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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in Brasilia on March 25, 2019. REUTERS / Ueslei Marcelino

The controversy is in full swing in Brazil after President Bolsonaro's decision to commemorate the 1964 military coup on March 31st. A decision that sparked a public outcry among the survivors of the dictatorship and within the justice itself.

With our correspondent in Sao Paulo, Martin Bernard

For Jair Bolsonaro, there was no dictatorship in Brazil, nor a coup. The president repeated it again in an interview on Wednesday, and he asked the military to commemorate the event.

The decision comes as Brazilian justice has established that the dictatorship has been responsible for the death or disappearance of more than 400 people, not to mention the many cases of torture and human rights violations.

For Jair Bolsonaro, this is " trifles ". The lawyers of the victims of the dictatorship accuse him of revisionism. They appealed to the Supreme Court, and a magistrate gave the president five days to explain this controversial decision.

Jair Bolsonaro is himself a former captain of the army, and is surrounded by eight military in the government. According to him, the intervention of the army in 1964 served as a bulwark for communism during the cold war. A thesis also publicly defended by Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo and Rio Governor Wilson Witzl.