World

Human remains have been found in the search for a British journalist and Brazilian indigenous expert who disappeared deep in the Amazon after receiving threats, Brazil’s president confirmed Monday.

Relatives of veteran correspondent Dom Phillips and respected indigenous specialist Bruno Pereira meanwhile said authorities informed them two bodies had been found — though police and local indigenous leaders denied that, adding to confusion around the case.

The families of Phillips, 57, and Pereira, 41, have endured an anguished wait for news since the pair disappeared a week ago Sunday during a reporting trip to Brazil’s Javari Valley, a remote jungle region rife with illegal fishing, logging, mining and drug trafficking.

“The evidence leads us to believe something bad was done to them, because human innards were found floating in the river, which are now undergoing DNA testing,” President Jair Bolsonaro said.

The development came a day after police said they had found personal items belonging to the two, including Pereira’s health card, pants and boots, as well as Phillips’s backpack and clothing.

Bolsonaro, whose government has faced accusations of failing to act urgently enough in the case, said hope was fading.

“Because of the time that’s passed — eight days now, approaching the ninth — it’s going to be very difficult to find them alive,” the president told CBN Recife radio.

“I pray to God for that to happen, but the information and evidence we’re getting suggest the opposite.”

– ‘Upset and distressed’ –

Phillips’s niece Dominique Davies told AFP via text message that authorities had informed the family two bodies had been found.

“We are waiting on confirmation from the federal police (in Brazil) as to whether they are Dom and Bruno. We all remain upset and distressed at this time,” she said.

Britain’s Guardian newspaper, where Phillips was a regular contributor, said the bodies were found tied to a tree, according to information given to Phillips’s family by an aide to Brazil’s ambassador in London.

Federal police said in a statement that reports that Phillips and Pereira’s bodies had been found were incorrect. And the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley (UNIVAJA), which is taking part in the search, denied two bodies had been found.

The police have confirmed they are analyzing a blood sample and suspected human remains found during the search to determine whether they are from the missing men.

They said the results of these analyzes are expected “during this week.” 

Pereira’s wife Beatriz Matos said Monday on Twitter that the police had confirmed “that no body was found.”

Brazilian police have arrested a suspect in the case, 41-year-old Amarildo Costa de Oliveira, nicknamed “Pelado.”

Witnesses say they saw him threaten Phillips and Pereira prior to their disappearance, then pursue them in his boat just before they disappeared.

The blood sample being analyzed was found on a tarp in Oliveira’s boat.

The search has been complicated given the difficult jungle terrain in the far-flung Javari Valley, where the men had traveled by boat gathering material for a book Phillips was writing about sustainable ways to protect the world’s biggest rainforest.

– U2 adds to pressure –

Brazil’s government faces pressure from international media organizations, rights groups and high-profile figures over the case — fueling criticism of Bolsonaro’s policies on the Amazon, where illegal deforestation and other environmental crimes have surged since he took office in 2019.

Dozens of indigenous protesters marched Monday in Atalaia do Norte, the small city Phillips and Pereira had been headed to, demanding answers on their whereabouts.

“It’s been a week… and every day brings conflicting reports,” Natalie Southwick, Latin America coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), said in a statement.

“CPJ remains deeply concerned about the government’s insufficient response and lack of transparency. Brazilian authorities must stop dragging their feet.”

Irish rock band U2 became the latest to rally to the cause, joining Brazilian football legend Pele and iconic singer Caetano Veloso.

“We are waiting to find out what has happened to these courageous men,” the band tweeted, along with a red-and-black drawing of the pair by artist Cristiano Siqueira that has gone viral.

“Where are Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira?” it reads.

UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet said Monday she will not seek a second term, ending months of speculation, insisting she wanted to spend more time with her family in Chile.

Two major human rights organisations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, used the opportunity to reiterate their criticism of Bachelet’s stance on China.

The surprise announcement came as the 70-year-old former Chilean president opened the United Nations Human Rights Council’s 50th session.

“As my term as High Commissioner draws to a close, this Council’s milestone 50th session will be the last which I brief,” Bachelet told the diplomats gathered in Geneva. 

Speculation has been rife for months about her plans.

But Bachelet told reporters “this is not something new,” saying she had informed UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres two months ago of her decision to leave “for personal reasons”.

“After a long and rich career, I want to go back to my country, to my family,” she said. 

Guterres said in a statement he was “deeply grateful to Michelle Bachelet for her relentless service” as rights chief.

Bachelet, he said, “lives and breathes human rights”, and “has moved the needle in an extremely challenging political context… She has made a profound difference for people around the globe.”

The post of High Commissioner for Human Rights typically faces heavy political pressure from countries around the world.

While it can be held for a maximum of two terms, nearly all of Bachelet’s predecessors have avoided staying on for more than one term.

– Discreet diplomacy –

But there had been speculation that Bachelet, who has largely avoided harsh public criticism of countries, might be eyeing more time.

When Guterres appointed her in 2018, it was clear she was meant to mark a break with the repeated declarations of outrage by her very outspoken predecessor Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein of Jordan.

Bachelet, who went from torture victim under Augusto Pinochet to become the first woman to serve as president of Chile, has instead emphasised the importance of dialogue and discreet diplomacy in forwarding rights in various countries.

