[H-PAD] Manifesto of Academics and Public Intellectual to Free Lula

[Marc Becker]

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