Insider

Brazil could recreate commission on political disappearances

Political rally in honor of Honestino Guimarães, a student leader who disappeared during the dictatorship and whose body was never found. Photo: Joedson Alves/EBC

Brazil’s Justice Ministry reiterated its support for a decision to recreate the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances, which was shut down at the end of the Jair Bolsonaro administration in late 2022.

The committee was created in 1995 to locate and identify people who went missing during Brazil’s far-right military dictatorship (1964-1985).

Human rights NGOs such as the Vladimir Herzog Institute and Amnesty International criticized the decision to end the committee, arguing that the committee’s mission had not yet been accomplished.

In 2014, during the Dilma Rousseff administration, a truth commission issued a report concluding that 434 people were killed or disappeared by the military regime, a number Amnesty International considers an underestimation.

Jair Bolsonaro is an overt nostalgist of the military dictatorship era. During his time as a congressman, he had photos of Brazil’s five dictatorship presidents in his parliamentary office. As president, he hosted some notorious figures of the regime, such as retired Army colonel Sebastião Curió and Maria Joseíta Silva Ustra, the widow of Colonel Brilhante Ustra, who was convicted of torture in 2008.

Since the beginning of the current Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva administration, Human Rights Minister Silvio Almeida has spoken in favor of recreating the committee.

The Justice Ministry did not issue a press release commenting on the legal opinion issued on Friday, but the document was made public. While under former minister Flávio Dino, the department had supported the decision to recreate the committee. The Human Rights Ministry consulted it again because Mr. Dino, who now sits on the Supreme Court, was replaced by Ricardo Lewandowski.

Lula has the final decision on whether to recreate the committee. The president faced criticism for refusing to hold official events to remember the 60th anniversary of the 1964 military coup on March 31, as part of his push to cozy up to the Armed Forces.

You may also be interested in: Love It or Leave It: 60 years of Brazil’s 1964 coup d’état (a four-part podcast series)