Ref:  Untuk melihat video-footage, click link :  
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2013/04/201341014723459696.html

Selain itu juga : Socrates and the Corinthians' Democracy  :  
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/footballrebels/2013/03/2013312145718474996.html
     
     
     


      People & Power  
     
      All the President's Torturers  
     
      Can Brazil shake off the murky past of its security forces as it attempts 
to cement its place as a 21st century power? 
      People and Power Last Modified: 11 Apr 2013 21:04  



Chosen to host both the 2014 football World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games and 
with abundant natural resources and one of the fastest growing economies in the 
world, one way or another Brazil is set to become a major player in the affairs 
of the 21st century.

With an ambitious, progressive government, a population of around 193 million, 
now well established federal democratic structures and apparent political 
stability, many even see it as a global superpower in the making, perhaps even 
deserving of a permanent seat on the UN Security Council in the not too distant 
future.

But its solid international reputation has not always been so glossy.

Between 1964 and 1985, Brazil was ruled by a military regime that was 
frequently accused - both at home and abroad - of serious human rights abuses.

Those were the dark days when many of the government's left-wing political 
opponents, often at the behest of the US, were suppressed, when the aspirations 
of its indigenous people were generally ignored and when economic mismanagement 
and widespread corruption, still something of a problem today, hindered the 
country's development.

Much has since been done to remedy those problems, but for Brazil to 
confidently take up its place on the world stage in this century, it needs to 
deal with the legacy of the last - especially with regard to the savage 
political repression that was such a dominant theme of the 1970s. 

This is why Dilma Rousseff, the president of Brazil, signed legislation on May 
16, 2012, to create an organisation with a truly remarkable brief. In front of 
an invited audience in the country's capital Brasilia, she described how a new 
public body - the Truth Commission - would have responsibility for 
investigating the abuses committed by the former military regime and uncovering 
all the facts of what had happened for the public and generations to come.

And nobody deserved the truth more, she added, than the loved ones of those who 
had lost their lives and “ who continue suffering as if they were dying over 
and over again, every day.”

If President Rousseff seemed visibly moved when speaking these last words, it 
was perhaps understandabl as she herself is a former left-wing militant and had 
been detained and tortured by the regime's security police - one of an 
estimated 50,000 people who were imprisoned, abused or murdered during those 
years. 

However, wanting to establish the truth is not the same as actually doing so. 
As the Truth Commission began work, it publicly invited former members of the 
security forces to take part and collaborate with the inquiry. But fearful, 
perhaps understandably, of reprisals or legal retribution and still bound by 
loyalty to their colleagues and the old regime, no one came forward.

Until very recently, that is.

Earlier this year, a former police inspector, Claudio Antonio Guerra, turned up 
at a closed meeting of the commission and declared his willingness to give 
testimony.

Then he began to tell a remarkable story. It was the same story he had just 
spent several weeks sharing secretly with People & Power filmmaker Rodrigo 
Vasquez.

In March 1964, when a military coup overthrew Joao Goulart, Brazil's then 
democratically elected president, Guerra was a young police officer. Even as 
the armed forces were taking over the government, it was setting up underground 
paramilitary groups to eliminate dissent among the civilian population.

One of these secret units was to be run by Guerra - and he and his men were 
given the specific mission of assassinating and 'disappearing' political 
opponents.

Once the leader of one of the most lethal death squads in Brazil, a man with a 
licence to kill, he has since become a convert to evangelical Christianity and 
now wants to expiate his sins. His shocking confession, the subject of this 
special two part People & Power investigation, reveals how the agents of a 
murderous regime tortured and killed Brazilians for almost 40 years.

Editor's note: The second part of this investigation will be shown from April 
17.

     People & Power can be seen each week at the following times GMT: 
Wednesday: 2230; Thursday: 0930; Friday: 0330; Saturday: 1630; Sunday: 2230; 
Monday: 0930.

      Click here for more People & Power
     


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