One year after they were murdered, their work must go on – Forest defender Bruno Araújo Pereira and journalist Dom Phillips were assassinated in Brazil on 5 June 2022
By Katharine Viner
1 June 2023
(The Guardian) – 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.
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. [more]
