President of the Amnesty Commission since the beginning of the Lula government, Eneá de Stutz e Almeida says she is disappointed and surprised by the president’s stance regarding the 60th anniversary of the 1964 coup.
The anniversary of the military dictatorship that lasted more than 20 years in the country takes place this Sunday (31), under a silence from the Palácio do Planalto determined by the head of the Executive.
Lula banned acts in memory of the date and said, in an interview last month, that he does not want to “always dwell” on the past and that he is more concerned about the coup attacks on January 8, 2023.
“How does the president think it is important to talk about an attempted coup [8 de janeiro]but don’t you think it’s important to talk about the coup?” he told Sheet.
On the part of the commission, the event schedule was maintained. First, it will hold the first collective reparation trial in the country’s history, with apologies to two indigenous peoples and a group of Chinese.
And, afterwards, a solemn session at the Participatory Legislation Committee in the Chamber, with tribute to Clarice Herzog, widow of journalist Vladimir Herzog, persecuted by the dictatorship.
When lamenting the attempt to ignore the 60th anniversary of the coup, the president of the Amnesty Commission also draws a parallel between Lula’s speech and that of former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) about “passing the erasure”.
“Both [Lula e Bolsonaro] They said the same thing, ‘let’s move on’, because what matters is pacification. You can’t erase the past, whether it’s 60 years ago or a year ago. We have to face a legacy of violence and authoritarianism,” he said.
Cornered in the face of progress in investigations on different fronts of the Federal Police, Bolsonaro called on his supporters on Avenida Paulista in February for an act in his support.
He gave a speech saying he was seeking pacification – “putting an erasure on the past, looking for ways for us to live in peace” – and asked for amnesty for those arrested for the coup attack on January 8, 2023.
Lula, in turn, two days later, gave an interview to the program “É Notícia”, on RedeTV!, and was asked about the government’s plans for the 60th anniversary of the military coup. At the time, the president said he was more worried about January 8 than 1964.
“What I can’t do is not know how to move history forward, keep rehashing it, always rehashing it, in other words, it’s a part of Brazil’s history that we still don’t have all the information about, because there are still people missing, because there are people who can qualify. But, honestly, I’m not going to dwell on it and I’m going to try to move this country forward”, he said.
The speech had a bad impact among family members of victims of the dictatorship. In a note released the following day, more than 150 entities from the Brazil Coalition for Memory, Truth, Justice, Reparation and Democracy classified the statement as “wrong” and argued that dealing with the coup “is not rehashing the past, it is discussing the future” .
The group’s spokesman, Leo Alves, went further and said that the feeling was one of “betrayal”, because they considered him an ally.
When contacted, Palácio do Planalto did not comment on the committee president’s criticisms.
The family members’ logic is also supported by what the president of the Amnesty Commission argues, that dealing with 1964 means bringing back memory to ensure that it does not happen again.
For Eneá, who is also a law professor at UnB (University of Brasília), Lula’s speech also brought disappointment, but she presents a legal justification: she says she thinks the president sees the law as one of forgetfulness and self-amnesty.
In this proposal, the period is deleted and there is no need to discuss repairs. But she also questions this position and argues that there is a loophole in the Amnesty Law to ensure that remnants of the regime can be tried.
“The 1979 law is not one of self-amnesty, it is one of memory. Those who were imprisoned could be released. Those who were exiled could return. And those who were not even prosecuted can be prosecuted. Because the facts were not erased. So, no we erase history,” he said.
Eneá argues that facing the country’s authoritarian past and what he calls the attempted coup, in January 2023, are not mutually exclusive. She also said it was great that the Armed Forces had not embarked on what she called a canoe of institutional disruption: “It’s what we need.”
On the other hand, he advocates that the military apologize to the victims of the regime, without fear of resentment. “It seems to me that it would even be a very appropriate moment if the Armed Forces, as an institution of the Republic, apologized for, way back when, they embarked on this coup adventure and participated in the institutional rupture,” he said.
In what is considered transitional justice, the apology is an important symbolic pillar. So much so that the Ministry of Human Rights, in the government’s planning for the 60th anniversary of the coup, intended to carry out public apologies. The action, like others planned for the date, was vetoed by Lula, in yet another gesture to the barracks.
The Amnesty Commission adopted as a protocol, when it assured compensation to victims under PT governments, to apologize on behalf of the State.
But, in 2017, when the president was Michel Temer (MDB), there was a change in the collegiate’s stance, which became more restrictive in granting reparations and interrupted official apologies. With the arrival of Eneá in 2023, the collegiate resumes the measure during the trials.
With the approval of Minister Silvio Almeida (Human Rights), the collegiate changed the way of publicly judging compensation requests, with block sessions, and made a commitment to, by 2026, end the entire liability of 7,000 applications. And, with that, be able to close the commission’s activities.
“This binomial of memory and truth still needs to be completed. The Amnesty Commission itself has to finish judging its processes”, he concluded.
