June 25, 2022

12:06

Iury Lima – Amazon Agency

VILHENA (RO) – The Amazon Forest, where the Brazilian indigenist Bruno da Cunha Araújo Pereira and the british journalist Dominic Mark Phillips were brutally murdered, is taken over by organized crime – and it has been so for a long time – according to organizations and specialists interviewed by AMAZON AGENCY. The difference is that “now the whole world is watching”.

The galloping deforestation rates in the largest biome in the country – more than 2 thousand soccer fields of native forest felled per day between January and May this year -, the relationship between illegal fishing and drug trafficking through money laundering in the Javari Valley region, in the Amazon, and the blatant violence perpetrated against activists, journalists, environmentalists and whoever else challenges the criminal organizations that operate within the Protected Areas converge on a single thing: the absence of State power in the Amazon. Bruno and Dom have been put to the test.

Escalation of violence

Killed by shooting with hunting ammunition, quartered, set on fire and then buried in the middle of the forest, Bruno Pereira and Don Phillips, as he was better known, were victims of a political crime, according to the evaluation of the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley (Univaja), which denounced the disappearance of the two on June 5. The same way the case is understood by the employees of the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), who went on strike last Thursday, June 23. 

Despite the brutality with which they were committed, these deaths are nothing new. Bruno is the third indigenous person killed in the current administration of Funai, headed by Marcelo Xavier, under the Bolsonaro government. 

The first was Maxciel Pereira dos Santos, killed in 2019 with a shot in the neck, on the main avenue of Tabatinga (AM), also near the Javari Valley. He was 34 years old and was fighting for the protection of Indigenous Lands. In Rondônia, one year later, the indigenous activist Rieli Franciscato died while mediating a conflict between isolated indigenous people in the region of the municipality of Seringueiras and miners who were invading their territory. He was 56 years old and was accidentally hit by an arrow. Now, in 2022, the ‘Bruno and Dom case’, with lives interrupted at the ages of 41 and 57, respectively.

All these losses illustrate very well a devastating reality presented in data by the international NGO Global Witness, in 2021: Brazil ranks fourth among the countries that kill the most environmentalists in the whole planet.

Bruno and Dom

Bruno Pereira was a consultant for the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley (Univaja) and helped to articulate a network of protection in this area, which is the second largest Indigenous Land (TI) on Brazilian soil, home to at least six known ethnic groups and the largest number of isolated communities on record. The indigenist was also considered one of the most important experts of his generation on Indigenous Peoples in isolation, and spoke four native languages.

Dom Phillips, meanwhile, was documenting the day-to-day life fraught with threats suffered by traditional populations in the region. He planned to publish everything in a book, but there was no time. 

“Who cares about a brutal murder like that of two people who were there, in the work environment, which was not a hostile environment [as criticized by the President of the republic Jair Bolsonaro]. It was an environment known to Bruno. The indigenous people knew him, therefore, Dom Phillips, who went along with him, was being received in the same way, with good will, with hospitality”, declared the anthropologist from the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) and professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), Lúcia Helena Rangel.

Bruno and Dom were last seen alive leaving the riverside community of São Rafael, in Vale do Javari, on June 5. So far, three suspects of involvement in the murder have been arrested. 

For the specialist, violence has been a chronic problem in Brazil, “whether in the cities, in large urban centers, or in the Amazon”. She criticizes the government for its lack of competence in curbing illegalities. “These criminal organizations that operate throughout Brazil have a lot of power. And our military, our police, are not able to contain this violence. And more: I think that the Federal Government doesn’t want to contain the violence”, he also said. 

Eyes turned to Brazil

Internationally, the case is seen as the most faithful portrait of the Brazilian government’s neglect. It has led to charges from the United Nations (UN) and even to a manifestation at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, promoted by the Articulation of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (Apib) against the inertia of the State, harshly criticized also by those who live here. 

“They didn’t just disappear or were murdered. They were brutally murdered. And this is what we are exposing to the world: how Brazil treats activists and people who care for the environment and protect human rights”, said Txai Surui, activist and coordinator of the Association for the Ethnoenvironmental Defense Kanindé and the Indigenous Youth Movement of Rondonia, in an interview with AMAZON AGENCY. 

Txai remembers his childhood friend Ari Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau, murdered in 2020 for denouncing the invasion and illegal logging of his people’s territory in Rondônia. He was found dead, with an injury in the neck region. “And to this day we have no answers, as has happened with other murders of forest defenders, which remain unsolved”, lamented the activist.

