Let’s start with the good news for a change. The Instituto Dom Phillips will soon be launched by the murdered journalist’s widow, Alessandra Sampaio. This NGO will focus on education, stressing the value of the Amazon and its people. This move to carry forward Dom’s legacy is an expression of hope, idealism and an indomitable human spirit that refuses to be bowed by a horrendous crime and the ongoing assault against indigenous people by powerful business and political interests.
This is all the more remarkable because the prevailing trends in Brazil and the world are in the opposite direction. The forest, indigenous rights and journalistic freedom are all under assault. That much is obvious from the dire developments in Brasilia, where the agriculture and mining lobby is using its power in Congress, the Supreme Court and the government to hold-up demarcations of indigenous land, resurrect the historically unjust “Marco Temporal” law, and launch a new attempt to permit mining on indigenous land.
Reporting on the war against nature may generate fewer headlines than Gaza or Ukraine, but it is also high-risk with little legal protection. Worldwide, several dozen reporters have been killed for covering environment stories over the past 15 years. Barely one in ten of the assassins are convicted. Instead, the law appears to be increasingly used against journalists. More than 100 have been arrested for covering environmental protests.
Without the courage of correspondents to continue working in conflict areas, press organisations warn the world will start to see “zones of silence” where the risks are so great that important stories go unreported. The same can be said about the environment or democracy, both of which are more vulnerable when the truth is choked.
That is why the work of Dom and Bruno – and the countless other murdered reporters, indigenous activists and Earth defenders – must go on. Instead of being silenced, the voices of forest defenders and communicators must be amplified. This is an important part of the mission of SUMAÚMA.
It has never been more important. But whether anyone is listening is another matter altogether.
With an absent agrarian reform agency, a Brazilian multinational mining company that purchased federal lands irregularly a few years ago is now pressuring farmers and working to demobilize social movements. All to expand mining in southeastern Pará
At the 2024 Free Land Camp, which celebrated 20 years of mobilization, around 8,000 members of over 200 Indigenous peoples stayed together over five days in Brasília to debate the topics most relevant to the movement and their future
She overcame slavery in the rubber era, the invasion of large landowners with their armed gunmen, and the neglect of the State and proved her people were not extinct and the Amazon region was the home of her ancestors
The perverse way that so much land is concentrated in the hands of so few is the result of land theft through ‘grilagem’. This text is an attempt to better explain this process so we can grasp the full effects of it on the Amazon region