Trucks carrying illegally harvested logs exit the Terra Nossa settlement, Brazil, September 30, 2019. © 2019 Fernando Martinho/Repórter Brasil |
In Brazil’s Amazon, Indigenous peoples, small-scale farmers, and other local communities have been risking their lives for years as they try to hold on to their land and protect the environment and their livelihoods. They are faced with an onslaught of criminal networks involved in illegal logging, land grabs, and mining, which deploy armed men to threaten and attack those who speak up to defend the forest.
The story of Terra Nossa, an Amazon settlement designed to balance small-scale agriculture with the sustainable collection of forest products in northern Brazil, is at the heart of the struggle to save the Brazilian Amazon.
Rainforest Ashes, our new multimedia feature, highlights how this small community is defending the rainforest from cattle ranches, loggers, and miners – and how they are fighting for their livelihood and the planet.
For years, we have travelled to Brazil’s rainforest communities, where people depend on the sustainable use of the forest across the Amazon, and documented the link between environmental destruction, violence, and poverty. More than 300 people have died in conflicts over the use of land and resources in Brazil’s Amazonian states in the last decade.
The situation worsened after Jair Bolsonaro became president on January 1, 2019. The total area deforested in the Amazon in 2022 was 53 percent larger than the area deforested in 2018, the year before Bolsonaro took office. All the while, defenders fought hard to protect their homes and the environment.
Community members believe that criminal groups operating inside Terra Nossa have killed at least four people since 2018. Another person is missing and believed dead.
Brazil’s new President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva promised to side with forest defenders in their struggle. Will he deliver?
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Victims of the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat state, which left more than 1,000 dead, gather for a protest in Ahmedabad, India, February 28, 2014. © 2014 AP Photo/Ajit Solanki The Indian government has banned a BBC documentary about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role in the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in India’s Gujarat state, which resulted in numerous killings and rapes.
The documentary also highlighted rising authoritarianism in India and violence against the country’s Muslim minority.
India’s censorship of the video is its latest attempt to use abusive laws to restrict media freedom and silence critics.
As protests take place over the government’s censorship of the documentary, the government has used emergency censorship powers to compel social media platforms, including Twitter and YouTube, to take down clips and references to the documentary. |
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