Forest defenders should not be killed for exposing crimes. Journalists should not be killed for reporting facts.
But, one year ago, the Guardian was devastated by the awful news that in the Amazon rainforest, two lives had been taken on the frontline of the battle to protect the planet.
Bruno Araújo Pereira, a renowned defender of the rights of Brazil’s Indigenous peoples, and Dom Phillips, an outstanding reporter, long-term Guardian contributor and friend to many who work here, disappeared while researching a book on how to save the rainforest.
In the weeks that followed, when their bodies were discovered and our worst fears of their deaths confirmed, everyone at the Guardian was horrified. And from that horror was born a determination to continue the work they were doing, covering what our global environment writer, Jonathan Watts, has called “the global war against nature”.
Today, we launch the Bruno and Dom project, a year-long collaborative investigation coordinated by Forbidden Stories that involves more than 50 journalists from 16 media organisations in 10 countries around the world.
What is the Bruno and Dom project?
Bruno Pereira, a Brazilian Indigenous expert and Dom Phillips, a British journalist and longtime Guardian contributor, were killed on the Amazon’s Itaquaí River last June while returning from a reporting trip to the remote Javari Valley region.
The attack prompted international outcry, and cast a spotlight on the growing threat to the Amazon posed by extractive industries, both legal and illegal, such as logging, poaching, mining and cattle ranching.
A year after their deaths, the Guardian has joined 15 other international news organisations in a collaborative investigation into organised crime and resource extraction in the Brazilian Amazon. The initiative has been coordinated by Forbidden Stories, the Paris-based non-profit whose mission is to continue the work of reporters who are threatened, censored or killed.
The goal of the project is to honour and pursue the work of Bruno and Dom, to foreground the importance of the Amazon and its people, and to suggest possible ways to save the Amazon.
Who was Bruno Pereira?
Pereira, 41, was a former employee of the Indigenous agency Funai where he led efforts to protect the isolated and uncontacted tribes who live in the Brazilian Amazon. After being sidelined from his post soon after the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro came to power, Pereira went to work with the Javari Valley Indigenous association Univaja, helping create Indigenous patrol teams to stop illegal poachers, miners and loggers invading their protected lands.
Who was Dom Phillips?
Phillips, 57, was a longtime contributor to the Guardian who had
lived in Brazil for 15 years. A former editor of the dance magazine Mixmag, he developed a deep interest in environmental issues, covering the link between logging, mining, the beef industry and the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. His reporting brought him into contact with Pereira, and in 2018 the pair took part in a 17-day expedition deep into the Javari Valley. In 2021 he took a year off to start writing a book, titled How to Save the Amazon. His return to the Javari was to have been the last reporting trip for the project.
What is the Javari Valley?
Sitting on Brazil’s border with Peru and Colombia, the Javari Valley
Indigenous Reservation is a Portugal-sized swathe of rainforest and
rivers which is home to about 6,000 Indigenous people from the Kanamari, Kulina, Korubo, Marubo, Matis, Mayoruna and Tsohom-dyapa groups, as well as 16 isolated groups.
It is also a hotspot for poachers, fishers and illegal loggers,
prompting violent conflicts between the Indigenous inhabitants and the
riverside communities which fiercely opposed the reservation’s
creation in 2001. Its strategic location makes it a key route for smuggling cocaine between Peru, Colombia and Brazil.
What happened to Pereira and Philips?
On 2 June 2022, Pereira and Phillips travelled up the Itaquaí River from the town of Atalaia do Norte to report on efforts to stop illegal fishing. Two days later, members of the Indigenous patrol team with whom Pereira and Phillips were travelling were threatened by an illegal fisher. Early on 5 June, the pair set out on the return leg before dawn, hoping to safely pass a river community that was home to several known poachers.
They never arrived, and after a search by teams of local Indigenous activists, their remains were discovered on 15 June.
Three fishers are being held in high-security prisons awaiting trial for the killings: brothers Amarildo and Oseney da Costa de Oliveira and a third man, Jefferson da Silva Lima.
Federal police have alleged that a fourth man, nicknamed Colombia, was the mastermind of the killings.
Together, we have worked with three aims in mind.
First, to honour and pursue the work of Bruno and Dom. Bruno was totally committed to the traditional peoples of the Amazon and defending their ways of life, and Dom’s brave and humane journalism did so much to bring the stories of Brazil and Latin America to a global audience. We have picked up the threads of their unfinished stories, chased down leads and tried to carry on doing what they can no longer do.
Second, to remind everyone of the beauty, importance and fragility of the Amazon. Watts, who moved to live in the rainforest in 2021 and is the Guardian’s first journalist to be permanently based there, has written about it being the heart of the world – “not the lungs, as is often mistakenly claimed”. But now it beats much less strongly than it did, and than it must, if human beings on this planet are to have a future.
Third, to suggest ideas for how to save the Amazon, and, in time, inspire positive change. This was a central focus in all of Dom’s work, and something that much Guardian journalism strives for.
The Bruno and Dom project, over four days of publishing, will include:
The latest in the criminal investigation into their deaths, including the perspective of friends and family. Three men are currently being held in prison, and police have named a fourth as the alleged mastermind, while the former head of Brazil’s Indigenous protection agency under President Jair Bolsonaro has been charged on the basis that he ignored warnings over the risk of bloodshed in the Javari valley.
The last photographs taken of Bruno and Dom before they were killed, and what they tell us.
A wider exploration of how organised crime, including illegal fishing, hunting, logging and mining, is taking over the Amazon.
An investigation into the global companies making billions from extracting raw materials from the rainforest, including how beef is eating up the Amazon, and the extent of deforestation.
A detailed analysis of solutions for how to save the rainforest.
The Guardian and Forbidden Stories, an international consortium of investigative journalists that pursues the work of assassinated journalists or those under threat, know only too well that what happened to Bruno and Dom is not an isolated crime. At least 67 journalists and media workers were killed in 2022, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, while Global Witness has found that three people are killed every week trying to protect their land from extractive forces, with Brazil one of the deadliest countries in the world for land and environmental defenders, many of them from Indigenous communities.
We hope you will read, reflect on and share the Bruno and Dom project, with the spirit of defiance that has inspired it. The work must go on.
Katharine Viner is editor-in-chief of the Guardian
