‘The January 8 dead who haunt the Supreme Court’

Businessman Clériston Pereira da Cunha, 46, died in Papuda prison on November 20, 2023, following a sudden illness. Arrested in connection with the January 8 events, he passed away despite repeated warnings from his lawyers regarding his delicate health and a series of comorbidities that required treatment. “Clezão,” as he was known, has become the paramount symbol of the 2023 protest and illustrates the Supreme Federal Court’s (STF) disregard for the protestors, both judicially and in terms of human rights.

Other protestors also lost their lives throughout this process, but their cases were overshadowed by successive events. This is exposed by the latest survey from the Association of Family Members and Victims of January 8 (Asfav). According to their findings, at least ten protestors have already died. These were individuals who spent considerable time separated from their families, enduring “degrading” conditions, and who, even upon returning home, were never truly the same. People who died without a fair trial, branded by a detention that inflicted pain upon them until the end of their lives.

Lives interrupted on January 8

While Clezão was the only one to perish within the confines of Brazil’s penitentiary system, other protestors also died while under state custody, albeit during house arrest. Such is the case, for instance, of Antonio Marques da Silva, a 49-year-old earthmoving machine operator. Silva passed away in Barra do Garças (MT), his hometown, on October 29, 2023. The relentless stigma of “coup plotter” and the restrictive measures, including an ankle monitor, led Silva to lose his job. Consequently, he resorted to odd jobs for survival. During one of these precarious gigs, he fell from a roof, suffering a severe head injury. Hours later, he experienced “neurogenic shock and severe traumatic brain injury,” as reported in the hospital’s medical bulletin at the time.

Silva left behind a widow and seven children, including two toddlers, burdened with mounting bills accumulated during his detention in Brasília. When he was arrested, he was taking two medications for hypertension: losartan and hydrochlorothiazide. He arrived in the federal capital on January 7th by bus and settled in the encampments set up near the Army Headquarters. Despite never even venturing to the Praça dos Três Poderes, unlike the others, he was eventually arrested by the police at the HQ the day after the widespread vandalism.

The third recorded death was that of Giovanni Carlos dos Santos, a 46-year-old senior caregiver. Like Silva, Santos died during temporary work in São José dos Campos (SP) in January 2024. He fell from a height of nearly seven meters while trimming tree branches. Also unemployed due to his involvement in the protest, he was forced into informal labor. Before and after the demonstration, Santos cared for relatives, including his father, who had suffered a stroke, leaving him with debilitating sequelae requiring assistance for even basic daily activities.

“He left Papuda deeply traumatized emotionally, 20 kilos lighter, and suffering from health problems,” recounted his partner, Maria Vilani Rodrigues. According to her, Santos spent much of his time melancholic, coughed incessantly, and had been diagnosed with an abnormally low white blood cell count. “He was scheduled for a bone marrow exam to check for anemia or cancer, but there wasn’t time,” she lamented, referring to the accident. “Giovanni couldn’t find work as an senior caregiver anymore due to the electronic ankle monitor’s time restrictions, and he started doing odd jobs to survive,” Maria detailed.

When Santos died, his family lacked even the means to bury him. Thus, a group calling itself Núcleo Brasil em Evidência (“Brazil in the Spotlight Collective”), formed to assist those involved in the January 8 events, raised donations to give Santos a dignified funeral.

Truck driver Eder Parecido Jacinto, 58, is another name on the list of those who died without trial or the possibility of ever seeing amnesty. He passed away in March 2024 from injuries sustained in two falls from the truck he used for work. Eder was accused by the Attorney General’s Office of armed criminal association, violent abolition of the Democratic Rule of Law, coup d’état, and qualified damage through violence and grave threat, involving the use of “flammable substance” against federal property and “to the detriment of the victim.” Since his death, his family has sought privacy, primarily due to the pervasive negative stigma in their hometown, and yearns for “oblivion,” as a relative put it.

A similar chilling sense of fear plagues the family of radiology technician Kleber Freitas, 44, found dead at his parents’ home in Borrazópolis (PR) in May of last year. He suffered a heart attack. A family member, fearful of identification, attributed the tragedy to “the sense of injustice he carried,” particularly for “seeing no way out.” Freitas spent two months imprisoned for being at the HQ. He faced charges of incitement to crime and criminal association and was granted provisional release on March 13, 2023, on the condition of wearing an ankle monitor with nighttime and weekend home confinement. For a year and two months, Freitas also complied with other precautionary measures demanded by justice Alexandre de Moraes, which caused him emotional distress. Of all the judicial orders, the ankle monitor was the worst, the relative confided. In a request to the STF, Freitas explained, in his own handwriting, that he needed to care for his father on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays, and that his presence was “indispensable.” However, his request was denied by Moraes.

Historical reparation

Last September 17th, the Chamber of Deputies approved the urgency for the Amnesty Bill, finally paving the way for a direct vote in the plenary. This measure thrusts the issue back into the political spotlight, on the eve of an election year, and pressures the STF to confront the consequences of the arbitrary arrests and convictions stemming from the 2023 protest.

Even without judgment, Clezão and the others remain ever-present. Their deaths, far from closing the chapter, have transformed into a stark warning and a banner wielded by grieving families. Each absence weighs more heavily than any sentence penned on official letterhead, reminding the country that true justice isn’t confined to legal records — and that, if in the near future the STF decides to block the amnesty approved by the National Congress, it will forever bear the burden of the ghosts of those it allowed to die.

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