Feb 09 2024 | Nº. 103

Editorial

This week we saw another explosive development in the investigation into the largely undemocratic acts that culminated in the insurrection carried out by former President Jair Bolsonaro and his allies on January 8, 2022. The new developments come to light shortly after last week's bombshell revelations, when Bolsonaro's summer home in Angra dos Reis was the target of a search and seizure operation involving the misuse of Brazil's intelligence agency, ABIN.

On Thursday, February 8, Federal Supreme Court minister Alexandre de Moraes unsealed a decision of over 130 pages, outlining, among other things, wide-ranging operational requests made by the Federal Police (PF), Brazil’s FBI equivalent. Thursday morning’s actions included 33 raids, 4 arrests—including of Filipe Martins, a close Bolsonaro aide with ties to Steve Bannon and other far-right actors abroad, and Valdemar da Costa Neto, the head of Bolsonaro’s political party—and 48 other preventative measures, such as the apprehension of Bolsonaro’s passport. The remarkable takeaway from Thursday’s developments is that the investigations seem, if anything, to be accelerating. 

As expected, Bolsonaro’s inner circle was quick to dismiss these developments as further evidence of a political witch hunt against the former president facilitated by the Supreme Court (STF). Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, another of the president’s sons, lamented that “politics in Brazil today is crafted in the Supreme Court.” The former first lady tweeted out a religious message while Senator Damares Alves, Bolsonaro’s former minister of human rights, issued a strong statement: “This morning there is no feeling other than indignation, but we cannot say that we are surprised. We know how the mechanism works. Many didn't believe us when we said it, and now they're seeing it all happen. May God have mercy on our country.” 

The challenge for the former president is that the PF seems to have amassed considerable evidence that the former president and those close to him conspired for months with the explicit aim of undermining and overruling the result of the 2022 presidential election. It will be hard, in other words, for the former president to deny his abiding hostility to the will of the people. Some of the evidence collected, for example, is a video recording of Bolsonaro meeting with close advisors to map out how a coup would take place.

The silver lining of these investigations is that they indicate a level of ineptitude within the Bolsonaro camp that belies the former president’s tough talk about attacking the bases of Brazilian democracy. One of the pieces of evidence collected by the FP, for example, is video footage of Bolsonaro and close advisors gathering for a meeting with “coup-plotting dynamics” in which a Bolsonaro-aligned general promised to mobilize active-duty troops in major cities to assure the success of a potential coup. The investigations are also likely to scramble Bolsonaro’s political coalition, with concerns raging about where investigators might go next. One thing is clear as events unfold: the former president is in even more trouble than maybe he even realized a month ago.

Highlights

• WHAT IS THE OPERATION. The Federal Police operation called Tempus Veritatis is investigating the existence of a criminal organization formed by members of the Jair Bolsonaro government who aimed to carry out a coup d'état and establish a dictatorship in Brazil. The group, made up of members of the military and civilians, wanted to arrest at least one Supreme Court justice, annul the 2022 elections, and keep Bolsonaro illegally in power. To this end, the group disseminated false information that the elections had been rigged and that the Brazilian Electoral Court was at the service of Lula's party, the PT (Workers' Party).

• WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE? One of the most important documents in this investigation is the draft of a coup d'état decree that had been found in a search and seizure operation carried out in January 2023 at the home of Anderson Torres, Bolsonaro's former minister of justice. Until today, Bolsonaro and his ministers have denied having any relationship to this document, which, in short, detailed the step-by-step plan of a military intervention to be carried out in the country after Lula's victory. Although Bolsonaro denied participation in elaborating the document, new evidence shows the opposite: the former president discussed the terms of the decree with two of his civilian advisors: Filipe Martins, who was arrested in the operation, and Amauri Feres Saad. Among this new evidence is the testimony to the court by Army Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, who was arrested and entered into a plea bargain agreement with the Court. In the files of Bolsonaro's former aide-de-camp, recordings were found of meetings in which Bolsonaro and his advisors discussed the terms of the coup draft.

• THE MILITARY INVOLVED. In addition to Cid, there are 15 other military personnel involved, including retired Army Generals Walter Braga Netto, who had been the presidential chief of staff and was then a candidate for vice-president on Bolsonaro's ticket; Augusto Heleno, former head of the then president's Institutional Security Office and former commander of  the United Nations Mission for the Stabilization of Haiti (MINUSTAH) during the Lula government; the former Army commander and former Minister of Defense Paulo Sérgio Nogueira; and Estevam Cals Theóphilo Gaspar de Oliveira, former head of the Army's Land Operations Command; in addition to the admiral and former Navy commander Almir Garnier Santos.

