Relatives of dictatorship victims angered.by Lula's ban on remembrance events

Relatives of the victims of Brazil’s brutal two-decade dictatorship have voiced anger and dismay over President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ’s reported decision to block offi cial remembrance events marking the  60th anniversary of the 1964  military coup d’état.

- Tom Phillips

Activists had hoped the leftist government would mark tomorrow’s anniversary of that power-grab with a series of memorials honouring the thousands who were killed, disappeared or tortured by the 1964-85 regime.

The human rights minister, Silvio Almeida , had planned a ceremony and an awareness campaign with the slogan: “Without remembrance there is no future.”

But Lula reportedly scuppered those plans by giving explicit orders against such commemorations. The decision was seemingly intended to avoid irking military chiefs at a time when several senior military figures are facing jail for allegedly conspiring to stop Lula taking power after his 2022 election victory. That alleged plot culminated in the failed 8 January 2023 uprising, when backers of the former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed the presidential palace, congress and supreme court in Brasília.