If you’ve been following the news coming out of Brazil or the UK will have picked up on the tragic story of British Journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous Activist Bruno Pereira who were murdered while out on an assignment in Brazil’s remote Amazon jungle.
Their murder is part of a long trend of violence against those who oppose the rapacious exploitation of the Amazon and those of the indigenous community that call the forest their home. It is a trend that has accelerated beyond control ever since the crypto-fascist, Jair Bolsonaro took over the presidency of the country.
Phillips was a dedicated conservationist who had visited remote parts of the Amazon many times and was in the process of writing a book on the region which would have been a clarion call for the protection of indigenous rights. His compatriot, Pereira, worked for FUNAI (Fundação Nacional do Índio), as part of government efforts to contact indigenous groups and afford them some sort of political voice.
From the outset, Bolsonaro has been blase about the fate of Phillips and Pereira, victim-blaming them for being in this hostile territory—a territory that has only been made hostile by the criminal gangs, the cocaine smugglers and the illegal loggers, that have flourished in the region under Bolsonaro’s watch.
One of the last messages Phillips sent was to David Biller, the APs news chief in Brazil, in which he said:
the amazon is much less protected than people think it is and much more threatened than people realise.
I hope that his words inspire the outrage that is necessary to defend the Amazon, to defend the indigenous groups that live and protect the forest, and to bring down the political edifice that has allowed criminality and murder to flourish in the region.