It is an indigenous land that is difficult to access, close to the border with Peru and Colombia, and hit by the presence of illegal miners and loggers who try to invade land to exploit it.
Three groups in the region defending indigenous rights assured in a joint note that only six state police officers were acting, asking the government for more resources. In the afternoon, the Federal Police reported that they reinforced the searches with “another helicopter” with members of that force and the Army.
Bolsonaro described the expedition as an “adventure not recommended”. “Two people in a boat, in a region like that, completely wild, is an adventure that is not recommended. Anything can happen,” he noted in an interview with Sbt News. “It may be an accident, they may have been executed,” he added, saying he hoped “they will be found” soon.
For WWF Brazil, the government “took a long time to act” to mobilize its forces. “The Amazon is becoming a lawless land,” the organization deplored in a statement.
Phillips and Pereira had traveled by boat to Lake Jaburu and were due back in the city of Atalaia do Norte last Sunday morning. They were looking to interview indigenous people, for which they arrived at Lake Jaburu on Friday night. “I am entering the forest tomorrow. In about 15 days or even less, I will be in Atalaia do Norte,” Pereira said in an undated audio published Tuesday by O Globo.
Phillips and Pereira were traveling in a new boat with 70 liters of fuel and using satellite communication equipment. Pereira, an expert with Brazil’s government agency for indigenous affairs (Funai), had previously been threatened by illegal loggers and miners.
The Brazilian Alessandra Sampaio, the journalist’s wife, asked between tears to “intensify the searches”, in a video released by TV Bahia. The journalist’s sister, Sian Phillips, asked the authorities in a video on social networks “to do everything possible. Timing is crucial.”
Some 40 correspondents and friends of Phillips, who has also published in The New York Times and The Washington Post, asked in a letter in O Globo to “immediately” expand the efforts.
Eleven press organizations requested an urgent audience with the Ministers of Justice and Public Security and Defense, and demanded information on the progress of the operations.
In this indigenous land, to which Phillips had traveled with Pereira in 2018, 6,300 individuals from 26 different groups live, 19 of them isolated, according to the NGO Instituto Socioambiental. The violence has escalated in recent years. The local base of Funai, to protect and assist indigenous people, has suffered several attacks since 2018, including the murder in 2019 of an employee.
The case had international repercussions and the UK government released a note. “We are accompanying the case of the disappearance of the British journalist Phillips who was with the indigenous Araújo Pereira in the Amazon,” posted the charge d’affaires of the British Embassy, Melanie Hopkins.
Source: Ambito
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