Workers persecuted during dictatorship profiled in amnesty report

The Amnesty Commission delivered a report to the São Paulo State Truth Commission on Wednesday (Nov. 5) with profiles of 80 city workers who faced political persecution during the military dictatorship and until 1988. The workers reported their cases to the Amnesty Commission for appreciation and were all granted amnesty.

The Amnesty Commission was established by the Ministry of Justice to consider compensation claims filed by people who were barred from working for purely political reasons. Rodrigo Lentz, researcher and report coordinator, said the Amnesty Commission received 74,000 applications for political amnesty. Out of this total, 7,518 cases are from São Paulo, 1,345 of which were considered and granted amnesty. “We selected 180 of these cases that had already been approved and archived. Our focus was on urban workers who were granted amnesty in the state of São Paulo,” Lentz said.

The report looks into such details as age, gender, and political activism by the workers and the persecutory actions taken against them, including dates and places where they were committed, who committed them, and the agencies involved. A total 27 forms of persecution were identified. The most common was termination of employment, which was used as a repression tool in nearly half of the cases.

Among the 180 workers analyzed by the report, 93% are men, and 47% are union members. Lenice Azevedo, from Alagoas, had a blue-collar job in the metalworking industry. She was fired after leading a strike and her name was included in a sort of “blacklist” of industries in São Paulo. “She was monitored by police until 1989,  according to a report of the National Intelligence Service [the SNI, an intelligence agency which was used for repression in the dictatorship]. It is striking that out of the 12 women in the list, seven were union members,” Lentz said.

The head of the State Truth Commission, Deputy Adriano Diogo, said the report is “crucial” and might be incorporated in a final document the State Truth Commission is working on.

“We asked them [the Amnesty Commission] to select the names of those affected in São Paulo, workers from diverse sectors, military, peasants, and others. With these profiles we will be able to detect the kind of abuse they were exposed to and the locations [they took place],” said Ivan Seixas, another member of the State Truth Commission.

“This report is critical [and] clearly shows how official Brazilian agencies managed to set up a large network to hurt people they regarded as a threat to national security,” said Paulo Abrão, chairman of the Amnesty Commission. He said other reports drafted by the Amnesty Commission have already been provided to state-level Truth Commissions in Paraná and Rio de Janeiro.

Translated by Mayra Borges