- Three years after the killings of British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, threats remain in the Javari Valley, in the Brazilian Amazon, despite government efforts to halt violence in the region, prominent Indigenous leader Beto Marubo said.
- “The factors that caused the killings remain the same: drug trafficking and the increase in invasions of Indigenous lands,” Marubo told Mongabay in an interview in São Paulo.
- Phillips and Pereira were killed while the British journalist was investigating illegal fishing in the region for his book; Marubo was one of the contributors who helped to finish the book, launched in May in the U.S., Brazil and the U.K.
- Aware of the importance of the book, Marubo made a commitment to help promote the book. to elevate the voice of those who lost their lives defending the Amazon: “Despite all these deaths — not only Dom and Bruno, but also Chico Mendes, Dorothy Stang and so many others who die for the protection of the environment — they are forgotten, they are relegated; they are just numbers, just records in our history.”
SÃO PAULO AND RIO DE JANEIRO — Despite government efforts to halt violence in the Amazon region where British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira were killed three years ago, the threats remain, prominent Indigenous leader Beto Marubo said.
“Unfortunately, I can say that if Dom and Bruno were in the Javari Valley today, they would be killed again,” Marubo told Mongabay in an interview in São Paulo, referring to the lack of permanent presence of the federal government in Amazonas state.
On June 5, 2022, Phillips and Pereira were brutally killed in the Javari Valley; none of the perpetrators have been brought to trial.
According to Marubo, authorities did make an effort to take some specific actions in the Javari Valley, including raids and investigations led by the Federal Police and by the federal environmental agency, IBAMA, in addition to opening channels of dialogue with the community, but it didn’t solve the problem.
“It didn’t have the impact we expected that all the repercussions of the case would have on those in power, unfortunately. So, the factors that caused the killings remain the same: drug trafficking and the increase in invasions of Indigenous lands”, said Marubo, who represents the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Vale do Javari (UNIVAJA) in Brasília, Brazil’s capital.
In a news release published in June, the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples said the Territorial Protection Plan for the Javari Valley carried out 42 raids in the region, resulting in 211 enforcement actions that led to 27 million Brazilian reais ($5 million) in fines and 97 people arrested between June 2023 and March 2025. “The Territorial Protection Plan is a continuous initiative that aims to guarantee Indigenous peoples’ rights to full ownership and exclusive use of the lands they traditionally occupy.”
Near the Brazil-Colombia-Peru triple border, the Javari Valley region is a hotspot for organized crime, including drug traffickers, illegal loggers and poachers. The region is home to the second-largest Indigenous territory in Brazil — 8.5 million hectares (21 million acres), an area twice the size of Switzerland — and an estimated 17 isolated Indigenous groups live there, with little to no contact with the rest of the world.
In August, the Inter-American Human Rights Commission carried out hearings in the region as part of a plan due to the heightened risks and threats following the killings of Pereira and Phillips.
In July, a federal court in Amazonas state accepted the charges brought by federal prosecutors against Rubén Dario da Silva Villar, known as “Colombia,” as the alleged mastermind of Phillips’ and Pereira’s killings. He is accused of illegal fishing and poaching in the region and funding and arming criminals to execute Phillips and Pereira and conceal the victims’ corpses.
Vilar’s lawyer, Ivanilson da Silva Albuquerque, denied the accusations, saying that “the evidence gathered in the case files is insufficient to reach a guilty verdict” in a statement to Mongabay. “The motive and perpetrators have already been duly established, with the perpetrators having confessed to the crime in court. In the course of the proceedings, it will be demonstrated that Mr. Ruben Dario [Villar] did not contribute in any way to the commission of the crime in question.”
Since the start of the investigation, eight other people have been indicted. The case of three defendants — Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, known as “Pelado,” Jefferson da Silva Lima and Oseney da Costa de Oliveira — were part of a single lawsuit that set a trial before a jury. But in September 2024, a court decision accepted Oseney Oliveira’s appeal and dismissed him from the lawsuit; the Federal Public Ministry appealed.
‘How presumptuous of you!’
