By Anthony Boadle
BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s Navy on Monday dispatched a crew of ten people to search for British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira who went missing while reporting in a remote part of the Amazon rainforest near the border with Peru.
Navy spokeswoman Cibelly Lopes, in the Brazilian border city of Tabatinga, said it should take the Navy vessel around three to four hours to reach the isolated base of Atalaia do Norte. The Navy team will then head to the Sao Gabriel riverside community, where the two men were last seen early on Sunday morning. It is unlikely the search party will arrive before nightfall, Lopes said.
Brazil’s federal police said in a statement that they were also working to locate the pair. A senior federal police officer in Tabatinga said Monday afternoon that there was still no information on their whereabouts or what could have happened.
Phillips, a freelancer who has for years written about Brazil for The Guardian, the Washington Post, the New York Times and others, was on a reporting trip in the Javari Valley with Pereira, who is considered to be one of Brazil’s most knowledgeable experts on isolated and uncontacted tribes.
The Javari is home to the world’s largest number of uncontacted indigenous people that inhabit an area the size of Ireland, threatened by illegal miners, loggers, hunters and, increasingly, coca-growing groups that produce the raw material for cocaine.
In a detailed statement about the disappearance of the men, the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley (UNIVAJA) said that threats had been received in recent days. It was not clear if those threats were to UNIVAJA associates or to Phillips and Pereira.
UNIVAJA said the two men were traveling in a small boat with a 40 horsepower outboard motor, but the area was hard to penetrate due to dense forest and floating plants and vines. Two UNIVAJA search parties had been dispatched to look for them.
A spokesperson for Britain’s foreign office said they were in contact with Brazilian authorities over reports that a British man had gone missing.
(Reporting by Anthony Boadle, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
