RIGHTS-LATIN AMERICA: Pinochet Case Reopens Old Wounds in Brazil

By Clarinha Glock Reprint | | Print |

Clarinha Glock

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Nov 8 1998 (IPS) - The arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London has reopened old wounds in Brazil, whose nationals were both perpetrators and victims of human rights abuses in Chile.

In 1973, when Pinochet violently overthrew the government of Salvador Allende, at least five Brazilians were detained and killed in Santiago. Others remain missing.

“Pinochet’s arrest confirms that genocide, extermination and crimes against humanity were committed in the 1970s and 1980s,” journalist Nilson Mariano said in Porto Alegre, capital of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Mariano, who has 18 years experience as a reporter, published a book titled ‘Operation Condor’ on the network formed by the security forces of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay – then ruled by military governments – to crack down on opposition in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Portuguese version of the book, originally published in Spanish, was launched this week in Porto Alegre.

It tells how Operation Condor spread the practice of state terrorism throughout the Southern Cone of the Americas. “The borders of the countries were knocked down for hunting opponents of the military dictatorships,” said Mariano.

The attempt by Spanish prosecutor Baltasar Garzon to have Pinochet tried in Spain reopens the possibility of unearthing information on the participation of Brazil and other countries in Operation Condor.

The Chilean state body commissioned with investigating the political crimes admitted that Brazilian police interrogated and tortured prisoners in Chile’s National Stadium, which was converted into a concentration camp in the wake of the military coup in 1973.

Mariano’s book mentions five Brazilian victims of the Chilean dictatorship, who were living in exile in Santiago after fleeing the de facto military regime that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 85.

The list includes Luiz Carlos Almeida, a former university student in the University of Sao Paulo, and Vanio Jose de Matos, former captain of the Public Force, the Sao Paulo military police.

Almeida, who supposedly joined the Chilean Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), was tortured and shot, and his body was thrown into the Mapocho river, near Santiago.

Matos, who had been active in a guerrilla group in Brazil, was tortured to death in the National Stadium. The Chilean government pays his family an indemnity of 100 dollars a month.

Nelson de Souza Kohl, then aged 33, was detained by the Chilean Air Force on Sep. 15, 1973 in Santiago. He is considered disappeared, because although his family found a death certificate, they never found his body.

Jane Vanini, who was 29 and an active member of MIR, had been living in exile in Chile since 1971. She was shot at point-blank range on Dec. 7, 1974. Her remains, too, have never been found, nor have those of Tulio Roberto Cardoso Quintiliano, a former engineering student shot dead by a firing squad on Sep. 12, 1973.

The deaths of the five Brazilians were recognised by the Chilean government in 1993, and their families have the right to a life pension from Santiago, according to Deputy Nilmario Miranda, a member of the Human Rights Commission of the Brazilian House of Representatives.

In a message to Garzon, in which they expressed support for a Pinochet trial in Spain, the Brazilian Movement for Justice and Human Rights (MJDH) and the Chilean group For Life and Justice, which links Chileans living in Porto Alegre, mentioned three other Brazilians killed in Chile: Antenor Machado dos Santos, Nilton Rosa da Silva and Sergio Morais.

The groups argue that the killing of the three should be added to the crimes against humanity for which Pinochet is responsible.

“The action of the Spanish judiciary is legitimated by international treaties and conventions signed by Spain and Great Britain as well as by Chile itself,” said Jair Krishke, president of MJDH.

On Thursday, Tarso Genro, a former mayor of Porto Alegre, submitted a report and documents on Brazilians tortured and killed in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship to Judge Garzon in Madrid.