British journalist Dom Phillips has been buried in Brazil, exactly three weeks after he was shot dead while traveling on the Amazon with indigenous expert Bruno Pereira.
Pereira and Phillips, a longtime Guardian collaborator, disappeared while traveling down the Itaquai River on Sunday, June 5th.
Their killings have sparked international outrage and highlighted the historic assault on indigenous communities and the environment that has taken place under Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.
The bodies of the men were recovered from the rainforest on June 15, after a local fisherman confessed to his killings, and returned to their families on Thursday.
Dozens of villains gathered Sunday in a cemetery in Niterói, a city near Rio de Janeiro, to pay their respects to 57-year-old Phillips, who had spent the past 15 years reporting on his South American foster home.
“He was killed because he tried to tell the world what was happening to him in the rainforest and its inhabitants,” his sister, Sian Phillips, told reporters and television cameras gathered outside the chapel where he was. placed his coffin, covered with the Brazilian and the union. flags.
Sian Phillips says her murdered brother’s family and friends are committed to telling her story as she speaks at her funeral on Sunday, June 26, 2022 in Brazil. Photography: Pilar Olivares / Reuters
“Its mission clashed with the interests of individuals determined to exploit the Amazon rainforest regardless of the destructive impact of its illegal activities.”
He said the murdered journalist’s family and friends were “committed to continuing this work even at this time of tragedy.” “The story has to be told,” he added amid applause.
Phillips’ wife, Alessandra Sampaio, paid tribute to the indigenous peoples about whom her husband had been writing when he was murdered and who led the two-day search for the two men.
Sampaio urged the bad guys to celebrate Phillips’ “huge heart” and his love for humanity. “We will redouble our fight so that other families of other journalists and environmentalists do not have to face our pain and that of Bruno Pereira’s family,” Sampaio said.
The editor-in-chief of The Guardian, Katharine Viner, said: “Dom Phillips was a brave and passionate journalist who died doing something he loved: looking for and exposing the wrong done.
“His deep care for Brazil, his land and his people shone powerfully in his insightful journalism for the Guardian and many other publications. His memory will last a long time and his colleagues and friends will continue with the reports. which he did “.
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