Brazil apologizes for post-WWII persecution of Japanese immigrants

Associated Press

Sao Paulo (AP) — The Brazilian government has apologized to the Japanese community for human rights violations in the persecution and internment of immigrants in the years after World War II. “I want to apologize on behalf of the Brazilian state for the persecution your ancestors suffered, for all the barbarities, atrocities, cruelties, tortures, prejudice, ignorance, xenophobia and racism,” said Enea de Stutz e Almeida, president of the Amnesty Commission, and advisory board of the Ministry of Human Rights that analyzes amnesty and reparation requests to victims of political persecution in the country. The commission report acknowledged that 172 immigrants were sent to a concentration camp on the São Paulo coast, where they were mistreated, and tortured from 1946 to 1948.