RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – A British journalist and a native official are still missing in Brazil’s remote Amazonian region, as authorities say they are expanding search operations in a region where the violent clashes between fishermen, poachers and government. Agents.
Dom Phillips, who is a regular contributor to the British newspaper The Guardian, and Bruno Araujo Pereira were last seen in the San Rafael community on Sunday morning, according to Valle do Javar’s Indigenous Peoples Association, of which Pereira is a councilor.
The couple was back by boat from the town of Atalaya do Norte, about an hour’s drive away, but never showed up.
Pereira is one of the most experienced employees of the Brazilian Resident Affairs Agency, working in the Valle do Javari region. He oversaw the agency’s regional office and interacted with isolated indigenous groups before vacationing. It received threatening streams from illegal fishermen and poachers and often carried guns.
Univaja said they were both threatened with travel reporting. While they were camping on Saturday, a small group of men headed down the river towards the border of the native area and shot the patrol in Unijava, Association president Paulo Marubo told the Associated Press. Phillips photographed the men at the time, Marubo said.
Phillips, 57, from Brazil, worked for more than a decade and worked on a book on Amazon conservation in support of the Alicia Patterson Foundation, which gave him a one -year scholarship for an environmental report that lasted until January.
The couple disappeared on their return from a two-day trip to the Lake Jaburu region, where Phillips interviewed local natives, Univaja said. There were only two on board.
The place where they got lost was the main thoroughfare of Vale do Javari, the second largest native area in Brazil, which is larger than Maine and where. Several thousand inhabitants live in dozens of villages. People in the area say men in the industry are unlikely to get lost.
“She is a conservative journalist with an amazing understanding of the intricacies of Brazil’s environmental crisis,” Margaret Engel, executive director of the Alicia Patterson Foundation, wrote in an email. And he was a great writer and a good man. The best in our business. “
Brazilian federal prosecutors said Monday they had initiated an investigation and mobilized the federal police, the Amazonian state civil police, the National Guard and the Navy. The Navy, which prosecutors called search coordination, said it sent a search and rescue team of seven and would deploy a helicopter on Tuesday. There were no reports of helicopter use on Monday, and many colleagues expressed concern that the government was not acting quickly.
“We urge the authorities to act quickly, seriously and with all possible resources in this research,” Pereira’s family said in a statement. “Every minute counts, every section of river and forest that hasn’t been explored could be where they hope to live.”
The army’s workforce far exceeded the region’s navy, and there were no indications from officials as to why he was not involved in the reconnaissance for the first time. But finally on Monday, a spokesman for the Army’s Amazon division told the AP that it has since been ordered to place a search mission.
Phillips has also contributed to the Washington Post and the New York Times. He currently lives in El Salvador, Bahia, Brazil with his wife Alessandra Sampaio, who shared a series of messages posted on Twitter by a journalist to help him with advice.
“I can only pray that Domi and Bruno are okay, somewhere, for some mechanical reason, not to continue living, and that it will be a whole other story in a life full of them,” what Sampaio wrote. “But I know Amazon is going through a while and I know the dangers that Dom always condemns.”
In the Valle do Javari region, hunters have continued repeatedly between hunters, fishermen and security officials with a permanent base in the part of the world with the most unconnected indigenous population. It is also the main route for cocaine produced along the Peruvian border, smuggled into Brazil to supply local cities or shipped to Europe.
In September 2019, a Nursing Agency employee was killed in Tabatinga, the largest city in the region. The crime was never solved.
“It is very important that the Brazilian authorities devote all available and necessary resources to the immediate conduct of research to ensure the safety of the two men as soon as possible,” said Maria Laura Canineo, director of Human Rights Watch. Brazil said in a statement on Monday.
Journalists working for Amazon’s regional media have died in recent years, though no similar cases have occurred with domestic or foreign media reporters. However, there have been few reports of threats and the press has had limited access to some areas dominated by criminal activity, including illegal mining, land grabbing and drug trafficking.
President Jair Bolsonaro commented on Tuesday: “In fact, in a wilderness like this, only two people on a boat are not recommended for adventure. ფერი Whatever could have happened.” It could have been an accident, they could have died, “he said in the interview. of SBT. ”We hope and ask God to find them soon. “The armed forces are working hard.”
Bolsonaro’s three ministers told the AP on Tuesday that the government knows the importance of a quick response and is concerned that its apparent failure will cast a shadow over Bolsonaro’s attendance at this week’s U.S. summit in Los Angeles. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak in public.
___ AP writers Mauricio Savares in São Paulo and Deborah Alvarez in Brazil contributed to this report.
Source: Huffpost
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.