One year after the murders of the British journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian indigenist Bruno Pereira, in the Javari Valley, in the Amazon, six Brazilian cities are holding acts this Monday (5), in memory of the victims. The acts take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Campinas, Belém, Salvador and Atalaia do Norte (AM). There will also be a demonstration in London, England. In Rio de Janeiro, the event took place on Copacabana Beach, in the south of the city, and brought together Dom’s widow, Alessandra Sampaio, his family and friends of the journalist. Alessandra Sampaio highlighted that she trusts the Brazilian Justice to judge the killers and those responsible for the crime. She believes that the judgment would send an important message to the criminal networks that operate in the Javari Valley and in other areas of the Amazon. She also defended that it is important to protect the people who live in these territories from the criminal organizations that operate in the Amazon. “This criminal network takes advantage of the poverty that exists in the region, of a lack of job opportunities. They enlist people to work in mining, to clear forests. And when are we going to change that? We’ve seen this forever. Will more journalists need to die there? How many indigenous people will need to die? How many activists will need to be killed to have real change?”, demanded Alessandra during the act, in Rio de Janeiro. Vale do Javari Indigenous leader Beto Marubo, a member of the Representative Organization of the Indigenous Peoples of the Land of the Vale do Javari (Univaja), also participated in the act in Rio de Janeiro. He stated that, despite the change of government at the federal level this year, nothing has changed in relation to the reality of that region. “The Brazilian government owes the world an explanation, and what steps it will take from now on. What will Brazil actually do? We don’t have an official response from the authorities yet,” he said. According to Marubo, during the transition of government, several suggestions were presented to improve the situation in Vale do Javari, but so far none of these measures have been adopted. “The Brazilian State has to be responsible and aware that one or two institutions [sozinhas] will not solve the problem. There must be an interagency, coordinated action, with technical planning, together with Funai, the Army, the Federal Police, Ibama and the National Force. In a short, medium and long term perspective”, he defended. He said that Funai’s structures in the region are very precarious and the agency currently does not have the capacity to face armed criminals. “There needs to be a restructuring of equipment and infrastructure in the region. There is no way to face the situation in Vale do Javari with its completely outdated organization chart. It is necessary to regulate Funai’s police power. How is an agency that is responsible for protecting indigenous lands going to face armed people, for example?” Marubo also criticized the approval of the Temporal Framework Bill for the demarcation of indigenous lands (PL 490/07), by the Chamber of Deputies. “We hope that it will not be validated [pelo Senado], because that would be a tremendous setback. It is something that will directly affect isolated indigenous peoples. It allows the usurpation of indigenous lands”, he highlighted. Book Friends and fellow journalists of Dom will meet, at the request of his family, to finish the book of the British. The project started a crowdfunding campaign to raise the GBP 16,000 (about R$100,000) needed to complete the work. As of Monday morning, the campaign had raised around £10,500. “We will immediately start sending reporters to seven remote locations in the Amazon basin, which is 28 times the size of the UK. Most of the places you need to get to are only accessible by boat, walking trails that take days in the middle of the forest or taking a ride in a helicopter”, informs the text announcing the campaign. “The destroyers of the Amazon remain extremely powerful and must be held accountable for their crimes,” warns the document. One year Bruno and Dom were killed in an ambush when the journalist was gathering information for a book he was writing about the Amazon. The book How to Save the Amazon sought to tell the story of defenders of the forest and indigenous rights in the Amazon rainforest. The indigenist was killed with three shots, one of them in the back, without any possibility of defense. Dom was murdered just for being with Bruno, that is, to eliminate the witness of the crime. Three people were denounced to the Federal Court for involvement in the crime and in the concealment of the bodies: Amarildo da Costa Oliveira, Oseney da Costa Oliveira and Jefferson da Silva Lima. They claimed self-defense, in testimony to Justice, in May. The Federal Police (PF) also indicted other people, including two former directors of the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (Funai), for possible fraud, for failing to guarantee the safety of their servants in the region. The PF is also investigating Rubén Dario da Silva Villar, known as Colombia, who is suspected of having ordered the crime. According to the PF, the suspicion is that he planned the murders due to disagreements with Bruno, as the licensed Funai employee acted against illegal fishing in the region. A PF investigation against illegal fishing was also closed with the indictment of ten people.
Agência Brasil
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