As a child, the breathtaking images accompanied by the staccato tones of Sir David Attenborough painted the Amazon to be the most idyllic place on Earth.
But after travelling to the region on several occasions, I found it to be one of the most brutal.
And ever since 2019, there has been a great menace to the Amazon – President Jair Bolsonaro.
The Brazilian government’s inadequate response to Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira’s disappearance wasn’t a mistake. It was designed.
Bolsonaro, known in Brazil as “the enemy of the Amazon”, waited days before deploying his military to the search. Anyone who doubted his apathy only needs look to at his words.
“Two people in a boat in a region like that, completely wild – it’s an unadvisable adventure. Anything can happen,” he said. “Maybe there was an accident, maybe they were executed.”
Such an unashamed, unsympathetic view towards those trying to save the Amazon have allowed unbridled violence to spread like cancer throughout the “lungs of the world”.
I’ve experienced first-hand the threats Phillips and Pereira received.
Whereas theirs were given by local fisherman, they would differ very little from those issued to myself and my fixer while in Itaituba to expose the illegal gold mines in February.
With very few hotels to choose from, it was just a matter of hours before a group of men arrived at ours enquiring at reception about the reason as to why we were there. It was only on leaving the rooms that we first laid eyes on them.
At one point, one of the group showed his holstered handgun while another drew his thumb across his neck.
Bolsonaro has emboldened such criminals, effectively providing them with immunity. Anyone who dares challenge them or Bolsonaro does so at their own risk, just as Phillips discovered.
It was he who famously asked the Brazilian leader about deforestation among other environmental concerns three years ago. “The Amazon is ours, not yours,” Bolsonaro snapped back.
Unfortunately, it is now the same Amazon that Phillips may have given his life to trying to save.
