Challenge to Brazilian Army Operation in Amazon Re-ignites Tension between Military and STF

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – “The jungle unites us,” said vice-president Hamilton Mourão on September 5th, when the day of the Amazon is celebrated in Brazil. But his words did not resonate with Brazilian reality at a time when a battlefield is opened against the government’s management in the region.

Since May, the same Mourão has been leading the Green Brazil operations in the area, with the support of the Armed Forces, to prevent patch-burns and environmental crimes in general. But the legality of the military’s action was challenged in the Federal Supreme Court (STF) by the Green Party on August 30th, given the increase in deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, raising suspicion that the government may have agents who advise deforesters about the ongoing inspection operations.

The petition calls for the suspension of the normative acts of the Army, which in practice means paralyzing the Green Brazil operation.

On Thursday, September 3rd, Supreme Court Justice Carmen Lúcia requested “with urgency and priority, information from the President of the Republic and the Minister of Defense on the legal provisions challenged, to be provided within a maximum period of five days”. Subsequently, demonstrations from the Solicitor General’s Office and the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Republic will be requested.

It was up to the Minister of the Office of Institutional Security, General Augusto Heleno, to voice his annoyance and rekindle public friction between members of the Government and the Court when he wrote: “Supreme Justice Carmen Lúcia accepted a motion from a political party and ordered the President and the Ministry to explain the use of the Armed Forces in the Amazon. Forgive me, dear Justice, but if you were familiar with this area, do you know what your question would be: “What would the Amazon be without the Armed Forces?”

Vice-President Mourão had already expressed himself on the matter on Friday, September 4th, in an interview with the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, saying that the Justice’s request “is yet another political use by the STF”. Heleno’s tweet on Saturday complemented the provocations, and took the traditional bickering to social media, after an apparent truce between the Bolsonaro Government and the other governmental branches.

The tug-of-war over the Amazon, a biome of 4.2 million square kilometers, gains new levels each day under President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration. With the continuous criticism abroad regarding the conduct of environmental policy – and the threat of reducing investments in the country for this reason – Bolsonaro placed his Vice-President in charge of protecting the forest, particularly after the fires in August 2019, when Brazil became the target of worldwide criticism.

There the first Operação Brasil (Brazil Operation) was born, which remained in the region for two months [August to September] to control fires and environmental crimes.

However, deforestation did not subside in 2020, and in April fire and deforestation warnings in the Legal Amazon increased by 63.7 percent, which led the government to issue a Guarantee of Law and Order (GLO) decree, which provides for the use of the Armed Forces to protect the forest. Thus was born Operação Verde Brasil 2 (Operation Green Brazil 2), at a cost of R$60 million (US$12 million), which would initially run for two months.

Although environmentalists recognized the government’s effort to reach the forest before new fires in the second half of the year, the plan was perceived with suspicion because of the high cost projected – higher than the Brazilian Environmental Institute’s (IBAMA) annual budget, responsible for monitoring and reducing deforestation until then – and the lack of joint coordination.

Mourão emphasizes that the action aims to provide support to the inspection bodies, such as IBAMA and Chico Mendes Institute (ICM-Bio). “It is logistic and security support to the work of the two institutions, which are insufficient to fulfill their tasks in the Amazon”, he said to O Estado de S. Paulo.

The Vice-President’s position is well regarded by those in the field, but the noise remains in what is an extremely sensitive area for Brazilians and for the world that fights global warming and depends on forests, such as the Amazon: “We want and need the work with the other Powers. But each one has to take its own expertise.”

“The Army’s expertise is logistics, operational risk. We have experience in setting up operations and actions against environmental infractors,” said anonymously an inspector who has worked in the institute for over ten years. Mourão conceded a mea culpa in his interview when he said that the Government was wrong to withdraw from the forest in September at the end of the Operation Brazil 1. “If we had remained on the ground since last year, we would have better numbers to present. This is my mea culpa,” he said.

Between May and August, the number of patch-burnings was virtually the same as in 2019 in that same period, although in August there was a reduction of five percent. But this year, patch-burning reached the Pantanal biome, in the country’s midwest.

However, the convergences ultimately fade away with the government under pressure, with its image worn out by the hardship in completing the task on the one hand, and environmentalists on the other, seeing themselves ignored. In the Green Party’s (PV) motion to the Supreme Court, the party mentions reports from inspection agents that reveal a lack of cooperation. “They created an operation that contributes to the dismantling of the Brazilian environmental policy,” reports the PV claim, which also mentions an IBAMA operation on August 6th, leaked to those who would be the target of inspection.

The Federal Police had been monitoring an illegal prospecting operation in Pará for weeks, but they were subsequently ordered not to continue at the request of a military officer. “There was a disclosure of an audio recording sent to the WhatsApp group called ‘Prospectors are not criminals’, alerting about the presence of IBAMA agents in the region on August 6th. The author of the audio was identified and confirmed that the information was passed on by an official of the Federal Government,” says the appeal, mentioning a report disclosed in the Fantástico program.

The alert contained in the audio recording in this case, was made by Josias, an urbanized indian, in favor of prospecting, who is in contact with “a person” in the Government, as he himself concedes in the report. It is indigenous people like himself who are mentioned by Mourão or Bolsonaro when the subject is the Amazon and the construction of a chain of economic activity in the region.

“We have to understand the anxieties of the indigenous community. They can no longer remain segregated, far from the 21st century. They need to have their own income and they can’t live on state charity,” said the Vice-President. However, this reading does not take into account the different stages of integration of the indigenous in a country with over 300 different peoples, including the isolated and those who reject acculturation, because they understand the forest as their means of life, and respect for their ancestors, who have survived in the forest since before Brazil was discovered in 1500.

Source: El País