Brazilian Environment Minister Ricardo Salles criticized DW on Thursday for the publication of an opinion piece criticizing Brasilia's environmental policies.

The column by Rio-based German journalist Philipp Lichterbeck said the new Bolsonaro-led government was bent on turning the country's landscape into "an inferno of soy, pastureland, agrochemicals, sugarcane and mining industry."

The destruction of the environment "seems to be one of the main projects" of the new leadership, Lichterbeck wrote. "These are people who act and speak with arrogance and cruelty .... who laugh when a 7-year-old dies. They celebrate when police commit massacres in slums, when environmentalists or black councilmen die."

The text, titled "The project of Mephistopheles" and first published on DW's Portuguese site, provoked an angry response from Salles, who tweeted that the description of Brazil "is moreseeking to curtail the powers of environmental agency IBAMA, which polices deforestation in the Amazon. He also described Salles as someone who could have featured in George Orwell's 1984, "in which the 'Ministry of Peace' is responsible for organizing the war. Because in Brazil, the minister is not interested in protecting the environment, but in exploiting it."

Read more: Experts warn of Bolsonaro threat to the Amazon

What Salles had to say

When approached for comment, Salles told DW it was "unacceptable" that a public broadcaster could allow the publication of content that is so "gratuitous," "aggressive" and "offensive."

He added that the commentary "was not a criticism of environmental policy."

"It is a pure and simple offense, attacking people, attacking in a certain way the Brazilian government as a whole, it was