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Pain and frustration one year after the murder of Dom Philips and Bruno Pereira in the Brazilian Amazon: "Nothing has changed"

2023-06-05T20:41:02.694Z

Highlights: A year after the murder of Dom Philips and Bruno Pereira, things have hardly changed in the Yavari Valley. The murderers of the British journalist and the Brazilian indigenist have not yet been tried. The area of the Brazilian rainforest is the region of the world where more uncontacted indigenous communities live. Last week, the Minister of Indigenous Peoples, Sonia Guajajara, ordered the creation of a working group to find solutions to the lack of security and the increase in crime in the area.


The murderers of the British journalist and the Brazilian indigenist have not yet been tried and the situation in the Javari Valley has not improved under Lula's government, community leaders criticize


Relatives and relatives of Dom Philips and Bruno Pereira, this Monday in Rio de Janeiro.Antonio Lacerda (EFE)

A year after the murder of British journalist Dom Philips and Brazilian indigenist Bruno Pereira, things have hardly changed in the Yavari Valley, the corner of the Amazon where they lost their lives at the hands of poachers. This area of the Brazilian rainforest, which is known as a "valley" but is the size of Panama, is the region of the world where more uncontacted indigenous communities live. It is also a sieve for drug trafficking and organized crime, a lawless land. Activists in the area and relatives of the victims lament that things have hardly changed since the terrible crime.

On Monday, at a memorial service for Philips and Pereira, family and friends gathered at Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana Beach to remember them. Visibly moved, the journalist's widow, Alessandra Sampaio, called for decisive actions so that the State is more present in that remote region on the border with Peru, where threats to the indigenous people who defend their territory from invaders are still daily. "If this case that went around the world has not changed anything in the Yavari, when will it change? I speak from an awkward position because I lost the love of my life, I didn't want to be here, I wanted to be in my simple life that I had with Dom, we wanted to grow old together. They stole it from me, his family, his friends because of greed, because of the lack of intentional oversight of the previous government," he criticized. Sampaio, now a forced activist, is preparing the creation of the Dom Philips Institute, to disseminate actions for the preservation of the Amazon.

At his side, Beto Marubo, the president of the Univaja association, which brings together the indigenous peoples of the valley, confirmed his frustration. "Absolutely nothing changed. The Brazilian government owes an explanation to the world of what measures it is going to take from now on. We don't have a concrete response from the authorities," he lamented. Last April, men armed with rifles invaded a village of the Kanamari ethnic group and threatened the cacique, shortly after the Federal Police confiscated illegally extracted wood from that indigenous territory. In November of last year, the Kanamari had already denounced that illegal fishermen operating in the Yavari threatened to exterminate the indigenous leaders of the area. One fisherman even pointed a gun at the chest of an indigenous woman and cited the murder of Philips and Pereira as a warning.

Marubo, who has been threatened with death for years, says that in the transition between the Government of Jair Bolsonaro and the new Administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, at the end of last year, they already presented the urgent measures that should be implemented, such as strengthening the powers of the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples, Funai, the state body that takes care of native populations, so that its officials have "police power" and can confront armed people. He criticizes that until now there have only been palliative and isolated measures, patches that do not attack the root of the problem.

Last week, the Minister of Indigenous Peoples, Sonia Guajajara, ordered the creation of a working group to find solutions to the lack of security and the increase in crime in the area. However, the anniversary of the death comes after a week of bad news for the indigenous and environmental cause that goes in the opposite direction to what the relatives of Philips and Pereira and the Yavari activists claim. The Chamber of Deputies, with a conservative majority, withdrew powers from the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples and the Ministry of the Environment and approved the 'time frame' bill, which if definitively passed in the Senate could greatly hinder the legal recognition of new indigenous lands.

Meanwhile, a year after the murder, none of the defendants (Amarildo da Costa, Oseney da Costa and Jefferson da Silva), who are imprisoned in federal prisons, has been convicted. The first hearings should have been held at the end of January, but they were cancelled due to technical problems, and his lawyers have since managed to delay his interrogations. According to information obtained by the Globo network, last week the justice system charged two other people: Ruben Villar, nicknamed Colombia and alleged principal of the murder, and another illegal fisherman, Jânio Freitas. According to the police, in one year the defendants made more than 400 phone calls, including on the day of the crime, moments before and after the execution. Those conversations would be the strongest evidence that it was a premeditated crime.

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Source: elparis

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