<
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/16/dom-phillips-bruno-pereiras-brazil-ministers-visit-site-murder>
"Indigenous activists are planning to take some of Brazil’s top ministers to
the spot where Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira were murdered in the Amazon
rainforest amid reports security forces are poised to launch a major
environmental clampdown in the remote border region.
Leaders of Univaja, the Indigenous association for which Pereira worked in
Brazil’s Javari Valley, said senior politicians, including justice minister
Flávio Dino and the minister for Indigenous peoples Sônia Guajajara, would
travel there on 27 February.
The visit is part of a high-profile push by president Luiz Inácio Lula da
Silva’s new government to beat back the illegal miners, loggers and poachers
who wrought environmental havoc during the four-year term of his far-right
predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.
Last week special forces operatives from the environmental protection agency
Ibama and federal police launched what is expected to be a months-long
operation to drive tens of thousands of illegal miners from the Yanomami
Indigenous territory after claims its 28,000 inhabitants had faced “genocide”
under Bolsonaro.
Beto Marubo, one of Univaja’s main leaders, said the government delegation
would be taken to the decrepit riverside base which guards the entrance to the
Javari Valley territory, the world’s largest refuge for Indigenous tribes
living in isolation.
The ministers would also be taken to the spot where Phillips, a British
journalist who reported for the
Guardian, and Pereira, a Brazilian Indigenous
expert, were shot dead on 5 June last year as they traveled by boat down the
Itaquai River.
“We will show them,” said Marubo. “This is going to be a historic moment.”
As the activists spoke, the Brazilian newspaper
O Globo reported that the
defense ministry planned to launch a “mega-operation” in the Javari Valley on
the same day as the ministerial visit. The springboard for that operation will
reportedly be Atalaia do Norte, the isolated river town Phillips and Pereira
were trying to reach when they were attacked by a trio of men apparently
enraged by Pereira’s defense of the region’s Indigenous communities."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
