Over the summer, as fires burned more than 20,000 hectares of Amazon forest, far-right President Jair Bolsonaro decided to authorize the deployment of the Brazilian Armed Forces to try to contain the blaze. The operation lasted until Oct. 24 and, according to the Defense Ministry, resulted in 127 arrests and more than $33 million in fines.

To deploy the troops, Bolsonaro signed a Guarantee of Law and Order (GLO), an instrument used by the president when civil police forces are not able to provide security. Such operations have been allowed by the Brazilian Constitution since it was drafted in 1988, but the mechanism for using them was only written into legislation in 1999 by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and then reinforced in 2013 by Celso Amorim, who was defense minister for President Dilma Rousseff’s government. These laws allowed the military to carry out operations and assume police duties for a set period in a restricted area and using limited force.

Full article at Foreign Policy’s website. Date of publication: 19/11/2019