'History Is Being Severe' on Brazil's Coup Leaders: Rousseff

On Wednesday, former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff tore into the nation's current president, Michel Temer, and his administration during a speech in Brasilia.

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“History is being severe and implacable with the leaders of the coup,” Dilma said. She referred to “all of those who supported the coup, Aecio Neves, Eduardo Cunha, and everybody who sought my impeachment to destroy social rights and to 'stem the bleeding'"

“Stem the bleeding” means halting the Operation Car Wash corruption investigations and is a direct reference to a phrase used by lawmaker and former Planning Minister Romero Juca. Secretly recorded while under threat of being investigated for corruption, Juca told Sergio Machado, the former president of Transpetro, that a “change” in the federal government would result in a pact that would “stem the bleeding,” reported Folha de Sao Paulo.

Rousseff commented, “history has shown, day after day, that what was just speculation during the entire impeachment process, is now being confirmed. It's a fact, there was a coup in Brazil. It's also a fact that this coup, and the sectors that made it possible, are rapidly leading to ruin".

The former president warned the public to be “extremely vigilant” with the chain of events unfolding in the country. “Brazil has a tradition of intensifying, radicalizing, coups.”

Rousseff herself was a victim of imprisonment and torture under Brazil's military dictatorship. She recalled how the seizing of democracy in 1964 eventually “turned into a dictatorship that killed, tortured and exiled” its opponents after 1968.