Brazil apologizes for post-World War II 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 incarceration of immigrants in the years after World War II. The president of the government’s Amnesty Commission, Enea de Stutz e Almeida, apologized on behalf of the Brazilian state for “all the barbarities, atrocities, cruelties, tortures, prejudice, ignorance, xenophobia and racism” that Japanese suffered. The commission’s 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.