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Rio de Janeiro (AFP) – Acclaimed Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado said he “blames the Brazilian government directly” for the murder of British journalist Dom Phillips and expert Bruno Pereira in the Amazon, for “withdrawing” environmental protections from indigenous territories.
“Personally, I directly blame the federal government for the murder of Bruno and Dom, for removing protection filters from indigenous territories, allowing, by removing those filters, the penetration of violent marginality in the jungle,” said Salgado, 78. , when presenting his photographic exhibition “Amazonía” at the Museu do Amanha in Rio de Janeiro.
“Violence has increased so much in the Amazon! Mainly with this government,” said the photographer, referring to far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who took power in 2019.
Phillips, 57, was shot dead June 5 along with indigenous peoples expert Pereira, 41, as they returned from an expedition in the Javarí Valley, a remote location in Amazonas state considered dangerous by the presence of drug traffickers and other criminal groups.
The main hypothesis of the police is that the motive for the crime is related to illegal fishing in protected areas, an activity that Pereira was combating.
“Never has the Amazon forest been so threatened and so destroyed, a destruction caused by the current executive power,” said Salgado, echoing the indigenous people and environmentalists who accuse the government of weakening environmental control agencies and defense of their ancestral rights. , such as the National Indian Foundation (Funai).
Salgado, world-renowned for his striking black-and-white photographs and ecological activism, said he hopes to see a change of government in the October elections that will put a stop to the destruction of the Amazon biome.
“Brazil has totally lost its international prestige… We need to go back to being a serious country,” said the photographer, who lives in France.
The exhibition, which premiered last year in Paris and has already visited Rome, London and Sao Paulo, allows an immersion in the largest tropical forest on the planet through aerial photos of its rivers and mountains and portraits of a dozen indigenous communities. .
Official figures show that since Bolsonaro took power in January 2019, Average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased 75% over the previous decade.
In addition to a “new government”, Salgado considers “the participation of the entire planet essential” to protect the biome.
“The destruction of the forest was not done only by Brazilians (…) it was done by the consumer society of the entire planet.”
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