• FUGITIVE IN THE USA. One of the members of the conspiracy, Brazilian Army Colonel Bernardo Romão Corrêa Netto, had an arrest warrant issued during the operation, but is traveling in the United States. He is accused of having used Army Special Forces techniques in the invasion of the headquarters of Congress, the Supreme Court and the Presidential Palace on January 8, 2022. Technically, Corrêa Netto (not to be confused with Braga Netto) is considered a fugitive from justice.

• THE ACTIONS OF THE MILITARY. In an exchange of text messages, Braga Netto appears to have called the then Army commander, General Freire Gomes (Nogueira's successor in the position), a “coward” (cagão), for not having made troops available for the coup. Braga Netto also exchanged messages criticizing the current Army commander, General Tomás Paiva, for having opposed the coup. It seems that Paiva went to the house of General Villas-Bôas – a retired soldier who was a military commander in the Amazon and was a strong figure of Bolsonarism in the barracks – to say that the coup confabulations were a “clueless” adventure.

• WHAT IS BOLSONARO'S SITUATION? Bolsonaro was ordered by the court to hand over his passport. He was prohibited from leaving the country. The leader of the Brazilian extreme right had already been convicted by the Electoral Court for having disseminated false information about the Brazilian electoral system to foreign ambassadors, when he was still president. This conviction made Bolsonaro ineligible to hold a public office until 2030.

• TWO OTHER FIGURES. One of those detained was Filipe Martins, one of the most important public figures among youth who support Bolsonaro youth and former special advisor to Bolsonaro. He is known for his close relationship with Steve Bannon, for spreading ambiguous messages about neo-Nazism, and for public attacks on civil society organizations that worked against the coup, including the WBO. According to the Federal Police, it was Martins who presented Bolsonaro with the draft of the decree that would have declared a coup d'état and a state of exception in Brazil. Another important prisoner is Valdemar da Costa Neto, an experienced right-wing politician, who presides over the Liberal Party (PL), to which Bolsonaro is affiliated. Costa Neto was arrested because the police found a firearm on him without the politician having authorization to have it.

NEWS FROM WBO, ORGANIZATIONS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS:

INTERNATIONAL TRANSPARENCY. Federal Supreme Court Justice Dias Toffoli authorized the investigation of Transparência Internacional Brasil on suspicion that the organization had received public resources from leniency agreements signed by Brazilian companies in the context of Operation Greenfield, which investigated the embezzlement of pension funds. The organization responded by saying that it did not receive funds, but only produced studies for the Public Prosecutor’s Office with suggestions of good international practices for the allocation of funds of this type. Toffoli's decision was taken without the votes of the other members of the Supreme Court, contrary to an opinion issued by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and days after Transparency International had published a study critical of the government.

PACT FOR DEMOCRACY. The network that brings together 200 Brazilian civil society organizations in defense of democracy will hold a meeting on February 22 in Brasília to share and define action strategies with the executive, legislative and judiciary powers for 2024. Those interested in participating need to fill out a registration form available on the Pact for Democracy website.

NEW AFFILIATES. In recent days, WBO celebrated the affiliation of two new partner organizations: Instituto Pólis and Renova BR, the 56th and 57th organizations respectively. Pólis was created in 1987 to defend the "right to the city," which implies the construction of fairer, sustainable, and democratic cities. Renova BR is a non-profit, non-partisan political training school, created to train political leaders and improve democracy and public management in Brazil. See all 57 WBO affiliates.

ODARA INSTITUTE. The organization Odara – Instituto da Mulher Negra published a statement this week in which criticizes the behavior of President Lula, who, at an event held at Volkswagen in São Bernardo do Campo, referred to a young black woman who was on stage as “of African descent (who) likes the beat of a drum.” The president also said he thought the young woman was “someone’s girlfriend.” Luiza Eduarda Leôncio, aged 20, is a Volkswagen specialist operator and was on stage at an award ceremony in recognition of her services as a student apprentice at the company. The Odara Institute criticized the president, saying that “it is not surprising that a white man on the Left wants us to play the drum or sees us as someone's girlfriend-accessory”.

Feature Article

By Paulo Lugon Arantes*

Perspectives for a Brazilian Human Rights Agenda in 2024 – The Challenges and Value of the Domestic Experience

In 2024, Brazil begins an international agenda in human rights, development, and social issues full of opportunities and challenges. Having resisted an attempted military coup in 2023, despite facing a very conservative agenda at home, gives the country an image of solidity. The image of President Lula, walking hand in hand with members of the three Powers at the Planalto Palace, is historic and has a positive international impact, demonstrating unity, dialogue and strength.

