Brazil’s Truth Commission produced is report on human rights abuses committed by members of the military, government, and private companies during the two decades of military rule from 1964 to 1985.  Commissioners were clear to recommend changes to an amnesty law so that the criminals can be brought to trial.

“Under the military dictatorship, repression and the elimination of political opposition was because of the policy of the state, conceived and implemented based on decisions by the president of the republic and military ministers,” the commission concludes.

President Dilma Rousseff, herself a former Marxist rebel who was tortured by the police during her three year imprisonment in the 1970s, wept at the accounts of systematic murder, torture and other abuses.  At least 191 people were killed, and 243 were “disappeared” – 200 were never found. 

The 2,000-page report names 377 officials, including some generals, who committed the atrocities and says the 100 who are still alive today must be prosecuted for their crimes.  Unlike other criminals of the Cold War era, Brazil’s military murderers and torturers were protected by a 1979 amnesty law passed by the junta that protected them from most future prosecution.

The report also awarded a share of the blame to the prime enablers of fascism and militarism in South America during the era from the 1960s through the 1980s.  The United States and United Kingdom propped up abusive, evil military dictatorships in the name of fighting Communism.  Those major powers trained Brazilian and other Latin American interrogators in torture.