Persecution without borders

“The arm of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” - Martin Luther King
Operation Condor, the 20th century’s largest transnational statesponsored terrorist coalition, came into being in South America during the bloody era of military dictatorships. Its very name would send shivers down the spine of thousands of exiled and persecuted political activists across the continent.
When this plan came to light, it shocked the world. In 1975, the United States and the military governments of Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia and Peru adopted a plan to share intelligence on opponents and arrange for them to be abducted, swapped, extradited and executed. This was Operation Condor. Some of the masterminds have been brought to trial in Argentina and Chile, and the long arm of the law is now reaching out to Brazil.
Brazil’s military junta seized power in 1964 and ruled the country till 1985, relying on terrorism and intimidation.
They could hardly imagine in those years that the wheel of history would one day mock them, as their surviving victims eventually rose to the top of the Brazilian political scene.
Fernando Cardoso, exiled by the junta, eventually returned to his country and was elected president in 1995. Luis Lula da Silva, a former political prisoner and leader of the Workers’ Party, succeeded him in 2003. And Dilma Rousseff, a former guerrilla imprisoned and tortured during military rule, won the Brazilian presidency earlier this year.
But a country’s return to democracy does not necessarily mean that justice will immediately be done to former leaders guilty of injustices toward their people. Before ceding power, Brazil’s military rulers enacted an amnesty law, absolving themselves of all responsibility for political persecution under the junta, particularly for their involvement in Operation Condor.
Brazil was something of a special case in the context of the Cold War. It was one of the few countries to maintain diplomatic relations with the U.S.S.R., something Washington viewed with concern. The Soviets believed there were no other “progressive” nations in Latin America besides Fidel Castro’s Cuba and the Brazil of Joao Goulart.
Brazil’s relations with the Soviet Union soured in the wake of the 1964 coup, and were not to return to normal until the ‘70s. This change of heart prompted many Brazilian communists to go into exile in Moscow.
But in 1975, as Condor’s sinister flights over Latin America began, Brazil’s generals made a pragmatic decision to restore their commercial ties with Moscow. Economic interests prevailed over ideology, and Soviet leaders turned a blind eye to the persecution of their Brazilian comrades.
To this day, not a single person has yet been convicted of human rights crimes under the Brazilian junta. More than 600 people were assassinated over that period and 150 others went missing; over 50,000 Brazilians were jailed, about 2,000 tortured, and some 10,000 went into exile. The figure may be much higher, but the generals refuse to open up military archives.
Brazil’s generals still wield so much clout that Lula did not dare create a truth commission similar to those established elsewhere in Latin America. But two weeks ago Rousseff finally signed into law a Truth Commission bill, yielding to pressure from the Workers’ Party.
But Rousseff also endorsed a bill that imposed a 50-year limit on access to classified dossiers – keeping the junta’s crimes secret until 2035. Brazil’s generals do not want the public to know that in 1964, they received instructions from U.S. President Lyndon Johnson to remove President Joao Goulart, known for being a Soviet sympathizer.
CIA Colonel Vernon Walters, the U.S. military attache to Brazil, drew up a coup plot and selected General Humberto Branco as its leader. The country was turned into a political persecution laboratory.
The CIA sent high-profile agent Daniel Mitrione to Rio de Janeiro, where he created a torture laboratory that used his infamous “dragon chair,” experimenting on homeless people. From 1964 onward, Brazilian agents would pass freely across Argentina, abducting opposition activists as they went.
But long before Operation Condor, Brazilian agents and diplomats were operating in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile and Bolivia, under the pretext of the struggle against Soviet communism. And it was their work that actually paved the way for future military coups across Latin America.
The question remains: Will the junta’s torture victims, the relatives of those missing and killed, be ever able to forgive and forget?
Vicky Pelaez is a Peruvian-born journalist. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own, and not necessarily those of The Moscow News.
Source http://themoscownews.com/international/20111201/189251006.html