The Brazilian state issues official apology five decades after Vladimir Herzog’s murder.

On Tuesday, the administration of President Lula da Silva announced that the Brazilian state will compensate the children of journalist Vladimir Herzog, who was killed on the orders of the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985.

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Ivo and Andre Herzog were also recognized as “political amnesty recipients” and will receive about US$18,000 each, along with an official apology from Brazilian authorities.

The Vladimir Herzog Institute welcomed the Lula administration’s announcement as “an essential step in the process of reparations for the serious violations committed during the dictatorship.”

The official apology acknowledges that political violence leaves “deep, intergenerational scars,” the Herzog Institute said, noting that the consequences of the political crime marked the family for decades.

In early 2023, shortly after taking office, Lula reactivated the Amnesty Commission, a body tasked with reviewing cases of political persecution that had fallen into neglect during the presidency of far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022).

Later, in 2024, Lula da Silva granted similar recognition to Herzog’s widow, Clarice, who fought throughout her life in the search for justice.

Legislator Carlos Minc’s text reads, “Dictatorship, never again! How moving! In Sao Paulo, during the memorial service for Vladimir Herzog, to the sound of the emblematic song ‘Cálice,’ a screen displayed the artists and journalists who were imprisoned, tortured, and censored during the dictatorship. Names such as Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque (exiled and censored), as well as Vladimir Herzog and so many others who fell in love with democracy, appeared there. It’s chilling. Unfortunately, I lived through this experience in the dictatorship’s prisons. I was tortured like so many young people of my generation who resisted. I saw terrible things: a pregnant woman being punched in the stomach to force her husband to confess, people dying on the torture rack. Scenes that are never forgotten. But we resisted. And, as the title of the film says, ‘We’re Still Here.’ We resist with dignity against those who defend the past of dictatorship and torture. We resist against those who, not long ago, tried to stage a coup to revive these criminal and atrocious practices. Never again!“

Born in the former Yugoslavia, Vladimir Herzog was one of the executives of the public broadcaster TV Cultura. In 1975, military authorities summoned him to give testimony over his alleged ties to the Brazilian Communist Party.

After reporting to an interrogation center in Sao Paulo, Herzog was detained, tortured and killed. The dictatorship claimed the journalist had committed suicide and released images showing him with a rope around his neck, though his feet were touching the ground.

The killing sparked a wave of outrage and led to one of the first major protests against the military regime, which ended in 1985 following indirect democratic elections.

teleSUR/ JF

Sources: EFE

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