Only Bolsonaro sends messages to calm those who practice illegal logging.

Only an uninformed and irresponsible president like Jair Bolsonaro would show solidarity with criminals who steal timber from an environmental preservation area.

He recorded a video alongside Senator Marcos Rogério (DEM-RO) with an unusual objective: to reassure the criminals whose tractors and trucks were burned in an Ibama operation against illegal logging in the Jamari National Forest (Flona), in Rondônia.

Despite the senator's caveat that it's not about supporting illegal activities, but about punishing within the limits of the law, in practice the message from both of them misinforms and empowers criminals.

According to current legislation, the destruction of equipment and vehicles seized during environmental inspections is permitted, and this is clearly stated in article 111 of decree 6.514 of 2008.

“The (…) instruments used in the commission of the offense may be destroyed or rendered unusable when: the measure is necessary to prevent their improper use and exploitation in situations where transport and storage are unfeasible due to the circumstances; or may expose the environment to significant risks or compromise the safety of the population and public agents involved in the inspection.”

Those who work to protect the environment are the ones who determine when and why the destruction of machinery and equipment is recommended.

There is no record of any criminal having taken legal action to seek compensation for the property they lost.

When a president and a senator categorically disavow law enforcement agents and condemn actions to combat this type of crime, what follows is the further destruction of the protected area.

As if the negative repercussions of the video weren't enough, the government announced it will modify the legislation to 'correct' what it considers an abuse.

“Yesterday, the Minister of the Environment, Ricardo Salles, came to speak with me with this information. He has already ordered an administrative process to investigate who is responsible for this. Burning anything—machinery, tractors, whatever it may be—is not the procedure, that is not our guideline.”

Well, Ricardo Salles is the minister who is responding to a public civil action for environmental misconduct and administrative impropriety, in which he has already been convicted in the first instance.

The minister's position would be comical if it weren't so tragic.

And from what Bolsonaro has said and continues to say, it is evident that he is complicit with the interests of powerful environmental offenders.

There is one side to it, and it's not the side that's most important for future generations.

When he was in Rondônia during the campaign, Bolsonaro declared that "What is being done in Brazil, using the environmental name, is absurd," said the president.

Against the little guys, it's a bulldozer.
It irrigates the large areas.

Regarding social movements that occupy illegally seized land to force agrarian reform, Bolsonaro's stance is quite different.

“Their actions have to be classified as terrorism. These people only bring terror to the countryside. They invaded, we have to have appropriate legislation so that you can react and respond to any action on your part, but there is no punishment,” he said in a 2018 video to the current president of the Constitution, Justice and Citizenship Committee (CCJ) of the Chamber of Deputies, Felipe Francischini (PSL-PR).

Double standards.

The reverse side of the institutional role.

That's something only a fake patriotic president like Bolsonaro could do.