VOLKSWAGEN ADMITS PERSECUTION, TORTURE OF BRAZILIAN WORKERS

Volkswagen announced that it has agreed with the State of São Paulo to compensate its former workers for the damages it caused them during the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil between 1964 and 1985, teleSUR reported.

The German company pledged to grant $6.5 million to promote initiatives related to the defense of human rights and the investigation of crimes committed during the dictatorship. A little more than $3 million of that amount will go to former workers who reported violations of their human rights. "With this agreement, Volkswagen wants to promote the clarification of the human rights violations of that time," the German company stated and stressed that it is "the first foreign company to face its past in a transparent way."

The work of the Truth Commission, which was promoted by President Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016), allowed the relationship between Volkswagen and the dictatorship to become a judicial issue in 2016. The company's headquarters then hired historian Christopher Kopper to conduct in-depth research on the subject. The Bielefeld University academic concluded that Volkswagen's Brazilian subsidiary provided information to the military about the activities of those who worked at the factory in Sao Bernardo do Campo.

The meme reads, “They took me to the Volkswagen personnel department. The torture started right there,” said former worker Bellentani, who was beaten in front of security guards. "Government agents wanted me to denounce comrades who carried out political and union activities." In 1972, due to these secret links with the military regime, Lucio Bellentani, a worker linked to the Communist Party of Brazil, was tortured by police inside the factory. In that year, six other Volkswagen workers were also arrested for their union activities.

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