Public Note #27 – In repudiation of Mourão’s statement praising Ustra

In this public note, the Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns Commission for the Defense of Human Rights – the Arns Commission – expresses its most vehement repudiation of the statement made by the Vice President of the Republic, Hamilton Mourão, in an interview with the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. Mourão stated that Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra was “a man of honor, who respected the human rights of his subordinates”. The words of the vice president, who is a retired army general, not only dishonor the Armed Forces but also harm the dignity of those who suffered at the hands of this torturer who was already condemned by the justice system.

It is not new that authorities from the current government extol the macabre figure of the former head of the DOI-Codi – Department of Information Operations-Center for Internal Defense Operations (Departamento de Operações de Informações - Centro de Operações de Defesa Interna, in Portuguese) from the 2nd Army, in São Paulo, and from whose basements emerged unforgettable reports of terror and sadism against Brazilian citizens. To get an idea of ​​the savagery that was authorized as a State policy between 1970 and 1974, the Justice and Peace Commission of the Archdiocese of São Paulo, led by Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns, patron of the Arns Commission, gathered more than 500 complaints of torture in the DOI-Codi headed by Ustra.

It took more than 30 years for Ustra to be recognized, finally in 2008, as the perpetrator of abduction and torture, in a declaratory suit filed by the Telles family, whose members were able to survive to bear witness to the cruelties perpetrated by this army officer and his “subordinates”, in the basements of the dictatorship.

Today, and in years to come, paying homage to this violator of the Constitutional Charter of 1967/1969, the Military Penal Code of 1969, and the Geneva Conventions of 1949 is and will be unacceptable, as documented in the Report of the National Truth Commission (Comissão Nacional da Verdade – CNV, in Portuguese).

By expressing such praise, Hamilton Mourão defiles, from the outset, the honor of Brazilian military servicemen and women. In doing so as vice president, he embarrasses the Nation and disrespects the memory of those who fell under Ustra. Moreover, by insisting on revering the executioner, he once again violates the decorum of the office in which he was invested under oath to respect the Constitution. And it is the Constitution that teaches us that: “Torture is a non-bailable crime and shall not be subject to grace or amnesty”.

Image: Jornalistas Livres