[H-PAD] Manifesto of Academics and Public Intellectual to Free Lula
Marc Becker
marc at yachana.org
Thu May 10 09:09:24 PDT 2018
Colleagues,
We are forwarding this message so that those of you who are interested
can take action on this issue. Supporting documents are at
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Bo7N47XpSqAqWZe60rpGjwKM81qytoeK?usp=sharing
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Green, James <james_green at brown.edu>
Date: Sat, May 5, 2018 at 5:06 PM
Subject: Manifesto of Academics and Public Intellectual to Free Lula
To: "James N. Green" <James_Green at brown.edu>
May 5, 2018
Dear Colleagues:
I´m gathering supporters for a manifesto/petition denouncing former
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's imprisonment and
demanding his release.
The text aims primarily at describing the arbitrary nature of the trial.
On the whole, much of the coverage by the mainstream media worldwide has
been one-sided. Together, we can try to level the playing field a bit.
If you would like you to sign the statement, please send you name and
university affiliation to: freelula.manifest at gmail.com
Once we have a significant number of scholars and public intellectuals
supporting the effort, we will be circulating it publically for others
to sign.
In addition to the Manifesto, which follows, I have attached:
(a) a book in which some of the best Brazilian jurists discuss and
criticize Lula’s trial
(b) an op-ed by Immanuel Wallerstein about Lula’s imprisonment
(c) an op-ed at NYT by Mark Weisbrot (co-director of the Center for
Economic and Policy Research and president of Just Foreign Policy)
(d) the transcript of his interview with Amy Goodman on DemocracyNow!
The show by DemocracyNow! is at the link:
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/4/6/brazils_popular_ex_president_lula_ordered
A video by Noam Chomsky about Lula’s imprisonment is at the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzu2UcIxsT4.
I hope you can join us.
Best,
James N. Green.
Lula da Silva is a Political Prisoner. Free Lula!
We hereby manifest our deep concern about the circumstances under which
the former Brazilian president Lula da Silva was tried and imprisoned.
There is abundant evidence that Lula da Silva was a victim of lawfare,
that is, the abuse of judicial power for political purposes. Hence, the
international community should consider and treat him as a political
prisoner.
Lula’s trial was conducted as part of the so-called Operation Car Wash,
an investigation of payment of procurement kickbacks to Petrobras
officials and politicians, some of which took place while Lula was
president. While critics claim that “Lula should have known” or “Lula
must have gained something,” there is no evidence of his participation
in the kickbacks. According to Brazilian laws and legal doctrines,
corruption is a quid pro quo transaction. To convict Lula for
corruption, the prosecution must prove that he participated in the
procurement frauds and that he was compensated for such illicit acts.
In 2016, Lula was accused of receiving a rather modest apartment from
OAS, one of the Petrobras contractors involved in the corruption scheme.
However, no wiretapped conversations, bank transactions, transfer of
funds or title deeds have ever substantiated the case against Lula. He
never used or profited from the apartment. Worse still, it later emerged
that the sameapartment had already been used as collateral by OAS in a
long-term loan transaction when the accusation was made that Lula was
the owner.
The lack of incriminating evidence was disregarded by the judge
responsible for the case, Sergio Moro, who ruled against Lula. Moro
based his decision on the “informal collaboration” (not even a formal
plea bargain) that offered a substantial reduction of jail time if
Lula’s codefendant pleaded guilty and produced incriminating evidence
against Lula. The co-defendant was Mr. Leo Pinheiro, OAS’s owner.
Pinheiro had already been sentenced to 26 years when he decided to
“collaborate” and implicate Lula. He stated that the apartment was
“meant to be given” to Lula, an accusation which contradicted 73 other
depositions. But his statement was considered enough for Justice Moro to
convict Lula da Silva. Pinheiro’s sentence, in turn, was reduced to
three years, and he was released from prison during the day.
Besides failing to prove Lula’s ownership of the apartment, the
Prosecution could not point to any specific action or omission that Lula
would have undertaken to benefit OAS. Lula had been accused of
benefiting the co-defendant with three procurement contracts with
Petrobras. After months of investigations, no material proof was found.
Moro then convicted Lula for performing “indeterminable acts of
corruption” that benefited OAS. This categorization shifts the burden of
proof and the presumption of innocence and does not exist in the
Brazilian legal system.
Inadvertently, Judge Moro himself admitted that he lacked jurisdiction
over Lula’s case. When deciding a motion filed by the defense, he
declared that he had “never affirmed, not would be required to prove,
that the money used to build the apartment allegedly given to Lula
originated from contracts between OAS and Petrobras.” If the case has no
relationship with the Petrobras corruption, it should not be reviewed by
Moro.
Simply put, Lula’s trial is one where a judge arbitrarily chooses his
defendant and, acting as a prosecutor himself, accuses him of having
committed “indeterminable acts of corruption,” which by definition are
impossible to defend against.
