PAD: Comment Concerning the National Comittee fot Truth

The Process of Networking and Dialogue between ecumenical agencies and partner organizations in Brazil, representatives of ecumenical organizations, social movements and non-governmental organizations is centered on the cause of Human Rights in all aspects, in its relation with development.

We recognize progress such as the implementation of the Amnesty Committee and the Caravans which have permitted the Brazilian state to judge and acknowledge cases of human rights violations during the military dictatorship.
In Brazil today the debate about, the National Committee for Truth and its range in content and time, is in the spotlight.

With the Committee of Truth it is necessary to recover what the military dictatorship meant, the laws of exception, the institutionalizing of torture in Brazil, the ample violations of Human Rights. To recover the truth is to register this period and its consequences, which necessarily implies opening the archives in a commitment towards the search and identification of the bodies and mortal remains of the political disappeared.

Recovering the truth also means that the public power assumes responsibility for the crimes. The truth must come with justice.

It is necessary to overcome the Brazilian tradition of conciliation with the elite, who’s consequences have been the perpetuation of impunity for the agents of State crimes. That is what happened with the New State, whose crimes have neither been investigated nor punished and it has been this way since the end of the military regime in 1964. One of the results of this impunity has been the continuation of the violence against popular leaderships and the general use of torture as a interrogatory method in politic precincts.

It is necessary speed up the full fulfillment of the verdict given by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, OEA, which condemned the Brazilian state about the matters involving the Araguaia Guerrilla. It is necessary to remove the obstacles to the criminal investigations about all cases of political dead and disappeared in Brazil.

PAD understands that this cause should not be restricted to the Committee of Human Rights and Family members of the victims of the military dictatorship. The Committee of Truth is the appropriate place for the government and civil society to meet each other in demands of a full accomplishment of a State of Rights.

Redeeming memory is acknowledging Rights, Life and Justice!