RIO DE JANEIRO – A British journalist and an indigenous affairs official are still missing in a remote part of the Brazilian Amazon, as authorities say they are expanding research efforts in the area, which has seen violent conflicts between fishermen, poachers and government agents.
Dom Phillips, a former contributor to the British newspaper The Guardian, and Bruno Araújo Pereira were last seen in the early hours of Sunday in the Sao Rafael community, the Univaja Association of Indigenous People Vale do reported. Javari, for whom Pereira has been an advisor.
The couple returned by boat from the Vale do Javari and headed for the city of Atalaia do Norte, an hour away, but never showed up.
Pereira is one of the most experienced employees of the Brazilian Indigenous Affairs Agency operating in the Vale do Javari area. He oversaw the agency’s regional office and the coordination of isolated indigenous groups before leaving his current leave. He has received a number of threats from illegal fishermen and poachers, and usually carries a gun.
Univaja said the two had been threatened during their intelligence trip. On Saturday, while camping, two men traveled down the river to the edge of indigenous territory and brandished a firearm on a Unijava patrol, association president Paulo Marubo told The Associated Press.
Phillips has been working on a book on preserving the Amazon.Dom Phillips / Twitter
Phillips, who has been reporting from Brazil for more than a decade, has been working on a book on preserving the Amazon with the support of the Alicia Patterson Foundation, which awarded him a one-year scholarship for reporting which lasted until January.
The couple disappeared on their way back from a two-day trip to the Jaburu Lake region, where Phillips interviewed local Indians, Univaja said. Only the two were on the boat.
The place where they disappeared is the main access road to and from the Vale do Javari, the second largest indigenous territory in Brazil that is larger than Maine, and where several thousand indigenous people live in dozens of villages. People in the area say that men are very unlikely to get lost in this area.
“He is a prudent journalist with an impressive knowledge of the complexities of the Brazilian environmental crisis,” Margaret Engel, executive director of the Alicia Patterson Foundation, wrote in an email. “And he is a beautiful writer and a charming person. The best of our business. “
Brazil’s federal prosecutor’s office said Monday in a statement that it had opened an investigation and that the Federal Police, the Amazon State Civil Police, the National Guard and the Navy had been mobilized. The Navy, which prosecutors described as the search coordinator, said it had sent a seven-man search and rescue team and would deploy a helicopter on Tuesday.
The couple disappeared on their way back from a two-day trip to the Lake Jaburu region, where Phillips interviewed local Indians.AP / Fabiano Maisonnave
The footprint and manpower of the army are much larger than those of the navy in the region, and officials did not indicate why it was not included in the initial search efforts. But on Monday afternoon, a spokesman for the Amazon division of the army told AP that he had since received orders to deploy a search mission.
Phillips has also contributed to the Washington Post and the New York Times. He currently resides in Salvador, a city in the state of Bahia in Brazil, with his wife, Alessandra Sampaio, who has shared a series of messages on Twitter through a friend.
“I can only pray that Dom and Bruno are well, somewhere, prevented from continuing for some mechanical reason, and that all this becomes one more story in a life full of them,” Sampaio wrote. “I know, however, the moment the Amazon is going through and I know the risks that Dom always denounced.”
The Vale do Javari region has seen repeated shootings between hunters, fishermen and official security guards, who have a permanent base in the area, which has the largest uncontacted indigenous population in the world. It is also an important route for cocaine produced on the Peruvian side of the border, then smuggled into Brazil to supply local cities or to be shipped to Europe.
In September 2019, an employee of the Indigenous Affairs Agency was shot dead in Tabatinga, the largest city in the region. The crime was never solved.
“It is extremely important that the Brazilian authorities devote all available and necessary resources to the immediate conduct of the searches, in order to ensure, as soon as possible, the safety of the two men,” said Maria Laura Canineau, director of Human Rights Watch. Brazil said in a statement on Monday.
Journalists working for the Amazon regional media have been killed in recent years, although there have been no such cases among national or foreign media journalists. However, there have been several reports of threats and the press has restricted access to various areas dominated by criminal activity, such as illegal mining, land grabbing and drug trafficking.
“I hope they are found soon, that they are well and safe,” former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva posted on Twitter. President Jair Bolsonaro had not made any comments until Monday afternoon.