About to complete, (CEMDP) made a symbolic movement in a historic election to clarify human rights violations in the dictatorship. On August 14, the board met at the Ministry of Defense with the holder of the portfolio, to charge access to secret files from the period.
“It was an important approach. I liked the meeting and I think it was a different thing. It broke this taboo not to talk, not talking, not working together,” said the president of CEMDP, the prosecutor.
At the meeting, Múcio reiterated the position of the military in recent decades: as far as he is aware, he said, the Armed Forces archives have been released or have been destroyed. But it made a commitment to bring the request to army, Navy and Aeronautics commanders to verify that there are still restricted documents.
“He gave the word that if there is a confirmation that there are files that were not released, he would create a dialogue for this [o acesso] Be effective, “said the Union lawyer, head of the Special Advisory of Institutional Relations of the Ministry of Defense and representative of the portfolio at CEMDP.
Having a seat in both agencies, it was Abitta who articulated the meeting, which took a few months to leave. Last March, the commission sent a letter to the defense “formally requesting its members’ access to the information centers linked to military organizations of the Armed Forces of Brazil”.
The objective, says the document, is to “perform diligences ‘in loco’ that enable the identification of the existing collection, as well as the location of documents that can be essential to clarifying the facts [ocorridos durante a ditadura]”(…),” in particular the circumstances of forced disappearances and extrajudicial executions “.
Faced with a frustrating response (of which there were no documents), Apritta was urged by CEMDP colleagues to apply for a meeting with Múcio.
“The minister always strives for dialogue always. He likes to say, ‘When there is a fight, either I kill or I die: either I run to the bush or I go up to the hill.’ It’s impossible to fight him,” said the advisor.
In addition to Múcio, Eugênia and Abitta, three more members of the CEMDP were attended by the meeting: Diva Santana (representative of the family members of the dead and missing), Federal Representative Natália Bonavides (PT-RN, representative of the House) and prosecutor Ivan Marx (representative of the Federal Prosecutor).
For the collegiate, only the two representatives of civil society was missing (Professor of Psychology at USP and daughter of Rubens Paiva and Eunice Paiva) and Maria Cecília Adam (historian and teacher).
The meeting was brief, lasted less than half an hour, but still Eugenia evaluated as a breakthrough. “The position of Minister José Múcio is that this access has to be franchised, that it is necessary to do this joint work, which has at least one effort in this regard.”
The history of the Armed Forces in relation to the theme does not cherish the hope of the committee’s chairman. For decades, representatives of the family members of the dead and missing and human rights advocates claim access to documents, having only achieved files with relative importance, such as functional military records involved with repression, but nothing that helps clarify, for example, the destination of almost 250 missing missing.
Which documents/files were not specified, the commission intends to access. “It is very difficult to specify because there is no inventory. But, for example, we want administrative documents, the point sheets of the members of these repression bodies. As they are classified as administrative documents, they were not transferred to the National Archives,” says Eugenia.
“So we need to go there to understand how this documentation has been stored. There is the claim that has documents that have been destroyed, but for example, these administrative documents cannot be destroyed, why how do these people then retire?”
ABITTA considers the diffuse scope of the request an obstacle to access. “The very request made by the commission is, let’s put it, Platonic. It is on the plane of ideas, there is nothing palpable. They ask for access to the files and do not even list which military units they would like to have access. They made a generic request. So I want to access R, but I don’t know what I want to access.”
Rectified death certificates
To mark a year of the committee’s reinstallation of the dead and missing, the board will, from, from delivery ceremonies of rectified death certificates to relatives of victims of the dictatorship.
All 434 dead and missing will have their certificates rectified. But, according to Eugenia Gonzaga, the commission estimates that it will be able to deliver the new documents to about 200 families. “If there is no family member to receive, they have been rectified for historical purposes.”
The rectification was possible thanks to a partnership of CEMDP with the CNJ (National Council of Justice), which, last December, approved a resolution determining that dictatorship victims certificates should register, as mortis cause, “non -natural, violent death caused by the Brazilian state”.
After Belo Horizonte, CEMDP will make delivery ceremonies in Sao Paulo, Recife, Rio and Brasilia.
