Public Note #30 – In defense of the Committee for the Prevention and Combat of Torture

The Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns Commission for the Defense of Human Rights – the Arns Commission – goes public to denounce the recent appointments made by the Bolsonaro government for two coordination positions at the National Committee for the Prevention and Combat of Torture (Comitê Nacional de Prevenção e Combate à Tortura – CNPCT, in Portuguese), which is subordinated to the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights. Such choices constitute yet another authoritarian gesture in the sense of militarizing and controlling a public civil structure, deviating it from its original purposes.

In 1984, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which came into force in 1987 and was ratified by Brazil in 1989. As a civilizatory framework, the Convention developed the concept of “crime of torture” and defined mechanisms for its prevention. In 2007, Brazil also ratified the optional protocol of the aforementioned Convention, assuming obligations agreed between countries.

One of the main attributions of the CNPCT, in concert with the aforementioned Convention, is to guarantee the functioning of the National Mechanism for the Prevention and Combat of Torture, created by a legislative decree in 2006, promulgated in 2007 and replicated in the states.

However, the National Mechanism has been targeted by Jair Bolsonaro since the beginning of his administration, when the president issued a decree to transform the authorities of this body into voluntary actors without technical and operational resources to investigate human rights abuses in the country. The request for the suspension of this decree, as unconstitutional, was presented to the Federal Supreme Court by the former Attorney General of the Republic (Procuradora Geral da República – PGR, in Portuguese), Raquel Dodge.

Now, two military members with no competence in human rights are being appointed to the coordination of the CNPCT, one of whom is recognized as a shooting instructor and the other as a supporter of far-right theses. Thus, the president who celebrates torturers insists on imposing his negationist ideology on the legal-institutional system of human rights protection in Brazil. Therefore, in this public declaration, the Arns Commission also urges society to defend a universal principle: human rights backsliding is unacceptable.