Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Environmentalists Threatened

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 8 2006 (IPS) - Vilmar Berna, an environmental journalist who won the United Nations Global 500 prize in 1999, lives under a death threat issued more than a month ago in Niteroi, a city neighboring Rio de Janeiro. He filed a complaint and requested police protection last week but the response has been slow in coming. His situation is worrisome because in February 2005 another environmentalist was murdered, Dionisio Julio Ribeiro, defender of the Tinguá Biological Reserve, also located in the Rio metropolitan area. A hunter confessed to the crime but was absolved in May “due to lack of evidence”.

“Environmentalism is a high risk activity, and not just in the Amazon, because we oppose the anti-nature model of development,” Berna told Tierramérica. The violent reaction against activists may come from big landowners in the Amazon as well as the artisanal fisherfolk along the beach where he lives — they fear his presence because they use illegal fishing methods, he explained.