Rio de Janeiro: Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff will be awarded 20,000 reais (USD 10,000) compensation from Rio de Janeiro state for being tortured during the country`s 1964-1985 dictatorship, a spokesman for the presidential office said on Friday.
Thomas Traumann said the President has decided to donate the money to human rights organisation, Tortuna Nunca Mais, with the English name "Torture Never Again”. During Brazil`s military dictatorship, Rousseff was a member of left-wing group VAR-Palmares. In 1970, she was arrested for subversion and subjected to torture by government agents. She was kept in prison for two-and-a-half-years in the states of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Minas Gerais. After requesting compensation in 2004 from the three states, she won the financial compensation from Rio this week, along with other 315 victims of torture and their families. The money will be paid in June and Rio`s government will organise a ceremony on June 04 to publicly apologise to the victims of torture. The Torture Never Again group was founded in 1985 by victims of torture and their families to denounce violence by the military regime and promote human rights. The compensation was announced in the same week when Rousseff publicised the names of the members of the Truth Commission, a group that will be in charge of investigating human rights violations in Brazil from 1946 to 1988.
Rousseff stressed that the Commission is not an instrument for revenge, but a way to find out the truth about what happened during the regime.
ANI