Indigenous people hold a poster asking for justice for Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira, who were murdered earlier this month in a remote Amazon region. Photo: Bruno Rocha/Agência Enquadrar/Folhapress
The brutal murders in early June of British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, near the remote Vale do Javari reserve in Brazil’s western Amazon, drew attention to the region’s lawlessness.
In the wake of Messrs. Phillips and Pereira’s deaths, indigenous locals and advocates say they had been warning about the risks of rising violence for some time, as the work of indigenous and environmental defenders in the Amazon increasingly comes up against the interests of the various criminal groups that operate in the rainforest.
Orlando Possuelo, an indigenous expert who advises the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Vale do Javari (Univaja), told The Brazilian Report last week that for a year threats had been looming over the area in which Messrs. Phillips and Pereira were killed. “Are the authorities going to take our complaints more seriously [now]?” he asked.
These warnings and complaints are...
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