Exactly three weeks after being shot and killed while traveling through the Amazon with Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, British journalist Dom Phillips was laid to rest in Brazil.
Pereira and Phillips, a longtime Guardian contributor, went missing on the Itaqua River on Sunday, June 5.
Their murders sparked international outrage and highlighted Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro historic assault on Indigenous communities and the environment.
After a local fisher confessed to their murders, the men’s bodies were recovered from the rainforest on June 15 and returned to their families on Thursday.
Scores of mourners gathered at a cemetery in Niterói, a city near Rio de Janeiro, on Sunday to pay their respects to Phillips, 57, who had spent the past 15 years reporting on his adoptive South American home.
Alessandra Sampaio, Phillips’ wife, paid tribute to the Indigenous people about whom her husband was writing when he was killed and who spearheaded the 10-day search for the two men.
Sampaio urged those attending the funeral to remember Phillips’ “enormous heart” and humanity.
“We will redouble our efforts so that other families of journalists and environmental activists do not have to go through what we have gone through or what Bruno Pereira has gone through,” She added.
