals and exposed authoritarian enclaves, with some of his representatives now punished by the Supreme.
Even before last week’s conviction, however, another army captain, the current governor of Sao Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas, and defending amnesty to those involved.
If not, the behavior of the legitimately elected ruler, who has already classified the coup of 64 as “movement” and defends the implementation of dozens of “Civic-Military Schools” in the state, shows how difficult it can be to break with a certain mindset of a generation of superior armed forces officers, educated in the 70s and 80s and that continues to instruct new military classes.
Its performance, however, should not intimidate Brazilian society, let alone leaders committed to the construction of a fairer and more peaceful country.
Breakdown the effort of dismembered, it is not time to waste the opportunity that the historical moment offers to a nation that could not judge any of its dictators, which obviously did not contribute to the delegitimation of the military regime and nor to the discredit of the ideology that sustained to it.
It is necessary to advance the deconstruction of the idea that the military constitute a group apart in Brazilian society and that, unlike other citizens, they do not need to answer for all their actions.
Only in a democracy in which, before the law, everyone is equal in rights and duties will it be possible to ensure that no group of citizens has the privilege of impunity.
