Back where he belongs

Born in Hong Kong but raised in Brazil, Peter Peng Ho opposed the military's power grab, was jailed, tortured and kicked out. Thirty-nine years on, he's won his fight for justice
BRAZILIAN ACTIVIST PETER PENG
Claire Rigby in Sao Paulo Apr 29, 2012

It was a military dictatorship that lasted 21 years, three times as long as that of neighbouring Argentina. Though much less bloody, the prolonged totalitarian rule in Brazil from 1964 to

1985 left a trail of suffering in its wake. Thousands were jailed, tortured and exiled. For many victims, justice has been a long time coming. Hong Kong-born Peter Peng Ho knows all too well what it meant to be stripped of his freedom, his bona fide identity card - and even his identity as a Brazilian citizen. As with thousands of other Brazilians who fled the regime to safety abroad, Peng went into exile in the United States in 1973 after his role as a student activist drew months of detention and torture. But unlike his fellow countrymen, he was unable to return to live in Brazil after democracy was restored in 1985, because of what he describes as the gravest of the offences committed against him: his Brazilian identity had been erased before his exile in a clandestine, illegal procedure.

It was not until 39 years later, on April 13 in Porto Alegre, that the wrong was righted. The Amnesty Commission under the Ministry of Justice ordered the restoration of Peng's citizenship and identity card, apologised on behalf of the Brazilian government, and awarded him compensation of about 3,300 Brazilian reals (HK$13,700) a month, plus a retroactive sum of 302,000 Brazilian reals. "I was very surprised," says Peng, a chemical engineer who now lives in Orlando in the US state of Florida. "I didn't believe that Brazilian society had the capacity for justice. I had been trying for so long." Brazil's military took power in 1964 after three successive presidents stepped down following brief periods of rule. During the dark days of the regime, 426 people died or disappeared for political reasons, compared with as many as 30,000 people in Argentina during its 1976-1983 "dirty war". A Truth Commission was set up last year in Brazil to investigate human rights violations. Peng, who was just 22 months old when his parents took him to Brazil in 1950, was automatically entitled to citizenship, which was granted to children under five upon arrival. He became an activist in the early '70s, organising student protests in Porto Alegre, where he had read chemical engineering. He was just beginning his postgraduate studies in Rio de Janeiro when he was arrested at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in February 1971. "I was never involved in terrorist activities," he says. "I was a leader in the mass student movement. We protested against the Vietnam war and against the Kent State massacre - it was a way we could mobilise people and organise demonstrations, in a form of veiled protest against the military dictatorship." (The Kent State shootings, which took place in the US state of Ohio in May 1970, saw four students killed and nine wounded by US National Guard troops called in to quell anti-war protests on the campus of Kent State University.) Peng was imprisoned twice, for a total of 10 months, and subjected to torture, including severe beatings and electric shocks, for his role in the student protests. "I was never formally accused of anything, or indicted for any crime or illegal action." His Brazilian ID card, or "RG", which he received in 1965, was taken from him after his second arrest, and he was issued instead with a "modelo 19" card, a document that gave him the status of resident alien, effectively making him a foreigner. When he left the country in 1973 on his second release to go into exile in the US - "it was too dangerous for me to stay" - the stamp on his exit visa, on a British passport he possessed thanks to his Hong Kong birth, read: "This visa does not give the right to return to Brazil." Following his postgraduate studies, Peng settled in the US with his wife Elisa, his highschool sweetheart, and had two daughters and five grandchildren, becoming a US citizen in 1995. In 2004, the couple opened a software business in Sao Carlos, Brazil, with Peng

entering the country on each visit on a 90-day tourist visa. He began trying to regain his citizenship, but found himself unable to demonstrate his entitlement: not only had he been stripped of his identity documents in 1973, but his existence as a Brazilian had been systematically erased. "We discovered the number for my ID card in 2009, but the folder was empty," he says. Proving his status became impossible - his official employment record had disappeared, his university registration information had been changed to remove the reference to him as a naturalised Brazilian, and there was no record of any resident alien document. "They falsified my documents in order to get me out," he says. Despite the option that was open to Peng of claiming citizenship as the husband and father of Brazilian citizens, he decided to follow the process to its conclusion in pursuit of justice. "I could have applied for citizenship through my wife," he says. "I even started to do it. But then I thought, this isn't right. I wanted to win back my rights through the proper channels. I wanted to make it right." It wasn't until a determined friend went to Peng's old school to unearth his records that the Brazilian love of bureaucracy, and of franked, signed and sworn copies of official documents, threw Peng a lifeline. There was a sworn copy of his RG, and Peng was finally able to prove his status as a Brazilian. He took his case to the Amnesty Commission in Porto Alegre, and won back his identity on April 13 in an emotional hearing that ended with a standing ovation for Peng. "Some of the young people who interviewed me after the hearing couldn't understand why I was pursuing this after 39 years," Peng says. "I think some of them suspected I was doing it for the money. But it's about freedom - it's about human rights, and it's about dignity, and this is my contribution." Brazil's first full, free elections following the return of democracy were held in 1989, when Peng was out of the country and, deprived of his ID, unable to vote. "As a Brazilian, I resisted the military dictatorship, and I paid a price. But we were happy doing what we wanted to do - we realised we might suffer for it, but we did what we believed in."

After a turbulent decade, family found a new home

SCMP Apr 29, 2012

From the rural mountains of Sichuan to the bright lights of London and the shores of Brazil, Peter Peng Ho's father was the country boy who made good through diligence and determination.

By his side, unto death in old age, was his soulmate and wife, who hailed from a distinguished family in Tianjin . Their disparate backgrounds notwithstanding, Roy Peng Shulin and Sylvia Wu Peimin met and fell in love as students at Yanjing University in Beijing in 1932. Wu was then a beauty queen on campus and a friend of Zhou Enlai , who later became China's first premier.

In her home city of Tianjin, the Wu family had a house that accommodated the seven wives and concubines and dozens of children of her grandfather, Wu Mouting. Wu senior, a native of Anhui, had been a chief comprador for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank and minister of commerce for the imperial court. In 1936, Peng and Wu headed to London for further studies. He enrolled in Imperial College London as a scholar of the Boxer Indemnity programme, a fund that supported Chinese students overseas. "It was a big break for a country boy from Emei [in Sichuan]," Peter Peng says. Wu, meanwhile, studied at the London School of Economics. The couple married in the British capital in 1936. Peng Shulin completed a Doctor of Science in industrial chemistry and returned to China with his wife to teach at Sichuan University. After the war broke out, he fought the Japanese on various fronts, reaching the rank of major. "He said that he knew [paramount leader] Deng Xiaoping," the son says. Peng Shulin later became vice-president of Taiwanese company Chinese Petroleum Corporation. "When my parents went to Brazil in 1950, I think that they were simply tired of war," Peter Peng says. "I was born in Hong Kong but my parents were there only in passing, on their way out during the [Communist] revolution," he says. The family settled in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, where Peng's parents lived for the rest of their lives and died in 1999 - Shulin peacefully at home, aged 87, after a brief fight with terminal bone cancer, and Peimin just 20 days later, aged 85, in the emergency room of a hospital "after her heart fluttered". Claire Rigby