Torture is unpardonable and barbaric, says Rousseff

President Dilma Rousseff gave an interview to CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour on Thursday (July 10). Talking about her own past experience as a politically persecuted victim of Brazil's military dictatorship, the president said that torture is “unpardonable” and “barbaric”, and that it leads to a loss of human values and “all the gains we as human beings have established as civilization gains ever since we left the caves.” She told Amanpour about the cruelty she had to withstand during her three years' imprisonment, saying the experience taught her she ought to resist and made her realize that “only you can defeat yourself.”

Rousseff recalled she was subjected to such torture devices as the pau-de-arara – with the victim tied to hang from a horizontal pole placed behind their knees, with their wrists and their ankles tied together – and electric shocks. “It's not easy to tolerate torture – and you can only tolerate or put up with torture if you deliberately deceive yourself by telling yourself, 'well, a little bit more, yes, I can cope with that, I can also cope with a little bit more, a little bit more,'” she said.

Asked how this period shaped her world view, Rousseff replied, “Let me tell you one thing – above all, there's one thing tortured has led me to live life in a more intensive way – I'm talking about the absolute certainty that we in Brazil, we have succeeded in defeating those who engaged in acts of torture,” she said, explaining that it was not a personal victory, but a broader, nationwide victory that established democracy.

The president was subsequently confronted with the fact that 2,000 people were tortured and killed by police in Brazil in 2012. Rousseff said the federal- and state-level executive and justice systems must operate closer together in a more aligned manner and that Brazil's prison system needs to improve as there are prisoners being kept in sub-human conditions. “I believe we may have to revisit the current arrangement and revise the Constitution,” she added.

The president also told CNN that corruption must be dealt with with the utmost rigor, and listed such initiatives as the so-called Accountability Web Portal (Portal da Transparência) which discloses the government's spending, the Federal Comptroller-General's Office, and the full autonomy given to the Federal Police to investigate corruption concerns. “Now both sides, not only the corrupted, but also those who are corrupt, are liable and held criminally accountable before Justice, which I think is a major improvement,” she completed.

Translated by Mayra Borges