Brazil nixes international debate of its amnesty law

Brazil on Monday ruled out any international discussion of its 1979 amnesty law exonerating those guilty of human rights violations during the 1964-1985 military dictatorship.
"We will not get involved in the debate on the amnesty law, either domestically or at the international level," said the minister in charge of human rights, Maria do Rosario.
She was signaling that the Brazilian government would not discuss the amnesty law, which allowed the return of exiled dissidents but also cleared military personnel who perpetrated torture and other abuses, at the upcoming session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Wednesday, President Dilma Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla who was tortured and jailed for nearly three years by the military in the 1970's, swore in a seven-member Truth Commission tasked with probing rights abuses perpetrated from 1946 to 1988, a time span exceeding the dictatorship.
The panel will over the next two years probe the disappearance of leftists opponents of the dictatorship and rights abuses but will not punish the perpetrators who are protected the amnesty law which was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2010.
Do Rosario said the truth panel would be presented in Geneva as "a major step forward" in Brazil's democratic process, but made clear that the amnesty law was "part of this process" of national reconciliation.
Unlike other South American countries ruled by right-wing dictatorships that committed political abuses and killings from the 1960s to the 1980s -- Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile -- Brazil has never put the perpetrators on trial.
The Brazilian government officially recognizes 400 dead and missing during the military dictatorship, compared with 30,000 in Argentina and more than 3,200 in Chile.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights in November 2010 dismissed Brazil's amnesty law as legally invalid, saying it was incompatible with the American Convention on Human Rights.