Vladimir Herzog died in military custody nearly 30 years ago in what remains one of the most notorious cases of human rights abuse in Brazil. Now the publication of a pair of photographs said to have been taken in his last hours has reopened that old wound and widened differences between the armed forces and the left-wing government that is now in office here.
The army's attempt, decades after the episode, to justify its treatment of Herzog and several hundred other political prisoners has enraged public opinion here. Though President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has moved to discipline the army, the resurfacing of the case has also exposed other violations that may prove harder to address.
"The immediate political problem may have been resolved, but the deeper one has not," Joao Luiz Pinaud, president of the government's Special Commission on the Death and Disappearance of Political Prisoners, said. "The residue of an authoritarian system is still there, concealed in the shadows."
In interviews last week, the military intelligence agent who supplied the photographs, Jose Alves Firmino, has also raised eyebrows by saying that military intelligence continued clandestinely to spy on left-wing parties and politicians, unions and social movements long after military rule ended. He said that during the mid-1990s he even monitored da Silva's activities, offering a photograph of himself with the future president as proof.
Herzog, a Sao Paulo television journalist, was summoned for questioning at intelligence headquarters there on Oct. 25, 1975, on suspicion that he had Communist ties, the government has said. He died the same day after being tortured. The military called his death a suicide, and made public a photograph, later proved to have been staged, that showed Herzog hanging from a belt in his cell.
His death became a symbol of the military dictatorship's excesses, though an amnesty precluded any attempt to bring those responsible to justice. But the Herzog case has been addressed in books, films and television programs over the years, and when the Brasilia daily Correio Braziliense learned that photographs of Herzog, jailed, naked and in despair had been found in the archives of a congressional committee, where they had been sent by Firmino some years ago, it interviewed him and made them public.
The armed forces maintains that all relevant official documents about human rights abuses were legally destroyed after civilian democratic rule was restored in 1985. But Firmino says they are part of a trove of 50,000 documents that a military officer gave him a few years ago.
Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed “Donald Trump” that is due to be sacrificed within days. Owner Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, said his brother named the 700kg bull over its flowing helmet of hair resembling the signature look of the US president. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo’s extraordinary hair,” he said at his farm in Narayanganj, just outside the capital, Dhaka. Mridha said that a constant stream of curious visitors — social media fans, onlookers and children — have come throughout
It began as a satirical online project. Now millions of young people in India are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration. A parody political party called the Cockroach Janta Party, with the insect as its symbol, has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humor into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach — known for its ability to survive harsh conditions — as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance. The online movement’s rise has been unusually rapid. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)
HOTTER: While Indians are accustomed to summer heat, climate change has caused northwestern India to warm faster than other parts of the country, an academic said Roads and markets have emptied during afternoons and some farmers have switched to nighttime work to avoid scorching temperatures as a heat wave grips large parts of India. The India Meteorological Department forecast maximum temperatures for yesterday of about 45°C in the capital, New Delhi, where authorities have opened temporary “cooling zones” to help people cope. The weather department warned that conditions would likely persist across several northern regions in the coming days, with temperatures staying well above seasonal averages. Authorities urged people to stay indoors during the hottest hours and take precautions against heat-related illnesses. India declares a heat wave whenever maximum temperatures
BIGGER ROLE: Beijing has said it maintains an impartial stance on the war in Ukraine, but by training Russian troops, China is far more involved than previously known China’s armed forces secretly trained about 200 Russian military personnel in China late last year, and some have since returned to fight in Ukraine, according to three European intelligence agencies and documents seen by Reuters. While China and Russia have held a number of joint military exercises since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Beijing has repeatedly said that it is neutral in the conflict and presents itself as a peace mediator. The covert training sessions, which predominantly focused on the use of drones, were outlined in a dual-language Russian-Chinese agreement signed by senior Russian and Chinese officers in Beijing on
RSS