APPENDIX 8

ARTICLE FROM THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY ENTITLED, "A RETURNED KEY AND TORTURE IN BRAZIL," OCTOBER 23, 1974

New York City.-When Telkia Hanson encountered a Brazilian soldier at an apartment in Recife where she had expected to find her husband, she knew something was wrong. As the story has been pieced together by church officials here, Ms. Hanson's search for her missing husband has set in motion high-level interaction between Brazil and the United States that could eventually bring about the release of Fred B. Morris, 41, United Methodist clergyman and United States citizen. Morris has reportedly been tortured by Brazilian police and (as of October 15) was still being held in Recife under Brazil's National Security law, accused of being a "communist."

Until recently, Morris had been a missionary in Brazil, under his church's Board of Global Ministries. The Brazilian Methodist Church is autonomous, which means that it has only fraternal relations with the United Methodist Church in the U.S. Morris decided that as a U.S. citizen he could be more effective in a nonclergy role; he therefore withdrew as a missionary and entered the cement-block business in Recife, while continuing to serve as chairman of the board of a church social center in Recife. He retained his membership in the United Methodists' Northern Illinois Annual Conference, whose bishop, Paul Washburn, is also president of the Board of Global Ministries.

I

Arrested on September 30, Morris might have disappeared from view, joining at least 16 other persons in Brazil who, according to reports, have simply "vanished" during the past 13 months (including Paulo Stuart Wright, the son of a U.S. Presbyterian missionary). What apparently spared Morris this particular fate was the fortuitous fact that Telkia Hanson and her husband, Phil, had been using Morris' beach cottage over the weekend. Hanson, a local Lutheran World Federation worker from Champaign, Illinois, went by the Morris apartment on Monday, September 30 to return the cottage key. He found the apartment occupied by Brazilian police, who took him into custody and kept him incommunicado in the apartment for 30 hours.

Ms. Hanson, a native Brazilian, followed her husband to the apartment when he failed to return, found his car outside, and was told by soldiers that no one was in the Morris apartment. She went immediately to the local United States consulate, where consul Richard Brown notified the American Embassy in Brazilia and demanded, first, the release of Hanson and second, the right to visit Morris in prison. He got both after U.S. Ambassador John H. Crimmins lodged a formal protest with the Brazilian government.

Brown has since reported that Morris has bruises on his back, and lacerations on his arms, possibly caused by chains. Brazilian officials have denied the torture charges, but Ambassador Crimmins refuses to back down. He has insisted that Morris be visited daily by local Brazilian doctors. As late as October 15, there was no word as to whether Morris would be released or formally brought to trial by local Recife officials. One report from Brazil indicated that he had "confessed" to being an agent for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, but the only charges that have been reported from local officials have to do with alleged "communist" affiliations.

II

United Methodist official Paul McCleary told me here that he was very impressed with the strong and swift action taken by U.S. State Department officials since they learned of Morris's arrest. Some church leaders related to

Latin American affairs seem to feel, as one man put it, that the "local sheriff made a mistake." But McCleary, himself a former missionary to Bolivia, points out that "this case is only the most recent incident of the violation of individual human rights by the government of Brazil, which we have been denouncing for ten years." From a distance it is difficult to analyze the internal dynamics of a military dictatorship, but since the new president, a Protestant, took over a few months ago, there had been speculation that oppressive policies would be eased in an effort to move Brazil toward a more humane posture, which in turn could improve the country's image in world opinion.

Recife is the home of Archbishop Dom Helder Câmara, a world-renowned Roman Catholic leader of liberation sympathies. Fred Morris, who went to Brazil in 1963 after serving churches in Illinois, is also known as an activist clergyman with a concern for justice for the oppressed masses in Brazil. But just what specifically he is supposed to have done to incur the wrath of local police officials is still not known. It would seem, however, that the Brazilian government may decide that pressure from the U.S. ambassador and from U.S. church leaders is sufficient cause to order Recife officials to release Morris. Certainly, there is some indication that this pressure has already saved Morris from further torture of the kind he experienced when first arrested.

And, as an added irony, Morris is now a local businessman as well as a clergyman. A Latin American president who wants to encourage U.S. investment in his country would probably reason that the State Department, the Protestant church, and the power of the American dollar all combine as sufficient cause to tell the "local sheriff" that he did, indeed, make a little mistake. If Fred Morris is released, or at least given an opportunity to be charged through normal legal channels, then his case may be a small ray of hope that Latin American dictatorships are susceptible to American pressure in favor of justice—which would suggest that American church leaders have a responsibility to see that this pressure is constantly maintained.

JAMES M. WALL.

