From the Parrot's Perch

Only now is information starting to trickle out about the atrocities against political prisoners in our country. We can assure everyone that torture does exist in Brazil. What is more: all that has been said about the torture is very little compared with the true facts.

Those charges, brought by female prisoners in Rio de Janeiro, come from "Terror in Brazil," a 15,000-word dossier compiled by the American Committee for Information on Brazil. The document was endorsed by 34 concerned citizens, including Black Leader Ralph Abernathy and John Bennett, president of Union Theological Seminary. According to the dossier, Brazil's military regime has resorted to a whole catalogue of horrors in its effort to root out dissidents.

The committee is not alone in its denunciation. In the past two years, churchmen, students and international organizations have brought to light sordid stories of terror and torture. Repressive measures have increased dramatically since December 1968, when the military men who have run Latin America's largest and most populous (90,840,000) nation for six years sent the Congress temporarily packing and curbed most political activities. Denied outlets for protest, some dissidents turned to terrorist acts ranging from bombing and bank robbery to kidnaping and murder. With estimates of the number of terrorists running as high as 10,000, those responsible for combating the threat--mostly junior-grade policemen and military men--apparently resorted increasingly to torture. As in a number of other Latin American countries, the result has been a savage cycle of terrorism and repression.

Last month, after West German Ambassador Ehrenfried von Holleben was kidnaped, he was ransomed by the release of 40 prisoners, who were flown to asylum in Algeria. One of them, Vera Silvia Araujo Magalhaes, 22, had to be carried from the plane; she said that her legs were paralyzed because of brutal tortures that often concentrated on her genitals. Another, Daniel de Arao Reis Filho, displayed badly scarred arms. Police left him hanging from a beam, he said, "until there was no skin where my arms were placed across the wood."

Others told of being subjected to a mock execution just before they left Brazil. They were herded into the courtyard of their jail, blindfolded, lined up against a wall, and asked if they had any last wishes. Only after they heard the metallic click of bullets being loaded into the rifles of a firing squad were they put into vehicles by laughing policemen and taken to Rio's international airport for the flight to Algiers.

Messianic Megalomania. Some of the stories may well be exaggerations or fabrications. As one radical who surrendered himself to police earlier this month put it, the really hard-core terrorists are gripped by a "messianic megalomania." Conceivably, they would not hesitate to lie in order to discredit the Brazilian government. A statement from Brazil's presidential palace insisted: "There is no torture in our prisons. Also, there are no political prisoners." Yet President Emilio Garrastazu Medici has specifically advised his underlings that torture is not to be tolerated.

Medici's action lends credence to the growing collection of torture stories. "They connected the electric-shock machine and had fun with me," said Sister Maurina Borges da Silveira, mother superior of an orphanage in southern Brazil, who was later flown to Mexico City in exchange for a Japanese diplomat kidnaped in March. Arrested on the charge of giving refuge to subversives, she was stripped naked and thrown into a cell with a man. "I had to remain locked up with him all night, bothered by his advances," she said. Chael Charles Schreier, a former medical student, was seized in a police raid on an underground hideout and interrogated by security police in Rio. Three days later, his body was returned to his family. The medical certificate attributed his death to severe abdominal blows.

With Brazilian inventiveness, the victims have devised grimly apt names for the various torture techniques. One of the most widely practiced is called the pau de arara, or parrot's perch. The victim's wrists are tied together and slipped over his knees. After a rod is inserted between his knees and arms, the prisoner is hoisted into the air, where he hangs helplessly, head down. Using electric coils, the torturers shock the victim on the genitals and anus.

The "dragon's throne" is a chair with a metal seat and back. After being strapped into the chair, the victim is subjected to electric shocks in graduated amounts, usually until he confesses or--passes out. Another technique is "the telephone," in which the torturer continuously slaps the prisoner on the ear with a cupped hand, often rupturing the eardrum. A failed dental student, now a Rio policeman, has refined still another technique. The "mad dentist," as he is known, straps a prisoner into his dentist's chair, drills until he hits a nerve and keeps probing until the victim agrees to cooperate. Then he fills the cavity, leaving no outward evidence.

Mangled Hand. Tales of Brazil's torture have evoked many protests abroad. Early this year the Vatican declared: "We must deplore those cases of police torture of which there has been so much talk." Most of Brazil's 245 bishops recently signed a petition demanding that the government "investigate the problem in depth." Archbishop Helder Camara of Recife and Olinda has been particularly outspoken. "In all conscience, I shall talk openly about torture in Brazil," he told French audiences last May. "I would be a criminal if I did not."

Recently, anti-Brazilian protesters in Paris displayed a papier-mache Christ figure with a tube down its throat and wires attached to parts of its body.

The U.S. State Department has also expressed concern, partly because Brazil has received close to $1 billion in AID funds since the 1964 military takeover, some of it in the form of technical advice for Brazilian policemen.

Undeniable as the terrorist threat is, the obvious consequence of official over-reaction--aside from the appalling human suffering--is that many moderates will be driven into the extremists' camp. A typical response recently came from a minor member of Brazil's opposition, who was picked up for "questioning" about some extremists with whom he was wrongly linked. He left with a hand that was disfigured from having fingernails pulled out and the palm burned with cigarettes. "If I had known where to find a terrorist group," he said after his release, "I would have joined it immediately."

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