ICMBio censors public servants with “academic gag law”

An ICMBio ordinance signed by the environmental agency’s president, Military Police Colonel Fernando Cesar Lorencini, determines prior censorship of “publication of scientific manuscripts, texts, and compilations” produced within the institute.

Published in the Federal Official Gazette (DOU) on March 12, Ordinance 151/2021, effective as of April 1, also requires a statement in which the researcher assumes “full responsibility” for the work.

Listened to by Folha de São Paulo, the National Association of Servers in the Environment Specialist Career (Ascema) is studying measures against the decision. “It is an attempt to control not only the academic production but also the opinion of the public servants,” said Denis Rivas, president of the group. The website O Eco informed that the Forum of Zoological Societies, composed of 14 societies and research associations, published an open letter calling for the revocation of the ordinance.

Censorship against environmental agencies subordinated to the Ministry of Environment (MMA) is a recurring practice of the Bolsonaro government. In March 2019, Minister Ricardo Salles determined the restriction of access of servers to the press, centralizing the demands in the MMA’s Communication Office. In the case of ICMBio, the “gag law”, as it was called by critics, was extended to social networks, with the request for the interruption of the body’s Twitter profile, now inactive. In July of the following year, the Office of the Comptroller General (CGU) published a technical note defending that the disclosure by federal employees “of opinions about conflicts or internal affairs, or of critical manifestations to the body to which they belong” on social networks are conducts that are subject to “disciplinary investigation”.