Dom Phillips (57) needed one last trip and then he could finish his book on the Amazon that he had been working on for a long time. During that last reporting trip, the British journalist disappeared together with guide and researcher Bruno Pereira in the Javari Valley, an area deep in the Amazon, near the borders with Colombia and Peru. After a 10-day search, human remains were found on June 15 and two previously identified suspects confessed to the murder.
About fifteen so-called ‘isolated’ indigenous groups live in the Javari valley, who want no contact or limited contact with the outside world. Their existence is threatened by illegal gold miners, loggers, drug traffickers and illegal fishing. Journalist Dom Phillips reported on this in the area, Bruno Pereira knew the area well and had been fighting for the rights of the original inhabitants for years. It eventually cost them their lives.
“Dom had a great love for the Amazon and was also very concerned about the jungle,” said Jonathan Watts, friend, colleague and environmental editor at The Guardianthe British newspaper that Phillips works for The Washington Post wrote a lot. Phillips covered the destruction of nature, the violence against indigenous peoples and the illegal practices that took place there. Sharp reports, based on in-depth research. He dealt with sources with integrity, researched everything thoroughly and wrote down his stories with a great sense of style.
“In the book he was finishing, he wanted to explain how to save the Amazon. He really had ideas about that too. For example, what worked and what didn’t in the development of that area,” says Watts. His voice sounds broken and sad.
Beloved and helpful
For years, Watts himself was a correspondent in Brazil for The Guardian and worked closely with Phillips, who was much loved by both his foreign colleagues and Brazilian journalists. Social and helpful. Never afraid to help you with contacts and information.
For example, I was emailed a list of names and telephone numbers, and he shared his contacts when I went to a part of the Amazon that was still completely unknown to me years ago. He messaged the driver who had driven him around to the area that I would call him in.
Phillips has lived and worked for fifteen years in Brazil, the country he once ended up in when he – in a previous life – was associated with the magazine mixmagabout rave wrote music. He was the creator of the genre term ‘progressive house’ in 1992, according to the magazine’s website.
In 2007 he visited Brazil with a group of Brazilian DJs with whom he went to São Paulo. He fell in love with the country and decided to stay. He completed his book on the rise and madness surrounding electronic music: Superstar DJs Here We Go! : The Rise and Fall of the Superstar DJ that appeared in 2009.
For Phillips, the book was a farewell to that music scene. He started working as a correspondent in Brazil. He made fame in the time of booming brazil† Under then-President Luiz ‘Lula’ da Silva, the country became one of the major ’emerging economies’, with economic growth of 7 percent in one year. With international sporting events approaching such as the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games two years later, it seemed impossible in Brazil.
love for nature
Dom Phillips lived in Rio de Janeiro in the bohemian village of Santa Teresa, among the greenery of the largest urban forest in the world: the Tijuca rainforest, right below the famous Jesus statue. He was able to lose his love for nature. He enjoyed bike rides, hikes and suppen (stand up paddling) at Posto 6, on Copacabana’s famous beach. In Rio he also met his wife Alessandra Sampaio. In 2020, the couple moved to Salvador, where Dom, in addition to being a journalist, also taught English as a volunteer in one of the city’s slums. “He had a very creative way of teaching. We sang songs by the Beatles and other British pop stars,” one student told Brazilian TV.
Also read:‘Part of Amazon where missing people disappeared is threatened from all sides’
Ultimately, though, it was the trips to the Amazon that impressed him the most, and over the past five years Phillips had increasingly specialized as an environmental journalist. “He was passionate about the jungle. The Amazon was for him something divine,” his wife Alessandra told the Brazilian TV channel Globo in the first days after his disappearance. “He understood the complexity of the Amazon very well. He also understood why, for example, the garimpeiros (gold diggers) do what they do, and that they have to feed their families, he also listened to their story,” she says.
In the friendship and collaboration with Bruno Pereira, a so-called indigenista, connoisseur of indigenous people and culture, Phillips found a soul mate. When the two met, Pereira was still working at the government agency for indigenous peoples (Funai) and he went as a guide†
Tours Phillips took with Pereira were intense. Sometimes walking for days through the jungle, accompanied by natives. Sleeping in the woods, sharing a hammock together. Cross the rivers in an open boat under heavy tropical rains.
