Eduardo Bolsonaro Hints at Return of AI-5, One of Brazil’s Darkest Moments

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – Widespread criticism swept through Brazil on Thursday after lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro, one of the sons of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, suggested that if protesters took to the streets against his father’s administration, the government could adopt measures used during Brazil’s military dictatorship.

“Should a radicalization of the left occur, we will need to answer and the answer could come via ‘a new AI-5’,” said the younger Bolsonaro, when asked to comment on the recent political turbulence in neighboring countries Argentina and Chile

The mere mention of the Institutional Act Number 5, better known as the AI-5 decree, issued by Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1968, brought many Brazilians back to one of the country’s darkest hours. The decree marked the beginning of the regime’s most oppressive period, giving the military carte blanche to do ‘whatever necessary’ to halt opposition to or criticism of  the government.

Under AI-5, opposition lawmakers were expelled from Congress, judges were forced to step down, and students and University professors were jailed, tortured and forced into exile. Eventually the military government closed down the federal Congress, state legislatures and city councils.

Hundreds were arrested, denied habeas corpus and left incommunicado for weeks. Many simply disappeared.

Every newspaper in Brazil had a military censor inside their newsroom checking all stories being printed. Newspaper editors, trying to protest, would print poems and recipes in their daily’s front pages as a way to denounce the censorship.

The crackdown on dissenting voices would last for the next ten years, with the dictatorship issuing other measures following the AI-5 which further limited citizens’ liberties and attacked human rights.

“Fifty years ago, Brazil virtually legalized torture and censorship,” wrote João Ricardo Dornelles, law professor at Rio de Janeiro’s Catholic University and a member of the Rio de Janeiro Truth Commission at the end of 2018 at the 50th anniversary of the implementation of the measure.

“While repression and persecution had existed since the beginning of the dictatorship in 1964, the AI-5 installed a true terrorist state, increasing the practice of torture, deaths, executions and disappearances,” added Dornelles.

On Thursday, hundreds of enraged Brazilians took to social media to condemn Bolsonaro’s statement.

“Demonstrations such as that of Mr. Eduardo Bolsonaro are repugnant, from a democratic point of view, and have to be repelled with as much indignation as possible by Brazilian institutions,” stated Lower House President, Rodrigo Maia, on his Twitter account. Maia’s father, Cesar, was tortured during the dictatorship and forced into exile.

During the afternoon, President Jair Bolsonaro dismissed his son’s statement by telling journalists that ‘whoever talks about the AI-5 is dreaming’.

At the beginning of the evening, Eduardo Bolsonaro apologized for the statement, claiming he was misunderstood and that democracy has never been at risk in Brazil.