The wife and the sister of a missing British journalist have called on the Brazilian government to pull out all the stops to find him after he vanished in a remote corner of the Amazon rainforest.
Dom Phillips, 57, has not been seen since Sunday morning when he left the village of Sao Rafael in the Vale do Javari—not far from the border with Peru—with an indigenous adviser, Bruno Araujo Pereira, who had recently received a threatening letter believed to be linked to his fight with illegal gangs plundering the Javari river for fish.
The pair never arrived in Atalaia do Norte and the
O Globo newspaper reported that a few days earlier Pereira received a letter which warned, “We know who you are and we’ll find you to settle the score.”
Phillips, who has been covering Brazil for The Guardian and several other newspapers for 15 years, was researching a book, funded by the U.S.-based
Alicia Patterson Foundation, about the fight to conserve the Amazon rainforest and its wildlife.
His sister Sian urged the Brazilian authorities “to do all they can” to find her brother.
Phillips told The Guardian: “My brother Dom has been living in Brazil with his Brazilian wife. He loves the country and cares deeply about the Amazon and the people there. We knew it was a dangerous place, but Dom really believed it’s possible to safeguard the nature and livelihood of the indigenous people.”
The journalist’s wife,
Alessandra Sampaio, speaking from her home in the city of Salvador, said: “In the forest every second counts, every second could be the difference between life and death.”
Speaking directly to the government of Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, she said: “Our families are in despair. Please answer the urgency of the moment with urgent actions.”
Phillips and Pereira are understood to have spent two days interviewing indigenous tribespeople in villages near Jaburu Lake before their disappearance.
Brazil’s federal public prosecutors said on Monday they had opened an investigation and mobilised the Federal Police, Amazonas state police, the national guard, and the navy.
The navy has reportedly deployed a search-and-rescue team and a helicopter.
Hunters and fishermen have clashed with anti-poaching patrols in the Vale do Javari region in recent years.
