The two men have not been seen since Sunday morning. A British journalist and a Brazilian expert on indigenous peoples have disappeared in a remote region of the Amazon, authorities and indigenous rights groups announced on Monday (June 6th). Freelance journalist Dom Phillips, 57, was researching a book in the Javari Valley, along with renowned indigenous peoples scholar Bruno Araujo Pereira, reports The Guardian which Phillips collaborates regularly.
Located in the south-west of the Amazon, not far from Peru, this isolated and difficult-to-reach region is experiencing an escalation in armed violence due to the presence of miners, gold washers or clandestine hunters.
The prosecution announced that the police had been charged with a search operation, under the direction of the Navy. But early research by natives “with an excellent knowledge of the region” came to nothing, said the Union of Indigenous Organizations of the Javari Valley (Univaja) and the Observatory for the Human Rights of Isolated and Recently Contacted Indigenous Peoples (OPI).
According to the two organisations, the two men had “received threats on the ground the week [précédant] their disappearance”. Bruno Araujo Pereira, a long-time worker at Funai, a government agency responsible for indigenous peoples, has regularly faced threats from illegal loggers and miners coveting indigenous lands. Funai’s base in Javari Valley has been attacked several times in recent years. In 2019, a Funai representative was shot dead there. The body told AFP it was collaborating with local authorities in the search.
According to Univaja and OPI, the two men, who were traveling by boat, were last seen in Sao Gabriel, not far from the community of Sao Rafael, where Bruno Pereira had an appointment with the local chief. to raise the issue of indigenous patrols to combat the “invasions” of land, more and more frequent under the government of Jair Bolsonaro. According to the newspaper O Globo, two fishermen were arrested by the police in the night from Monday to Tuesday, including a person with whom the two men had an appointment. The newspaper does not specify whether it is this local chief.
The Guardian said to himself “very worried”, while the foreign press association in Brazil, Acie, expressed “his extreme concern” and asked the authorities to act “immediately”. L‘ex-president Lula, favorite in the October election, meanwhile wished that the two men “be safe and sound and found quickly”. “We implore the Brazilian authorities to send the national guard, the federal police and all the forces at their disposal to find our dear Dom”, called someone close to Dom Phillips on Twitter.