The lawfare against Lula also included tactics to keep his case under
Moro’s purview at all costs. In March 2016, Moro leaked illegally
obtained wiretaps of the sitting president, Dilma Rousseff, regarding
Lula’s appointment as Chief of Staff in her administration. He claimed,
again without proof, that this appointment was meant to “obstruct
justice,” since once appointed to the administration Lula would be
judged by the Supreme Court and not by Moro himself. Moro’s impartiality
was questioned, but the Court of Appeals ruled that the Operation Car
Wash was “exceptional” and that “ordinary rules don’t apply.”
The Kafkian nature of Lula’s trial was reinforced when, in August 2017,
the president of the same Court of Appeals declared that Moro’s sentence
against Lula was “technically irreproachable” while admitting that he
hadn’t even read the case. Meanwhile, his chief of staff posted a
petition requesting Lula da Silva’s imprisonment on her Facebook page.
The Court of Appeals rushed Lula’s case to trial. His appeal was put
ahead of some 257 other cases that were pending judgment. The Judge
reviewing the report took only six days in a case docket with thousands
of pages and hours of depositions. The panel needed 196 days to decide
the appeal, while, on average, it takes 473 days for similar cases. It
also ordered Lula’s immediate arrest. Only 3 of the other 20 Car Wash
defendants whose appeals were denied were sent to jail, and this
happened only months after the denials.
Lula petitioned the Supreme Court, requesting a habeas corpus against
his immediate imprisonment because he still had the right to file
appeals. According to the Brazilian Constitution, “no one can be deemed
guilty until his or her last appeal has been decided.”
In a tie-breaker vote denying the habeas corpus, a Justice declared that
she would vote otherwise if the Court were to discuss the rule in
general, instead of as applied to Lula’s case. The day before the vote,
the Army’s Chief Commander tweeted out a message to the court, saying
that “the army will not tolerate impunity.” For this thinly veiled
threat, he got not a reprimand, but a “like” from the Twitter account of
the very same Court of Appeals that had confirmed Lula’s conviction.
The following morning, the Judge presiding over the Court of Appeals
predicted that Lula’s detention could not occur in less than a month’s
time, given all the legal proceedings still pending before his Court. In
the afternoon, however, the Court of Appeals requested Moro to order the
arrest. It took Moro nineteen minutes to issue a decision that
acknowledged that Lula still had the legal right to have a motion heard
by the Court of Appeals, while declaring that this right to appeal was a
“procrastinating pathology” that should be “wiped out from Brazilian laws.”
It should come as no surprise that a recent poll showed that 55% of the
Brazilian respondents agree that “Lula is being persecuted by the
Judiciary,” and 73% agree with the statement that “the powerful want him
out of the elections,” in which he still is the favorite candidate by far.
The abuses of judicial power over Lula da Silva are thinly disguised
political persecution under a legal cover. Lula da Silva is a political
prisoner. His detention tarnishes the Brazilian democracy. The
supporters of democracy and social justice in East and West, in the
North and the Global South, should join in a worldwide movement to
demand Lula da Silva’s release.
We demand Free Lula, Lula Libre, Liberté por Lula, Kostenlos Lula, Lula
Libero, لولا الحرة, 释放卢拉, 룰라 석방하라!, חינם לולה, 無料のルーラ, Свободу
Луле, Lula Livre!
Initial signators:
Fred Block, University of California, Davis
Robert Brenner, Center for Social Theory and Comparative History,
University of California Los Angeles
Michael Burawoy, University of California, Berkeley
Sidney Chalhoub, Professor of History and African and African American
Studies, Harvard University
Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT)
Angela Davis, University of California, Santa Cruz
Peter Evans, University of California, Berkeley and Brown University
Stanley A. Gacek, Senior Advisor for Global Strategies, United Food and
Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) - Washington, D.C. USA
James N. Green, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Professor of Latin American
History, Brown University
Karl Klare, George J. & Kathleen Waters Matthews Distinguished
University Professor, School of Law, Northeastern University
Mara Loveman, Director of the Sociology Department, University of
California, Berkeley
Marjorie Mayo, Emeritus Professor, Goldsmiths, University of London
Pedro Meira Monteiro, Professor and Chair of the Department of Spanish
and Portuguese Studies, Princeton University
Keisha-Khan Perry, Associate Professor of Africana Studies, Brown University
Paul O'Connell, Associate Dean for Research (Law and Social Sciences),
SOAS, University of London
Frances Fox Piven, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and
Sociology Emeriti, Graduate School of the City University of New York.
Ananya Roy, Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare and Geography
and inaugural Director of The Institute on Inequality and Democracy at
UCLA Luskin
Barbara Weinstein, Silver Professor of History and chair of the
Department of History at New York University, former president of the
American Historical Association
Suzi Weissman, Saint Mary's College
Howard Winant, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of
California, Santa Barbara
Tukufu Zuberi, Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, University
of Pennsylvania
If you wish to sign this manifesto, please send your name and university
affiliation to: freelula.manifest at gmail.com
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