Icon: enlarge
The Volkswagen plant in São Bernardo do Campo: Here the car maker is said to have cooperated with the military regime
Photo:
MAURICIO LIMA / AFP
35 years after the end of the military dictatorship in Brazil, Volkswagen is compensating persecuted former employees worth millions.
This provides for a comparison with the country's judicial authorities, which the company claims to have signed.
The automaker is said to have collaborated with the regime at the time and betrayed employees to the military.
"It is important to deal responsibly with this negative chapter in the history of Brazil and to ensure transparency," said VW law chief Hiltrud Werner in a statement.
The background to this is the results of a commission set up by the government that examined the role of companies during the military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.
The experts found that Volkswagen and other companies had secretly helped the military to track down so-called public enemies and union activists in the workforce.
Many of these workers were fired, arrested or harassed by the police, according to research by Reuters news agency in 2014.
They haven't found a new job for years.
Comparison over about 5.5 million euros
The broadcasters NDR and SWR as well as the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" reported on the now closed settlement.
According to VW information, he plans to pay a total of around 36 million real (about 5.5 million euros).
Of this, 16.8 million reals go to a victim association of former employees and their surviving dependents.
The rest will be donated to human rights initiatives.
The Brazilian public prosecutor's office announced that the settlement would terminate three investigations that have been ongoing since 2015.
The historian Christopher Kopper from Bielefeld University, who was entrusted with the matter by Volkswagen, described the comparison as historically groundbreaking.
"It would be the first time that a German company accepts responsibility for human rights violations against its own workers in the plant for incidents that happened after the end of National Socialism," Kopper is quoted by NDR, SWR and "Süddeutscher Zeitung".
Icon: enlarge
In front of the headquarters in São Bernardo do Campo, a VW worker demonstrates against the company's role during the Brazilian military dictatorship
Photo: PAULO WHITAKER / REUTERS
In 2017, Kopper published a report commissioned by VW.
It said, among other things, that the VW factory security monitored opposition activities of its employees and facilitated the arrest of at least seven employees through its behavior.
Kopper based his investigation on the corporate archives of Volkswagen in Wolfsburg and its subsidiary Volkswagen do Brasil. In addition, Brazilian archives were consulted and contemporary witnesses were interviewed.
"The correspondence with the board of directors in Wolfsburg shows the unreserved approval of the military government until 1979," wrote the historian.
20,000 employees in Brazil
Volkswagen do Brasil has been active in the fifth largest country in the world since 1953 and employs around 20,000 people there.
A memorial plaque for the victims of the regime was unveiled on the premises of the São Bernardo do Campo plant.
The 21-year-old dictatorship in Brazil started in 1964 with a military coup;
According to a truth commission, around 440 people were subsequently killed for political reasons and hundreds more were imprisoned and tortured.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro had said in 2019 that he did not see the events as a military coup.
Rather, "civilians and soldiers" came together in troubled times to get the country back on the right track, he said.
A commemoration ceremony initiated by the right-wing populist president to mark the 55th anniversary of the coup was prohibited by a court last year.
The celebrations are not compatible with the "process of democratic reconstruction" enshrined in the 1988 constitution, justified judge Ivani Silva da Luz.
Icon: The mirror
hba / Reuters