Dom Phillips loved these kinds of trips, but they were expensive. He had received money from a fund for his book, but that was not enough. “He borrowed money from his family in England to pay for it,” Watts said. “Dom knew that this trip in the Javari valley was dangerous, because he had already been there in 2018, also with Bruno.”
More dangerous since Bolsonaro . took office
The work has become increasingly difficult and dangerous since President Bolsonaro took office in 2019. He is in favor of opening the Amazon to economic activities. Its government is diligently trying to pass laws to open the protected areas of the indigenous peoples to mining and agriculture. Since Bolsonaro took office, deforestation has increased, as has the killing of indigenous leaders, environmentalists and journalists.
Also read:Indigenous residents protect their own land in the Brazilian Amazon
Bolsonaro is doing everything he can to deprive the indigenous people of their protected areas. Official bodies charged with protecting indigenous peoples and the Amazon have been eroded under Bolsonaro. Last year made NRC another report about the Krikati, a group of indigenous people in the Amazon state of Maranhão. Due to lack of government protection, they take matters into their own hands and patrol their area armed against illegal invaders. Phillips was in the Javari to write about a similar indigenous self-defense group, among other things.
“Dom dared to go down paths that most journalists don’t and in the process he exposed things. For example, how the indigenous population is subject to increasing violence. And for which no one was arrested or tried,” sighs Watts.
On Youtube is a video clip of a breakfast of foreign journalists with Bolsonaro in which Phillips polite the president, yet very sharply questioned the increase in deforestation and violence against the indigenous people. He mentions the fact that local politicians in the area have been spotted with illegal gold diggers and loggers.
While Phillips calmly asks his question in Portuguese with a charming British accent, Bolsonaro looks straight ahead to answer venomously: “The Amazon is ours, not yours.” To then cast doubt on the latest deforestation statistics from the renowned government institute INPE.
A telling scene in the bigger story, which underlies the drama surrounding the murders of Phillips and Pereira: it is precisely under Bolsonaro that the illegal operators of the Amazon feel empowered in their criminal activities that do not allow them to use snoopers.
Bolsonaro, who previously commented that Phillips and Pereira were on an ‘adventure’ in the Amazon, showed little empathy during the search that led to a denouement on Wednesday. According to the president, Dom Phillips was not liked in the region because he wrote critically about gold mining. “He should have taken better care of himself. It was his own choice to make this trip,” Bolsonaro told the Brazilian media.
Violence against journalists and activists
It is clear that Phillips and Pereira were on the trail of the Javari cases that ultimately cost them their lives: the suspects who have now confessed to the murder were involved in illegal fishing from indigenous areas, according to local media. Phillips and Pereira were on to this.
Their deaths are not a tragic isolated event, but fit into a pattern where it is becoming increasingly dangerous for journalists, activists and indigenous groups to work and live in the Amazon. “We must therefore now focus on that systematic pattern and look ahead,” says colleague Jonathan Watts. “Journalists and activists need to be protected in their work in the Amazon, there needs to be more research. Because it can happen to any of us who go to the front lines of the war against nature. Because that is what the Amazon has now become.”
The words stick – also in the app group where correspondents in Brazil intensively share new developments since Dom Phillips went missing. And, now that there is clarity after ten days, comfort each other and put a heart to it. After this drama, how safe is it to report in the Amazon? Have the natives, environmentalists and journalists not been outlawed there for much longer?
Now it concerns a foreign journalist and that attracts a lot of international attention. But in Brazil, dozens of local journalists, activists and indigenous people are killed every year for their commitment to nature. In 2021, more than 30 indigenous leaders received serious death threats. At a time when countries internationally determine that climate and the environment are high on the agenda, security in the Amazon should also be a priority.
Jonathan Watts is adamant. “If there’s one thing Dom wouldn’t have wanted, it’s for all the attention now to be on him and Bruno, with no change. We should not be deterred, but rather be inspired by this tragic event. Continue to research, write about what happened there right now. I’m sure Dom wants to contribute to that, because in fact he gave his life for that now.”