Category Archives: Brazil

Brazil says illegal miners driven from Indigenous territory, but ‘war’ not over

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Country’s top cop said 90% of miners despoiling Yanomami land had been expelled, though experts say they are only displaced

Brazil’s top federal police chief for the Amazon has celebrated the government’s success in driving thousands of illegal miners from the country’s largest Indigenous territory but warned the “war” against environmental criminals is not yet over.

Speaking during a visit to the Amazon city of Belém, Humberto Freire estimated environmental and police special forces had expelled 90% of the 20,000 miners who had been devastating the protected Yanomami territory, since launching their clampdown in February.

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Brazil: Amazon deforestation drops 34% in first six months under Lula

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Government data shows marked reduction against same period last year, reversing trend of destruction during Bolsonaro reign

After four years of rising destruction in Brazil’s Amazon, deforestation dropped by 33.6% during the first six months of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s term, according to new government satellite data.

From January to June the rainforest had alerts covering 2,650 sq km (1,023 sq miles), down from 4,000 sq km –during the same period last year under former president Jair Bolsonaro. This year’s data includes a 41% plunge in alerts for June, which marks the start of the dry season when deforestation tends to jump.

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Judges ban Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years over ‘appalling lies’

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Former far-right leader will only be able to seek elected office again in 2030, when he will be 75

The political future of Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro has been cast into doubt after electoral judges banned him from running for office for eight years for abusing his powers and peddling “immoral” and “appalling lies” during last year’s acrimonious election.

Five of the superior electoral court’s seven judges voted to banish the far-right radical, who relentlessly vilified the South American country’s democratic institutions during his unsuccessful battle to win a second term in power. Two voted against the decision.

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Amazon facing ‘urgent’ drug crisis after gutting of protections, says narcotics chief

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Brazilian government warning comes as UN report says that flourishing organized crime groups are driving a boom in environmental devastation

The Brazilian government’s drug policy chief has admitted that the rapid advance of drug factions into the Amazon rainforest has produced a “a very difficult situation” in the region, as a UN report warned that flourishing organized crime groups were driving a boom in environmental devastation.

Marta Machado, the national secretary for drug affairs, said the previous administration’s intentional dismantling of Brazil’s environmental and Indigenous protection agencies had created a dangerous vacuum in the Amazon which had been occupied by powerful crime syndicates from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

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Destruction of world’s pristine rainforests soared in 2022 despite Cop26 pledge

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An area of primary rainforest the size of Switzerland was felled last year suggesting world leaders’ commitment to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030 is failing

An area the size of Switzerland was cleared from Earth’s most pristine rainforests in 2022, despite promises by world leaders to halt their destruction, new figures show.

From the Bolivian Amazon to Ghana, the equivalent of 11 football pitches of primary rainforest were destroyed every minute last year as the planet’s most carbon-dense and biodiverse ecosystems were cleared for cattle ranching, agriculture and mining, with Indigenous forest communities forced from their land by extractive industries in some countries.

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Brazil: all-female sambistas tackle sexism of male-dominated genre

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Groups such as Samba Que Elas Querem, whose rewrite of a samba classic prompted a legal tussle, are taking on the patriarchy

It was a typical Friday night at the Beco do Rato, a samba club tucked down a dark alleyway in Rio de Janeiro’s nocturnal Lapa district. A group of musicians beat their tantãs, tambourines and agogô bells to an audience of sweaty samba lovers who sang along.

Yet something about this scene was different: the band’s nine musicians were all women, and the crowd was also overwhelmingly female.

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Cecília Haddad’s ex-partner sentenced to 27 years’ jail in Brazil after confessing to 2018 murder in Sydney

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Mário Marcelo Santoro confessed to killing his former girlfriend in Australia only after extensive evidence was produced against him, judge says

A Brazillian federal court has sentenced engineer Mário Marcelo Santoro to 27 years in prison, after he confessed to the 2018 murder of former girlfriend Cecília Haddad in Australia.

Santoro, today in his mid-40s, was convicted of aggravated homicide, asphyxiation, femicide and concealment of a corpse.

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‘The signs aren’t good’: Bolsonaro may face ban on running for office in 2026

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Judges to decide whether to impose eight-year ban on Brazil’s former president, after attack on electoral system

The political future of one of the big names of the global populist right is on the line this week as Brazilian judges prepare to decide whether Jair Bolsonaro should be banned from running for office.

Members of Brazil’s superior electoral court will gather on Thursday to consider the first of 16 cases being brought against the far-right former president, who failed to win a second term after losing last October’s election to leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

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Brazil: 11 dead and 20 missing after cyclone strikes in south

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Authorities warn of landslides after conducting several thousand flood rescues in two days

At least 11 people were killed in Brazil’s southern state of Rio Grande do Sul after an extra-tropical cyclone struck the region, according to the state’s authorities.

The storm on Friday caused torrential rains and helicopter searches were under way in flooded neighbourhoods to find 20 others who were missing, the government of Rio Grande do Sul said.

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‘Journalism mustn’t be silenced’: colleagues to complete slain reporter’s book

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How to Save the Amazon will be published so Dom Phillips’ work telling the stories of rainforest defenders does not die with him

One year after Dom Phillips was killed in the Brazilian Amazon, friends and colleagues have come together in a show of journalistic solidarity to keep his legacy alive and finish the book the British journalist was working on at the time of his death.

Phillips and his Brazilian companion, the Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, were killed while returning from the remote Javari valley in the western Amazon last June. Three men have been charged with murder and are being held in high-security prisons while awaiting a decision on whether they will face trial.