APPENDIX 9

ARTICLE FROM CHICAGO TRIBUNE ENTITLED "BRAZIL'S DISGRACE" DATED NOVEMBER 17, 1974

It is not easy to disgrace a whole nation. There is no country that does not have its good people and bad, its saints and its sadists. What comes closest to national disgrace is a vicious government-one that gives preference to the sadists, elevates thugs to positions of power over citizens, makes criminality a normal part of its policy.

This disgrace now attaches to Brazil. Indeed, it has done so for some time; Amnesty International, an investigative organization that collects information on political prisoners, published a long report in 1972 about the "sophisticated” tortures being used against Brazilian political suspects [these included subjecting them to long periods of deafening noise and flashing lights, combined with cold, thirst, and hunger].

There was not much sophistication in the story told by the Rev. Fred Morris of Addison, Ill., about his questioning by Brazilian army officers. The Rev. Mr. Morris, a Methodist missionary and a correspondent for Time magazine, underwent 17 days of imprisonment and torture this fall at an army headquarters in Recife.

Since his missionary work had placed him among the poor of Recife, the Rev. Mr. Morris was evidently suspected of Communist sympathies. His tormentors also accused him [he was never formally charged] of filing stories unfavorable to the regime and of being too friendly with Dom Helder Camara, the Roman Catholic archbishop who has strongly criticized the government of President Ernesto Geisel and its predecessors.

The treatment he got was, we suppose, standard for political suspects. The Rev. Mr. Morris was repeatedly beaten and kicked in the groin. He was subjected to agonizing, muscle-cramping shocks administered thru clip-on electrodes; deprived of food, water and sleep; hung by handcuffs from the door of his cell; threatened with death if he did not "confess." What saved him, he says, was prayer-and finally the intervention of the United States consul in Recife, who had been refused permission to see him.

The Rev. Mr. Morris' story may be shocking to American readers. It is not by any means unique to Brazil or to the Geisel government. According to a list compiled by Catholic sources in Brazil, at least 79 persons have died under torture in the last nine years. Brazil has joined an extensive company, past and present: The Gestapo of Nazi Germany, the Soviet KGB, Greece under the deposed colonels, the secret police of Iran and Korea and Communist Hungary. Governments like this are no novelty. We have seen many whose power base is not a parliament or a presidential mansion, but a cellar room with thick walls to muffle the screams.

And what is to be done about it? Evidently not much. In the practical world of international politics, pity for the tortured does not play much of a role. Secretary of State Kissinger, in fact. has just assured us that the United States must not try to "reform the world" and that our policy must be based on a "hardheaded, coldblooded evaluation of what the situation requires." Will there be, at least, a protest to the Brazilian government, an effort to bring pressure against the use of sadism as government policy? Or is the United States message to the world's political prisoners-the men and women who have been reduced by experts to suffering, will-less lumps of flesh-going to be nothing more than "Sorry about that"?

(47)

APPENDIX 10

ARTICLE FROM TIME MAGAZINE ENTITLED "TORTURE, BRAZILIAN STYLE," DATED NOVEMBER 18, 1974

Torture is still widely used in Brazil, despite pledges made last spring by the country's new President, General Ernesto Geisel, to halt the barbaric practice. According to a report compiled by Brazilian Roman Catholics, former victims and attorneys, at least 79 persons have died under torture in the past nine years and thousands of others have been subjected to beatings, electric shocks and other torments. Torture, said the report, has become "institutionalized" in Brazil, conduced mainly by military security forces. A recent victim was former United Methodist Missionary and TIME Stringer Fred B. Morris, 41, who was held without charges for 17 days by military officials in Recife. His report:

After a chance meeting on the street, my Brazilian friend Luis Soares de Lima, 27, and I were getting into my car when about a dozen men in jeans and sport shirts, armed with machine guns and .45-cal. automatics, surrounded us. covered our heads with hoods, forced us to the floor of a station wagon and roared off. The man in the front was speaking into a walkie-talkie, using the code word hospital, saying that the "operation was a success," and that we would be arriving in a few minutes. We did at the Fourth Army headquarters in downtown Recife.

Luis and I were immediately separated. I was forced to remove my clothing, except for shorts, and was dragged off to a small cell and left alone. Having lived in Brazil for most of the past ten years, I had heard all the horror stories about torture, and I wondered whether my fate would be the same as Paulo Wright's; the son of U.S. missionaries, he was arrested more than a year ago, and has not been heard from since. To calm myself, I repeated, very deliberately, the 23rd Psalm:

The Lord is my sheperd; I shall not

want...

Yea, though I walk through the valley

of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil; for thou art

with me...

