RIO DE JANEIRO – Illegal fishermen operating in the remote Amazon region where a British journalist and Brazilian anti-poaching expert were murdered in June made death threats and opened fire on an Indigenous group, rights organisations said yesterday.
The attack is the latest violence in Brazil’s Javari Valley, the region where foreign correspondent Dom Phillips and Indigenous-rights advocate Bruno Pereira were killed, allegedly by an illegal fishing gang.
The region, which sits near the border with Peru and Colombia, is home to the largest concentration of uncontacted tribes on earth but has also been hit by a surge of illegal logging, poaching and drug trafficking.
The Kanamari tribe said a group of around 30 community members were travelling by boat to prepare for an Indigenous council meeting when they crossed paths with illegal fishermen driving boats full of fish and turtles.
The fishermen tried to bribe the group not to report them for poaching on the protected Indigenous reservation, the Javari Valley Kanamari Association said in a statement.
When an indigenous leader refused, the fishermen threatened her at gunpoint, it said.
“Attitudes like that are what made our people kill Bruno and Dom. You’re going to be next,” it quoted a fisherman as saying.
“If there weren’t children present, I’d kill you right now.”
The Kanamari said the fishermen then cut the wires on one of the Indigenous group’s boat motors and sped off, opening fire on them.
The gunshots punctured a gasoline barrel, the statement said.
The incident, which happened on November 9, was only made public this week.
Indigenous leaders said they had asked police to open an investigation.
“This new attack shows the investigation of Bruno’s and Dom’s deaths is far from over,” the Indigenous rights group OPI said in a statement.
“It is a clear indication the violence is escalating again, with a concrete risk of more deaths.”
Phillips, 57, and Pereira, 41 – who had received death threats for their work organising Indigenous anti-poaching patrols – were on a research trip at the edge of the Javari Valley when they were killed.
Police have arrested nine suspects in the case. – AFP, November 19, 2022