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Events in Brazil and UK to celebrate lives of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira

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British journalist and Brazilian Indigenous expert were killed a year ago on Monday in remote Amazon region they tried to defend

Friends and admirers of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira are preparing to gather in towns and cities across Brazil as well as London to remember the men and the causes they cherished.

The British journalist and the Brazilian Indigenous expert were shot dead during a reporting trip in the Amazon’s remote Javari valley region one year ago, on 5 June 2022.

If you want to help finish Dom Phillips’s book on the Amazon you can contribute here.

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The multinational companies that industrialised the Amazon rainforest

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Analysis shows handful of corporations extract tens of billions of dollars of raw materials a year – and their commitments to restoration vary greatly

A handful of global giants dominate the industrialisation of the Amazon rainforest, extracting tens of billions of dollars of raw materials every year, according to an analysis that highlights how much value is being sucked out of the region with relatively little going back in.

But even as the pace of deforestation hits record highs while standards of living in the Amazon are among the lowest in Brazil, the true scale of extraction remains unknown, with basic details about cattle ranching, logging and mining hard to establish despite efforts to ban commodities linked to its destruction.

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More than 800m Amazon trees felled in six years to meet beef demand

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Investigation involving Guardian shows systematic and vast forest loss linked to cattle farming in Brazil

More than 800m trees have been cut down in the Amazon rainforest in just six years to feed the world’s appetite for Brazilian beef, according to a new investigation, despite dire warnings about the forest’s importance in fighting the climate crisis.

A data-driven investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), the Guardian, Repórter Brasil and Forbidden Stories shows systematic and vast forest loss linked to cattle farming.

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Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira will not be forgotten, vows Brazil’s Lula

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President says last year’s killings were result of ‘encouragement of anarchy’ in Amazon under Bolsonaro

Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira will not be forgotten, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has vowed, blaming their killings a year ago on the Amazonian “anarchy” unleashed under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.

Phillips, a British journalist, and Pereira, a Brazilian Indigenous expert, were shot dead by a group of illegal fishers on 5 June last year while travelling in the remote Javari valley near Brazil’s border with Colombia and Peru.

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Brazilian Amazon at risk of being taken over by mafia, ex-police chief warns

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Alexandre Saraiva gives alert on organised crime in region ahead of anniversary of killings of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira

The rapid advance of organised crime groups in the Brazilian Amazon risks turning the region into a vast, conflict-stricken hinterland plagued by heavily armed “criminal insurgents”, a former senior federal police chief has warned.

Alexandre Saraiva, who worked in the Amazon from 2011 to 2021, said he feared the growing footprint of drug-trafficking mafias in the region could spawn a situation similar to the decades-long drug conflict in Rio de Janeiro, where the police’s battle with drug gangs and paramilitaries has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

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Last images of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira found on recovered phone

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Photos and videos on phone found near site of men’s killing show some of their last movements in Brazilian Amazon

Some of the last images of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira have been found after Indigenous activists recovered a mobile phone Pereira was carrying when the two men were killed in the Brazilian Amazon last year.

The phone was found last October when activists from Univaja, the Indigenous association where Pereira worked, returned to a stretch of flooded forest along the Itaquaí River where the men’s bodies were taken after they were shot dead on their boat on the morning of 5 June 2022.

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Outrage as Brazil law threatening Indigenous lands advances in congress

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Critics denounced ‘lies, hatred and racism’ as legislation moves to senate after being overwhelmingly endorsed by lower house

Indigenous leaders and environmentalists in Brazil have voiced horror and indignation after lawmakers approved controversial legislation which opponents fear will strike a devastating blow to Indigenous communities and isolated tribes.

Members of Brazil’s conservative-dominated lower house overwhelmingly endorsed bill number 490 on Tuesday night, by 283 votes to 155.

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Outcry as Brazil congress moves to gut environment and Indigenous ministries

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Plan to drastically dilute bodies’ powers would deal severe blow to Lula’s attempt to reverse Bolsonaro’s era of Amazon devastation

Brazilian activists have voiced outrage after congress moved to drastically dilute the powers of the environment and Indigenous peoples ministries in what campaigners called a potentially crippling blow to efforts to protect Indigenous communities and the Amazon.

Hopes that Brazil could turn the page on Jair Bolsonaro’s era of Amazon devastation were sky-high after the far-right leader lost last year’s presidential election to the leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. During his campaign Lula vowed to stamp out environmental crime and champion Indigenous people, and after taking power in January put the veteran environmentalist Marina Silva in charge of environmental affairs and made the Indigenous activist Sônia Guajajara head of a new ministry for Indigenous peoples.

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‘A crime of hatred’: disgust over Brazilian mobile phone slavery game

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Game in which users were able to buy and sell enslaved people, removed from Google Play store on Wednesday, elicits horror

Brazilians have reacted with horror to the news that a mobile phone game in which players were able to buy and sell enslaved people was until recently available to download on Google Play.

Dubbed the ‘Slavery Simulator’ (Simulador de Escravidão), the disturbing game also allowed players to inflict different forms of torture on black characters.

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Spanish police make arrests over ‘hate crimes’ targeting Vinícius Júnior

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Three detained after racist slurs directed at Real Madrid forward, with four more held over mannequin hanging from bridge

Spanish police have arrested three people in connection with the racist abuse suffered by Real Madrid’s Brazilian forward Vinícius Júnior during a match with Valencia on Sunday, and detained a further four suspects over an effigy of the player that was hung from a bridge in Madrid four months ago.

In a brief statement on Tuesday morning, the Policía Nacional said three young men had been arrested in Valencia over the “racist behaviour” that took place during the match at the city’s Mestalla stadium.

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