Brazil will also have challenges ahead in the international arena, particularly in an increasingly polarized world, reminiscent of the Cold War. To understand these challenges, it is important to remember that, upon leaving its own dictatorial regime and redemocratizing, the country promptly adhered to human rights treaties and ensured success in the difficult negotiation of the 1993 Vienna Declaration, which remodeled the UN architecture in human rights. In this context, the country reaffirms the universality and interdependence of human rights in a gesture of non-automatic alignment. Thus, it ratified, almost at the same time, the two UN International Covenants: on economic, social and cultural rights; and on civil and political rights, two instruments adopted separately due to the obvious ideological divisions at the time. This touchstone guides Brazilian diplomacy and reflects on its reputation as an honest broker between the global North and South and in the various human rights debates.

In Geneva, Brazil regained a seat as a member of the Human Rights Council in 2024. Brazil was one of the great promoters of the creation of this new reinforced body in 2006, amid complaints regarding the selectivity of the old Commission. Still in the Council, Brazil has a difficult position to mitigate this selectivity, prioritizing dialogue and cooperation and avoiding mere political condemnation.

Later this year, Brazil assumed the presidency of the G-20, with a strong agenda to combat poverty and gender disparities, with several meetings scheduled to take place in Teresina, Rio de Janeiro and Brasília. In 2024 it encouraged the expansion of BRICS to include Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Iran and Ethiopia, in a proposal for a new economic order, that is more inclusive, fair, and supportive.

Brazil's difficult task is to maintain a certain political coherence in a universe of such varied partners in a situation of enormous global polarization. For example, the interests of the BRICs members, as a bloc, are not fully transposed to the Human Rights Council. An investigative mechanism regarding Russia was implemented in Geneva. China and India have a principled position against country investigations, with Brazil not having such an automatic position, although it exercises great caution on this issue. For the March session, debates are scheduled in Geneva on the situation in Iran, Russia and Palestine (this is a fixed item on the Council's agenda). In the region, there will be the issue of Nicaragua and Venezuela, where Bolsonarist diplomacy adopted an automatic alignment. At the same time, Brazil supports, with the BRICS, processes important to global human rights debates, such as the new treaty on the right to development (led by the G77), the brand-new mechanism on peasants' rights and the resolution on international solidarity.

The scope and diversity of the resolutions led alone by Brazil or together with other countries demonstrates, from another perspective, its challenges. Brazil is part of the group that developed the resolution on sexual orientation and gender identity (OSIG) and the resolution on the right to privacy in the digital age, and it also leads the resolution on the right to health, trying to show the world that there are no irreconcilable issues. For example, the current UN rapporteur on the right to health, Tlaleng Mofokeng, through her current work, demonstrates that, yes, it is possible (and necessary) to integrate OSIG, racism, gender and the right to health, bridging an artificial abyss that is residue of the Cold War, and demonstrated that rights should not be treated in silos.

Obviously, Brazil does not intend to systematically adhere the positions of all of its partners, from the global North and South. The inevitable inconsistencies and gaps are part of the diplomatic exercise itself, the result of the search for what is possible within each negotiation. The important thing is to analyze how the country introjects and validates these encounters and disagreements, according to its own society. Brazilian civil society has a well-defined concept of foreign policy as public policy.

Brazil also has the challenge of continuing to set an example in granting humanitarian visas, this time for the Palestinians, in response to the UN's calls for the international community to cooperate with the humanitarian situation in that country.

The 55th Session of the Human Rights Council, which begins on February 26th, will be attended by Minister Sílvio Almeida for the High-Level Segment, which will expose to the international community the actions of the first year of Lula's government and the vision of the country as a new member of the Council.

Brazil’s best positioning comes from its own internal experience. Brazil has historically led the UN resolution on the incompatibility between democracy and racism, resulting in a seminal study by the then rapporteur on racism, Doudou Diène. The topic is more than current and necessary, with the sharp rise of the extreme right at home, in the Americas and in Europe, with worrying polls about the future composition of the European Parliament and the possible future governments of its member countries. The resilience of January 8th has enormous potential to be transmuted into a difficult, and therefore realistic and positive, internal practice.

* is a jurist, expert in the international protection of human rights and coordinator of the WBO (Washington Brazil Office) Europe Program. He has a bachelor's degree in Legal Sciences from the Federal University of Espírito Santo, UFES (1999); LL.M. in International and European Protection of Human Rights from the University of Utrecht (2003); and a doctorate with a focus on racial discrimination from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (2019). He is currently a professor, consultant, and reviewer with extensive work in the UN Human Rights Protection system.

Feature articles express the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or WBO.