Amnesty Commission grants 1st collective reparation, and Brazil apologizes to Krenak indigenous people for crimes during the dictatorship | Policy

The Amnesty Commission of the Ministry of Human Rights analyzed this Tuesday (2) the first requests for collective reparations in the country’s history.

In the first analysis, the collegiate formalized amnesty and a formal apology from the Brazilian State to the Krenak indigenous people, from the north of Minas Gerais. Also this Tuesday, a similar request from the Guyraroká indigenous people, who occupy a territory in Mato Grosso do Sul, should be analyzed.

Indigenous people of both ethnicities were persecuted and forced to leave their lands during the military dictatorship. They have never received compensation or compensation for this as, until now, only individual requests were analyzed by the Amnesty Commission.

Requests for collective reparations are new, and were only included in the commission’s regulations in 2023.

This type of request does not generate financial reimbursement. But in the case of indigenous people, for example, they can represent a new stage in guaranteeing rights to these communities, with the rectification of documents, inclusion in the Unified Health System (SUS) or advances in the land demarcation process.

The general coordinator of Indigenous Social Rights at the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, Jecinaldo Sateré, described the persecution and torture suffered by the Krenak people during the dictatorship.

“During the military dictatorship, the Krenak people suffered torture, imprisonment, individuals were subjected to ill-treatment, forced labor and compulsory displacement from their territory. They suffered attacks resulting from the creation of the Indigenous Rural Guard. They were subjected to the installation of the Krenak Reformatory, a prison for indigenous people, and suffered forced displacement of indigenous people to the Guarani farm in the municipality of Carmenésia (MG), which also functioned as an arbitrary detention center after the extinction of the Krenak Reformatory”, he reported.

Krenak indigenous people have deep marks of violations suffered during the dictatorship

In the episode, in 1964, nine Chinese diplomats were detained, tortured, sentenced to prison and then expelled from Brazil based on a false accusation of “subversion”. They allegedly conspired against the newly installed military dictatorship, but this accusation was never proven.