Phillips and Pereira were killed while the British journalist was investigating illegal fishing in the region for his book. Launched in May, How to Save the Amazon: A journalist’s fatal quest for answers, by Phillips with contributors, was a result of a three-year effort led by Jonathan Watts, fellow British journalist based in Brazil and a close friend of Phillips’, who coordinated a group of expert writers to finish the book.
Marubo, a close friend with Phillips and Pereira, was one of the contributors. “It was an honor for me to put together a project, in Dom’s name, to make it a reality,” Marubo said, referring to Watts’ invitation to write about his fight in the Javari Valley.
The Indigenous leader said he was super busy with multiple trips at the time and he wrote the text on a piece of paper and sent it to Watts. He was told the text was too long and it needed to be cut, but he said he didn’t have time to cut it. Watts then asked him if he’d accept the help of Helena Palmquist, an experienced Brazilian journalist, which Marubo said he did right away. “Helena was the one who formatted the final version of what I wanted to write.” Marubo recalled that it was a long editing process — which he wasn’t used to — to get the final draft approved by him.
He also recalled that, initially, he had laughed when Phillips told him about the title of his book project How to Save the Amazon during a layover of a connection flight at the airport of Brazil’s capital, Brasília. “I said: Look, Dom, you’re a foreigner, man. What the hell is this? Are you going to save us? How presumptuous of you!,” Marubo said. “And Dom said: That’s the reaction I want, especially from the people who read about the Amazon, to have an idea of how important the Amazon is and how we need to wake up.”
Aware of the importance of the book, Marubo said, he made a commitment to Phillips’ widow, Alessandra Sampaio, and Phillips’ friends to count on him to help promote the book. Since then, he has participated in various events, including the book launch in the U.K., where he said he was touched by the British people’s great commotion.
For him, those events are important to raise the voice of those who lost their lives defending the Amazon. “Despite all these deaths — not only Dom and Bruno, but also Chico Mendes, Dorothy Stang and so many others who die for the protection of the environment — they are forgotten, they are relegated; they are just numbers, just records in our history.”
Philips’ book has also been launched in the U.S. and in several Brazilian cities, including São Paulo, Brasília, Rio de Janeiro, Niterói, Paraty and Belém.
In Rio, where Phillips had lived for many years, the book launch had a packed movie theater, full of his friends in the audience of a panel discussion with Sampaio, Watts, journalists Tom Phillips and Andrew Fishman and photographer João Laet, who accompanied the British journalist on multiple reporting trips.
“Dom was turned into a forest,” Laet said during the book launch in late July.
Sampaio recalled that an Indigenous leader from the Ashaninka people had introduced Phillips to Pereira, highlighting that “those on the frontlines need allies.”
Fishman said nobody on the stage would like to be there, but “Dom’s dream came true.”
“Dom is still participating in this project. He is among us,” Watts said.
Marubo said his dream is “that the Brazilian society, the Brazilian people — not only environmentalists, Indigenous peoples or others who have fought for the Indigenous cause — understand the importance of forests for our future, the future of our country.”
Banner image: Beatriz Matos (left) and Alessandra Sampaio (right), widows of Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips, respectively, pose for a photo beside a banner with the slogan “Resist and fight” during hearing carried out by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission in the Javari Valley as part of a plan due to the heightened risks and threats following the killings of Pereira and Phillips. Image courtesy of the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Vale do Javari (UNIVAJA).
Editor’s note: On the three-year anniversary of the killing of Phillips and Pereira, The Guardian launched the podcast Missing in the Amazon. On the same day, 50 civil society organizations and journalists signed a manifesto led by the Javari Valley Indigenous Peoples’ Union, UNIVAJA, calling on Brazilian authorities for “more than promises.”
The contributors to Phillips’ book called for readers to post a review to help sales and the book’s appearance on the sellers’ websites in the U.S., Brazil and the U.K.
Karla Mendes is a staff investigative and feature reporter for Mongabay in Brazil and the first Brazilian to win the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism. Member of the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network, she is also the first Brazilian and Latin American ever elected to the board of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ); she was also nominated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) chair. Read her stories published on Mongabay here. Find her on 𝕏, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads and Bluesky.
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