One of the unanticipated aspects of state-sponsored torture that those guilty of it do not consider is the possibility of reparations. That certainly didn't happen in the case of Brazil's military dictatorship, but the current civilian government is paying the price for some measure of justice:
Thirty-four years after being tortured by the military dictatorship in Brazil, a retired United Methodist pastor is receiving both monetary compensation and a formal request for forgiveness.
The Rev. Frederick Birten Morris, 74, who now resides in Panama, will be paid 285,000 Brazilian reais-more than $122,000 in U.S. dollars-along with a monthly pension of 2,000 reais, about $900.
The award comes from the Brazil Justice Ministry's Amnesty Commission, which also invited Morris and 12 other survivors to participate in a Sept. 26 event in the capital city of Brasilia.
More important than the money to Morris was the fact that the Brazilian government formally asked for forgiveness.
"I don't know of any government that's ever done that," Morris told United Methodist News Service in an Oct. 7 telephone interview.
As the article notes, Morris had been working with Dom Helder Camara, the Archbishop of Recife and apparently this was the motivation for his diappearance and torture:
He never found out who made false accusations against him to the military. "That's one of the best arguments I know for the U.S. not using torture as a means of stamping out terrorism," he said. "People will say anything you want to hear."
During the same period, Time magazine published a positive story about the archbishop and his struggle for human rights for people of Brazil. "They knew in their investigation that I was a stringer for Time and The Associated Press ... so they assumed I wrote the story," he said.
Morris had several meetings that summer with military intelligence and thought they were satisfied of his innocence-until he was abducted on Sept. 30. "They waited until the archbishop left the country," Morris recalled. "He went to Rome for a synod meeting."
As the article also notes, Morris wrote an account of his torture for Time magazine, a link to which can be found here.
While the compensation and acknowledgment is encouraging, where Brazil has been a significant disappointment is the utter lack of prosecution of any of those responsible for the atrocities committed during the dictatorship.
One wonders if the Bush administration's enhanced interrogation techniques torture policies will result in our awarding compensation for the victims at some point in the future. Unfortunately the Torture Victim's Protection Act would only applies to torture committed outside of the United States. That probably saves Bush some potential embarrassment as it would be even more embarrassing to have his administration sued under a law signed by his father . . .
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