Indigenous leaders, politicians and friends and relatives of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira have paid tribute to the two men on the anniversary of their murders in the Brazilian Amazon.
The British journalist and Brazilian Indigenous expert were ambushed and killed on 5 June 2022 while travelling by boat through the remote Javari valley region.
On Monday morning hundreds of supporters gathered on Rio’s Copacabana beach and in the Amazon city of Belém to remember their lives and the causes they cherished.
Phillips’s widow, Alessandra Sampaio, fought back tears as she spoke of her bereavement.
“The truth is I lost the love of my life. I wish I wasn’t here giving interviews. I don’t want any of this. I’d like to go back to the simple life I had with Dom. We wanted to grow old together and this was stolen from me, it was stolen from my family and my friends – all because of greed and the previous government’s deliberate lack of control [in the Amazon],” she said.
Ex-president Jair Bolsonaro’s dismantling of Indigenous and environmental protections was widely blamed for soaring deforestation and creating the lawless backdrop against which last year’s murders occurred.
But Sampaio – who is preparing to launch the Dom Phillips Institute focused on the defence of Indigenous communities and the environment – said she was determined to continue her husband’s fight for the Amazon.
“I feel so angry but I try not to focus on this. I’m trying to move forwards and do what’s possible in Dom’s name to promote conservation,” she said, calling for greater government efforts to protect the Indigenous activists battling to protect their ancestral lands from illegal miners, poachers and drug traffickers.
“It’s intolerable that Indigenous people are still under threat and are still being killed. When will this stop? Wasn’t the death of Dom and Bruno enough?” Sampaio said.
Beto Marubo, a prominent Javari leader who is among those who has received death threats, attended the Rio memorial and said he was encouraged to see people around the world championing the causes Pereira and Phillips have come to represent.
But Marubo voiced disappointment that the Javari valley had yet to witness an emphatic intervention from Brazil’s new leftwing government which took power in January.
A floating federal police base has been installed in Atalaia do Norte, the port town nearest to the entrance of the Javari valley Indigenous territory, but activists say little else has been done.
“We thought that by now we’d have the army, the federal police and the navy working together in the region … but we don’t. And the same issues … that caused the deaths of Dom and Bruno persist,” said Marubo, who worked with Pereira for over a decade.
“Indigenous leaders are still being threatened … outsiders continue to invade the Indigenous territory. Absolutely nothing has changed,” Marubo said, adding: “We aren’t interested in [the government’s] good intentions. We want to see things happen.”
In Brazil’s political capital, Brasília, remembrance events are also planned, including one at the presidential palace marking World Environment Day. The president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and environment minister, Marina Silva, will attend, as well as the widows of Phillips and Pereira.
Writing on Twitter, Silva remembered how Pereira and Phillips were murdered “during a period of exponential growth of violence against the forest, its peoples and its defenders”.
“They have joined Chico Mendes, Sister Dorothy and so many other friends in the memory we honour and which nourishes our desire to keep working,” Silva wrote.
On the eve of Monday’s commemorations, it emerged that federal police had charged the alleged leader of a “transnational criminal organisation” with masterminding last year’s murders. Ruben Dario da Silva Villar is accused of being the boss of an illegal poaching network that pillaged the waterways and forests of the Javari valley territory – and whose activities Pereira was trying to thwart by training Indigenous patrol teams.
The indictment said evidence gathered by police suggested “the steps of Bruno and Dom were being monitored by the criminal organisation” in the days leading up to the crime.
Speaking on Copacabana beach, Marubo vowed Indigenous activists would continue struggling in Pereira’s name. “It’s matter of honour, of ethics and commitment to the cause,” he said, urging journalists to do the same by travelling to the Amazon to cover Indigenous issues.
“Dom gave his life for this,” Marubo said.
