An apology and compensation for torture in Brazil
In many cases, when a government issues an official apology for serious past human rights abuses, it is the president who makes the apology. Brazil, however, is in the unusual position of having a president who was among the victims of the serious human abuses that are now being investigated there.
In 1970, when Dilma Rousseff was 22 years old, she was arrested, held for nearly three years and repeatedly tortured. At that time, she was a member of a revolutionary group; now she is her country’s president.
Yesterday, the government of the state of Rio de Janeiro announced that it would apologize to President Rousseff for the human rights abuses she suffered there. It will also award her $10,000 in reparations, which she has promised to donate to a nongovernmental organization called Torture Never Again.
Last week, Rousseff also inaugurated a seven-member Truth Commission that will investigate rights violations committed from 1946 to 1988, a period that is broader than the country’s 1964 to 1985 military dictatorship.
“Brazil deserves the truth, the new generations deserve the truth and above all, those who lost friends and relatives and who continue to suffer as if they were dying again each day deserve the truth,” Rousseff said as she swore in the members of the new commission.
International Justice 