Brazil Releases 2,000-Page Report on Torture, Executions, Forced Disappearances and More Performed During Military Dictatorship
Brazil's National Truth Commission has delivered a report on the killings, disappearances and acts of torture that were committed by its government during the country's 1964-1985 military dictatorship, a time when more than 400 Brazilians were killed or disappeared.
The 2,000-page report called for those responsible to face prosecution.
"Under the military dictatorship, repression and the elimination of political opposition became the policy of the state, conceived and implemented based on decisions by the president of the republic and military ministers," the report states.
The commission rejected the previously offered explanation that the violations of human rights consisted of only a small number of isolated acts or excesses resulting from the zealous actions of a few soldiers.
Spending nearly three years going through archives, hospital and morgue records, and questioning victims and the families of the alleged abusers, the investigators presented to President Dilma Rousseff a document that details the military's systematic practice of arbitrary detentions, torture, executions, forced disappearances and a body hiding.
The report documents 191 killings and 210 disappearances committed by military authorities, as well as 33 cases of people who disappeared and whose remains were later discovered.
According to the , Rousseff, a former Marxist guerrilla who endured harsh torture and a long imprisonment in the early 1970s, spoke about the commission’s findings.
"Brazil deserves the truth," she said according to The Associated Press. "The new generations deserve the truth. And most of all, those who deserve the truth are those who lost family members, friends, companions and continue to suffer as if they died again each and every day.”
Brazil was one of several Latin American nations which in the 1960s and 70s experienced a militaristic overthrew of their democratic governments.
Argentina, Chile and Uruguay have similarly been investigating crimes committed by military, and top officials have been convicted and handed prison sentences.
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