“What we are seeing is not only a disrespect or a threat to our forest, to our Amazon, but a threat to those who defend it. Today, one of our greatest challenges is simply to survive (…) We see that these criminals are based, mainly, on impunity, on a certainty that nothing will happen. And it’s true”, he added.

Narcotraffic, illegal fishing, violence, and much more

The former coordinator of Funai in Vale do Javari, Antenor Vaz, is a profound connoisseur of the reality and irregularities that plague the Indigenous Land, as was Bruno Pereira. He told the report that the escalation of crimes and violence where the protection and respect for traditional communities should prevail has been pushed by the dismantling of the foundation, promoted by the federal government. Located in the triple border Brazil-Colombia-Peru, the area, in the extreme northwest of the Amazon, has become an easy path for drugs. 

“It is a region where, for a long time, the processes of invasion of territories have been quite strong”, he pointed out. “Recently, from about five to eight years ago, there has been a total emptying of FUNAI, not only the regional administration, which is located in the headquarters of Atalaia do Norte, but also in the Front for Ethnoenvironmental Protection, which is located at the confluence of two rivers: the Ituí River and the Itaquaí River. With very few people working, it is no longer possible to develop the surveillance and territorial protection work”, lamented Vaz.

He states that the situation is much worse today because of the presence of illegal drug dealers, loggers and miners. “The Indigenous Land is totally invaded by this organized crime”, he said. 

“It seems redundant to demand that the competent bodies assume the constitutional function of guaranteeing the integrity and fundamental rights of these indigenous peoples (…) The neglect of FUNAI is completely visible. Not only by the scrapping of employees to implement the Brazilian indigenous protection policy, but also by the scrapping of financial resources”, he declared, disappointed.

For the advisor of the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (Coiab), Fabricio Amorim, the scrapping generated a “foreseen situation”. 

“It is a border area (…) international drug trafficking has increased its strength in the region and has become involved in illegal invasion schemes of the Indigenous Land. It is a place of difficult access (…) an international river. So these criminals commit crimes on the Brazilian side and hide on the Peruvian side”, said Amorim. 

In his evaluation, while the government continues to be inert, the defenders of the forest and the forest peoples “become collectors of tragedies”. “There is a very serious situation here of garimpo and a lot of violence. We are very tired, you know? And I don’t think it’s going to end there, no”, he told the reporter.

Deforestation

As if all these problems were not enough, wounds the size of metropolises continue to spread throughout the Amazon. The forest has suffered the worst level of devastation in the last 15 years: more than 2 thousand soccer fields of native forest were cut down between January and May. In this last month alone, there were 1,476 square kilometers, almost half of the total accumulated from 2022 until now: 44%. 

But what does this have to do with the violent deaths in the region? Everything, according to the Amazon Institute of Man and Environment. “Whenever there is deforestation, there is violence, there is conflict in the countryside, and in those more remote regions, still far from this frontier, like Vale do Javari, there are already early signs that there will be pressure on those forests and the people who are there are already being threatened”, clarified Imazon researcher Carlos Souza Jr.  

According to him, this escalation of violence “culminated with the death of the indigenous activist Bruno Pereira and the journalist Dom Phillips”. “They were murdered in a brutal and cowardly way for protecting the Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley and their forests”, he added.

That is why, in the expert’s opinion, it is necessary that the governments combat illegal deforestation and protect the forest people and those who work for the conservation of the Amazon.

Lúcia Helena Rangel, professor at PUC-SP and anthropologist for Cimi, points out that it is necessary to reverse the scenario, but that if it were easy, it would have already been done.

“The challenges are many and very big, obviously, because it is not enough for a single individual to know the Amazon reality. The big challenge is to convince others that the forest is important (…) our rain, our water, our climate, everything passes through the Amazon Forest. The biggest challenge is to convince the government and the Brazilian right wing that all this is important for all of us. That destruction is not worth it. That destruction is death for many generations”, he evaluated. 

For now, what remains is the indignation of those who see friends, partners, comrades in the struggle suffering in the most ungrateful and unfair way.

“If yesterday it was Maxciel, if yesterday it was Rieli Franciscato, if yesterday indigenous people were murdered, if yesterday young people and children were raped and killed by this organized crime that presents itself through mining and illegal logging – and other atrocities – who will it be tomorrow? Who will be the next life, victim?”, echoed Antenor Vaz, finally, the question that the sensible, lucid and empathetic part of the world repeats.