A month after the murder of the British journalist and advocate for the Brazilian indigenous people in the Itaquaí River, three men are in custody: two local fishermen and a third named Jeferson da Silva Lima. Federal police have initially ruled out the involvement of a more powerful criminal mastermind in a lawless region at the heart of South America’s drug trade, although investigators are looking into whether the crime was a staged murder. Whatever the truth, the politician who led a Senate inquiry into the killings claimed Brazil’s far-right president also bore significant responsibility for the crippling of security services that could have kept the men safe during their trip to remote area of ​​Javari valley. “The Bolsonaro government’s policy of dissolution and destruction [Indigenous and environmental safeguards] is directly responsible for where the Javari Valley has reached.’ “There is no longer any state presence in the Javari Valley area. The Javari Valley no longer has [the environmental agency] Ibama to curb environmental crime. [The Indigenous agency] Funai and the few remaining indigenous experts face death threats and intimidation. There are not enough federal police there and the Brazilian military also does not have enough troops,” Rodriguez said. Brazil’s presidency did not respond to a request to comment on the allegations. Members of Rodriguez’s nine-senator committee flew to Atalaia do Norte, the riverside gateway in the Javari Valley, last week to gather testimony for its two-month investigation. The politician said he was shocked by the “total absence of state presence and authority” there. He feared further bloodshed as heavily armed environmental criminals continued to advance into the supposed Javari Valley Indigenous Protected Area to plunder its natural wealth. The vast expanse of rivers and jungle, which Phillips was reporting on when he was killed, is home to the largest concentration of uncontacted tribes on Earth. “The region is on the brink of a serious humanitarian collapse,” Rodrigues warned. “These criminals come armed with rifles and when they meet the isolated peoples, the isolated people will react to them. Since the [criminals] they are much better armed, they will promote a massive bloodbath. There is no state to protect the natives there.” Rodrigues admitted that his commission would only have a “palliative” effect, given Bolsonaro’s opposition to protecting the environment and indigenous people. “While Jair Bolsonaro continues to rule a paradigm shift is unthinkable,” admitted Rodriguez, who hoped voters would end the “Bolsonaro nightmare” in October’s presidential election. Polls show Bolsonaro will lose that vote to former leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose campaign Rodriguez is helping coordinate. But the senator said the commission would make specific recommendations, including calling for the removal of the Bolsonaro-appointed head of Funai and “a decisive attack on crime” in the Javari Valley. Rodrigues recalled feeling helpless over the murders of Phillips and Pereira and realizing that the area had been “taken over by crime”. “It was as if the Brazilian football team had just conceded the fifth goal in a World Cup match and had no hope of fighting back.” he said. He took umbrage at Bolsonaro’s attempt to smear the two dead, implying that they were responsible for their own deaths, having undertaken a misguided “adventure”. “But at the same time it gave me great courage to fight even harder against him. Bolsonaro is … one of the worst fascists humanity has ever produced,” Rodriguez said. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST Phillips had reported extensively on Brazil’s rollback of environmental and indigenous safeguards since Bolsonaro’s conservative predecessor, Michel Temer, took office following the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016. “At the Funai base in Atalaia do Norte, the nearest town [Javari] booked, the phones are disconnected and the internet is down. Contracts for fuel and other supplies are being finalized amid rumors of a shutdown,” Phillips wrote in 2018. The following year he traveled to the Yanomami region to report how thousands of illegal gold miners had invaded these lands. “The current … invasion has worsened since Bolsonaro took office,” Phillips said.