A year after the killings of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira, the Amazon is still under threat.The Lula government must protect the forest and its people

More or less a year ago, on 15 June 2022, the lifeless bodies of the journalist from Guardian, Dom Phillips, and Bruno Pereira, the Brazilian expert from the body for the protection of indigenous peoples.They had disappeared about ten days earlier in the Yavarí valley, in the Amazon forest, during a trip to investigate the exploitation of the forest and the growing threats to which indigenous populations are subjected.

Brazil, journalist Dom Phillips and activist Bruno Pereira killed while investigating illegal exploitation of the Amazon

A year later, their killings appear to be increasingly linked to the interests of groups dedicated to illegal activities that the two were investigating.The Yavarí valley – one of the most isolated places on the planet, a reserve of 85 thousand square kilometers covered by the Amazon forest, without roads, where you can move by navigating the river and within which approximately 23 indigenous groups live who have no external contacts – is in fact, it is a coveted territory for fishing, hunting, tree felling and illegal mining, and is an area affected by drug trafficking networks on the border between Brazil, Peru and Colombia.

On June 5, the Federal Police of Brazil he indicted the one considered to be the instigator of the murders, Ruben Dario da Silva Villar, head of a criminal group dedicated to illegal fishing in the Amazon forest, and his "right-hand man", Jânio Freitas de Souza, accused of also being involved in the cover-up of the bodies of Phillips and Pereira.The two had been followed for days by the criminal organization led by Silva Villar before being killed.

“Their killings were the consequences of the policies promoted by Jair Bolsonaro, a president who was undoubtedly the worst in recent decades when it came to the environment,” comment in an article on Guardian Beto Marubo, technical coordinator of the “União dos Povos Indígenas do Vale do Javarii” (Univaja), the main association of natives in the region.After having worked for years with the national body for the protection of indigenous peoples, FUNAI, in 2019 Pereira left the body, upset by Bolsonaro's cuts in funds and managers, to collaborate with Univaja and help the indigenous organization to train territorial surveillance teams to document and report illegal fishing and hunting.

Between 2019 and 2022, under then-President Jair Bolsonaro, deforestation in Brazil spiked.The new administration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has promised to limit deforestation.

Bolsonaro's secret plan to colonize the Amazon between hydroelectric plants, deforestation and highways

The main cause of deforestation is livestock farming.According to a new report from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), more than 800 million trees have been cut down in just six years to satisfy the world's appetite for Brazilian beef, despite warnings about the importance of the forest in fighting climate crisis.

The beef industry in Brazil has always been committed to avoiding deforestation-related farming, reports The Guardian.However, data suggests that 1.7 million hectares of the Amazon have been destroyed in close proximity to meat plants that export beef around the world.

“The Javari valley is at the center of a convergence of interests, including drug trafficking, illegal fishing, illegal logging and mining activities,” explains former police chief Alexandre Saraiva, who worked in the Amazon from 2011 to 2021.“I experienced how the state lost control of public safety in Rio de Janeiro.Today in the Amazon - if nothing is done in terms of public safety - we find ourselves faced with a Rio de Janeiro the size of a continent, with the aggravating circumstance of the borders with the main drug producers and an extraordinarily difficult jungle context".

The data collected by the Bruno and Dom project of the Brazilian Forum on Public Security (FBSP) on the impact of organized crime in the Amazon are disarming:

• In 2022, with more than 8,000 deaths, the homicide rate in the nine Brazilian Amazon states was more than 50% higher than in the rest of the country, reaching a similar level to that of Mexico.
• In Amazonas state, where Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips and 1,430 other people were killed last year, the homicide rate was 74% higher than the national average.2021 was even more violent, with 1,571 victims and a violent death rate of 36.8 per 100,000 inhabitants, five times higher than that of the United States.
• The number of people killed by military and civilian police grew by 71% in the Amazon between 2016 and 2021, compared to 35% in the rest of Brazil.The Amazon's prison population grew 35.1% between 2016 and 2022, compared to 14.1% in the rest of the country, helping factions run by detention centers to thrive in overcrowded prisons.
• The two most powerful criminal factions in Brazil - the PCC (First Command of the Capital) of São Paulo and the CV (Red Command) of Rio - today operate in all nine Amazonian states.In addition to them there are at least 15 other regional criminal groups.

If it is true that violence has long been "a distinctive feature of the predatory occupation of the Amazon", said the Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva, recalling the assassinations of activists such as Chico Mendes, in 1988, and Sister Dorothy Stang in 2005, the “overlap of multiple forms of crime” in the region now makes it necessary for a greater state presence in the affected regions.“If the Brazilian state does not intervene urgently and firmly, we will have [entire] regions managed by drug traffickers,” comments Beto Marubo.

At this rate, adds Saraiva, the Amazon will be a territory "of major conflicts between groups that will compete for areas of illegal gold and timber extraction.In the midst of all this, there will be indigenous victims.And we will face immense logistical difficulties to combat this."

Once elected, President Lula tried to involve Univaja.In February, indigenous leaders met with Lula's minister for indigenous peoples, senior environmental officials and police authorities at the organization's headquarters to work together on “recovering the Javari Valley.”

“It was an important meeting, but it has not yet produced effective actions,” comment Beto Marubo again.“A federal police team has been sent to the region, but it does not have the necessary resources to operate in this difficult area.We indigenous leaders call for - and hope to see - the Environment Agency, Ibama, the army, navy and other security forces take bold, clear and coordinated action.Lula's work in Javari must go beyond 'good intentions', just as he did in the face of the critical situation in Yanomami territory further north."

Meanwhile, colleagues and friends of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira they're trying to get it done the journalist's work remained interrupted Guardian and the Brazilian environmental activist.Among these, the journalist expert on environment and climate, Jonathan Watts, Eliane Brum (author and co-founder of Sumaúma, an Amazon information site), Tom Phillips (Latin America correspondent for the Guardian), Jon Lee Anderson (writer of New Yorker), Katia Brasil (founder of Amazon Real) and Andrew Fishman (president and co-founder of Intercept Brazil). 

“Dom was murdered while telling the story of Amazon defenders being killed.To leave his book unfinished would be to let the destroyers of the Amazon win without a fight.It would be a disservice to his legacy and everything we believe in as journalists,” Fishman said.

Phillips' sister, Sian Phillips, said the project is not only a lasting tribute to her brother's life's work, but also a vital resource to continue raising awareness about the threats facing the Amazon rainforest and on the indigenous populations who protect it:"If Dom and Bruno had not been killed, the book would have been important for the conservation of the Amazon.But now, thanks to the international outcry caused by the murders, the potential of the book is greater because many more people will read it,” he said.

On June 5th, exactly one year after their disappearance, have been organised various commemorative events.Activists from the Equipe de Vigilância da Univaja (EVU), the indigenous monitoring group that Pereira helped create, traveled across the Itaquaí River to raise a redwood cross on the spot where Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira were killed.

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