Amazon security plan includes 34 new river, land bases

The new security plan for the Amazon will include the creation of 34 new river and land bases, where federal and state police forces should be posted at all times, said Brazil’s Minister of Justice and Public Security Flávio Dino. The idea, he added, is to use the Amazon Fund to finance the construction of these checkpoints.

“At each base, we’ll have the Federal Police, the Federal Highway Police, the National Force, and the State Police, as well as the Armed Forces whenever necessary—especially on the border,” he said during a radio interview on A Voz do Brasil Tuesday night (Jul. 11). The plan’s guidelines were defined alongside government authorities from all Amazon states.

The minister met in Brasília last week with ambassadors and other representatives from 23 EU countries to unveil the initiative, dubbed the Amazon Plan: Security and Sovereignty.

He also talked about the measures taken by the Federal Police in the first half of the year, chief among them the efforts in cooperation with the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol).

“What’s happening in the Brazilian Amazon is of national and global interest,” Minister Dino argued, as he recalled the meeting with foreign representatives.

A larger presence of security forces in the Amazon biome, he said, should improve public safety in the rest of the country, as the region has served as a platform for organized crime in international drug trafficking, illegal mining and logging, predatory fishing, among others.”