change Brazil’s policy on Iran and vote to criticize its human rights conduct next year in the United Nations.
Dilma Rousseff, who will become president of Brazil on January 1, told The Washington Post in an interview that she was appalled by the Islamic Republic’s stoning policy and that, as a political prisoner decades ago under Brazil’s military dictatorship, she feels a personal kinship with Iranian political prisoners.
Rousseff made clear she wouldn’t be an American lackey. She condemned the US resort to war in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
But she made clear that opposing an American attack on Iran did not mean that she approved of the regime in Tehran.
A few weeks ago, Brazil abstained when the annual resolution on Iranian civil rights compliance came up in the UN.
“It’s not my position,” Rousseff said bluntly.
“I am not the president of Brazil [today]. But I would feel uncomfortable as a woman president-elect not to say anything against the stoning. My position will not change when I take office. I do not agree with the way Brazil voted.”
Her bald comments were startling because she is the handpicked successor to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva who approved Brazil’s abstention on the UN human rights resolution criticizing Iran.
She was not asked and did not give any indication that she would drop Lula’s effort to make Brazil some sort of player in Middle Eastern issues. It was Lula who involved Brazil in the effort to find a way to make a fuel swap for the Tehran nuclear reactor.
But she indicated she put a higher priority on human rights issues and would not overlook the Islamic Republic’s conduct on human rights when addressing political questions.
She said, “I believe it is necessary to make a differentiation in [what we mean when we refer to Iran]. I consider [important] the strategy of building peace in the Middle East. What we see in the Middle East is the bankruptcy of a policy—of a war policy. We are talking about Afghanistan and the disaster that was the invasion of Iraq. We did not manage to build peace, nor did we manage to solve Iraq’s problems. Iraq today is in civil war. Every day soldiers on both sides die. To try to build peace and not go to war is the best way.
“[But] I do not endorse stoning. I do not agree with practices that have medieval characteristics [when it comes] to women. There is no nuance. I will not make any concessions on that matter.”
Asked about political dissidents arrested in Iran and elsewhere, she said, “Due to the fact that I experienced personally the situation of a political prisoner, I have an historical commitment to all those that were or are prisoners just because they expressed their views, their public opinion, their own opinions.”
In the 1960s, Rousseff, who turns 63 next week, joined the underground war against the military dictatorship then ruling Brazil. She was imprisoned and tortured from 1970 to 1972.
The daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant and a schoolteacher, Rousseff was raised in an upper middle class household.