Family, friends and fellow reporters have paid tribute to British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian isolated tribes expert Bruno Pereira who disappeared in the Amazon 11 days ago.
Police said on Wednesday night they had recovered human remains from a grave in the jungle where they were led by a fisherman who confessed to killing the two men. The remains are still being identified.
The man had threatened Mr Pereira for documenting illegal fishing in the remote Javari Valley bordering Peru and Colombia, police said.
Through his reporting, Mr Phillips (57) became an international voice for the threats facing the world’s largest rainforest, which is being plundered by loggers, poachers, illegal fishing and wildcat miners.
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Mr Pereira (41), an indigenous peoples advocate and former official of the government agency Funai, was travelling with Mr Phillips as he researched a book on attempts to save the rainforest when they disappeared on Sunday, June 5th.
“Now we can bring them home and say goodbye with love,” Mr Phillips’s wife, Alessandra Sampaio, said. The end of the search also marked the beginning of a quest for justice, she added.
The Javari Valley indigenous association Univaja, which searched for the men, said their murder was a “political crime” and called on the government to better protect their land. Indigenous territories have become increasingly vulnerable to invasions, affected by cuts to agency funding and staff under far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.
Survival International said Mr Phillips and Mr Pereira were the latest victims of a war being waged by Mr Bolsonaro and his allies in Brazil’s farm sector eyeing protected indigenous lands.
“The government’s genocidal attempts to open up indigenous territories to invaders, and reward criminals with impunity, have caused sky-rocketing levels of both forest destruction and appalling violence against those who try to stop it,” said Survival International’s advocacy director, Fiona Watson.
Mr Phillips was an admired reporter in Brazil and a regular contributor to the Guardian. He also wrote for the Washington Post, The New York Times and other publications during his 30-year career in journalism.
In a letter last week, journalists and friends described Mr Phillips as “one of the sharpest and most caring foreign journalists in South America”, — Reuters
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