I felt a calm inner strength, which stayed with me. I needed it. After about 15 minutes, the cell door was flung open, my head again hooded, my hands manacled behind my back, and I was dragged off to a room that for me became a torture chamber. I again repeated the 23rd Psalm, as I was to do on every such trip for the next three days.

Still hooded, I was roughly pushed to the end of the room, and the questioning began. Several men were present. They wanted to know about Luis. They said he was a Communist, which I doubt. I said that we were friends, but that I knew nothing of his political activities. For my answer, I was kicked three times in the groin until I fell to the floor in pain. Questions continued: Where was Luis going? Why was he with me? My answers were met with fist blows to my chest, belly, kidneys and back.

MORE SHOCKS

The beatings went on for about half an hour. Then water was poured on the floor around me, a wire was fastened to the second toe of my right foot, and a spring-clip electrode to the nipple of my right breast, pinching so hard it cut the flesh. Trying to make me confess that I was a Communist, they resumed the questioning. Now my denials were met with shocks as well as fists. The voltage was successively increased, becoming so painful that I doubled over until I fell to the floor.

After about 20 minutes, the electrode was shifted from my breast to my right ear. These shocks seemed to be taking off the top of my skull. A blue-white lightning filled my head. Spasms forced open my mouth in screams, then slammed it shut on my tongue. My agony was highly entertaining to my inquisitors; there was much laughter in the room.

Next, the electrode was removed from my ear, and my shorts were pushed down. I remember saying "Oh, no!” I knew what was coming. The spring clip was placed at the base of my penis. Spasms threw my legs out from under me, causing me to fall with all my weight on my back. This ordeal continued for about an hour: questions, shocks, blows to head and body, falling to the floor, getting up to repeat the process.

Then I was dragged back to the cell. The handcuffs were taken off, passed around the outside of one of the bars of the door, at eye level, and refastened with my hands in front of my face. After about 15 minutes, back to the torture chamber for more questions, beatings and shocks. This continued for several hours. Then I was strapped to an armchair,, wired with one electrode on my now bleeding right breast and the other on my right ear. The shocks were unbearably painful. At least twice I blacked out.

Finally, the real reason for their interest in me emerged: my inquisitors began asking endless questions about Roman Catholic Archbishop Helder Câmara, a vocal critic of the regime and a friend of mine. They were furious about stories that I had filed to TIME and the Associated Press that they considered favorable to the Recife archbishop and unflattering to the dictatorship. They cursed Dom Helder, claiming that he was a liar when he accused the government of condoning torture. Their tirade was accompanied by more shocks and my screams. Twice during the afternoon they tortured me in front of Luis in an effort to get information from him. He refused to give in, though I could tell he was distressed by my pain.

FAT MAN

At one point, the most vicious of my tormentors got down on his knees in front of me, lifted up my hood so I could see his face and said that he would kill me if I did not cooperate. I believed him. Later, he told me his name: Luis Miranda Filho, a swarthy fat man with a huge black mustache. He is a notorious sadist, known in Recife to be responsible for countless tortures. He and a Colonel Meziat, identified as chief of intelligence of the Fourth Army and the man responsible for my imprisonment and torture, were the only ones I saw whose names I learned.

After more than eight hours of torture, I was allowed to use a bathroom for the first time, then taken back to my cell and hung by handcuffs on the door for the night. I was in a standing position, the handcuffs so tight on my wrists that circulation was nearly cut off; my left hand had been sprained and was painfully swollen. I passed the night standing and occasionally dozing, then being jerked awake as I sagged toward the floor and the cuffs pulled painfully on my wrists.

The next morning, exhausted from shocks, bruises and lack of sleep, I was hooded and hauled off again. Once more I recited the 23rd Psalm and again arrived before the interrogators inwardly at peace. I was made to stand, and electrodes were again placed on my breast and ear. Questions moved back to my arrival in Brazil in 1964 and all of my career as a missionary of the United Methodist Church, then focused mainly on my journalistic activities for Time and the A.P. Between sessions I was again hung on the cell door. Except for about an hour when I was strapped to the armchair, I was on my feet from Monday morning until sometime Tuesday evening.

That night the turnkey opened the peephole and offered me half a cup of water and a piece of bread-my first food or water since breakfast on Monday. Then back to more interrogation, which continued for a couple of hours. After that, I was dumped on the floor of my cell. I was still in my shorts, with no blanket, bed or pillows, just the bare concrete. I fell into an exhausted sleep, and was allowed to rest through the night.

Wednesday morning I was hung up on the wall of the torture room by handcuffs, with my arms high over my head. More questions about Archbishop Câmara, Time and Luis were accompanied by beatings on the back and kidneys. After about 15 minutes, I was taken down, turned around and hung up again, this time