“Continue to seek dialogue,” she told the council Monday as she presented an overview of human rights concerns around the world.

“Be willing to hear the other, to understand respective points of view and to actively work towards identifying common ground.”

This approach has not sat well with some and she has faced significant pushback over her restraint, especially when it comes to China.

She has faced mounting criticism from countries and NGOs for not speaking out more forcefully against allegations of widespread rights abuses in the country, including during her long-awaited trip there last month — the first in 17 years by a UN rights chief.

– China criticism –

The criticism “has no relationship” with the decision not to take on a second term, she told journalists.

“Having been president twice, I have received a lot of criticism in my life,” she pointed out. “That’s not what makes me take certain positions.”

Bachelet meanwhile vowed that a long-awaited report on the rights situation in the Xinjiang region, where China is alleged to have detained more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities, will be published before she steps down on August 31.

She told the council that the report was currently “being updated”, and that it would “be shared with the government for factual comments before publication”.

Countries and NGOs have become increasingly impatient to see that report, which they say has been ready for months.

“It is important that she not let that process run out the clock on her term and hand the report to her successor,” Human Rights Watch chief Kenneth Roth told AFP Monday.

He warned that Bachelet’s focus on seeking dialogue with Chinese President Xi Jinping “lacks the pressure that alone might persuade him to ease his repression”. 

He urged Guterres to pick “a successor who is comfortable using the office’s most important tool to improve human rights practices — the willingness to speak out against even the most powerful human rights abusers”.

“Michelle Bachelet now has just two-and-a-half months to address her failures on China,” said Amnesty’s Secretary General Agnes Callamard. 

She urged Guterres to be “open and transparent” in choosing a successor, saying: “This important post requires a mandate holder who is principled and independent, and who has a proven record of deep commitment to human rights”.

Callamard called on Bachelet to “finish her term by acting with the courage and principles that the office of High Commissioner demands”.

Maksym Katerin was red-eyed Monday as he showed the fresh graves of his mother and stepfather, scattered with rose petals, in his garden in Ukraine’s frontline city of Lysychansk.

On Sunday afternoon at around 5 pm, a shell ripped through his peaceful garden with its piglets and chickens, instantly killing his mother Nataliya and her husband Mykola, both 65, leaving their mutilated bodies on the ground.

“I don’t know who did this, but if I knew, I would tear off their arms,” said Katerin.

After months of shelling, the strategic city in eastern Ukraine is massively damaged with no water, electricity or phone signal.

Ukrainian artillery uses its high ground to exchange fire with Russian forces fighting for control of Severodonetsk, just across the river.

Katerin’s neighbour Yevgeniya Panicheva wept, saying Katerin’s mother “was lying here, her stomach was ripped and her guts were falling out. She was a very good, kind and helpful woman. Why did they do this to her?”

“They bomb and they bomb and we don’t know what to do.”

Their leafy street lined with mulberry and cherry trees lies close to Russian forces just across the river, with Ukrainian artillery positioned nearby. One house was completely obliterated by earlier shelling and an unexploded device could be seen sticking out of the road. 

They were not the only Lysychansk residents to die Sunday: a six-year-old boy was also killed, police told AFP, showing a photo of the crater from the shell, which scattered deadly shrapnel.

In the city centre, severed power cables lay in the street, with burnt-out shopping malls and the acrid smell of smoke in a yellow sky.

In one street, smoke rose from charred, roofless houses.

Soldiers and police drove cars with missing windows and AFP saw police haul in three youths with sacks full of looted goods.

– ‘The pits’ –

One policeman described the situation as “the pits”.

“Shells are flying in and hitting the city centre,” he said, while his colleague added: “It’s 24/7.”

“With every day, you see for yourself that the shelling doesn’t diminish, it is only intensifying,” Oleksandr Pokhna, a lieutenant-colonel in Lugansk region’s police special forces, told AFP.

Pokhna said police were trying to encourage as many residents as possible to go to evacuation points to be taken to safer parts of the country.

The boom of shelling was almost non-stop, and AFP journalists also heard the prolonged thundering of Russian multiple rocket launcher systems. 

At the entrance to the city, the roadside had craters from shelling and a cluster bomb stuck up from the ground. There were burnt-out cars at a checkpoint.

The few people out were on foot or bicycles.

Residents standing in line for greenish non-drinking water at the fire station said they were unable to leave, blaming lack of money or relatives, or the need to look after small children and pets.

“We have small (twin) babies of five months and so we can’t leave anywhere, we sit in the cellar,” said Sergiy, a metal worker.

Some called for negotiations to end the conflict.

“Can’t we come to an agreement, without weapons? We need to make an effort to make an agreement,” said a woman named Galina.

Many, seeing only Ukrainian forces and completely cut off from sources of information, insisted that Kyiv’s troops were responsible for the shelling.

One angry woman, who declined to give her name, said: “It’s the Ukrainians bombing us. They don’t consider us to be people. They call us separatists.”

“It was our own people — the Ukrainians,” an elderly man agreed.

Many locals in the Donbas coal-mining region feel little connection to Kyiv, and talk of taking “trips” to Ukraine.

Special forces police officer Pokhna acknowledged this mood but stressed: “The Ukrainian army is only defending itself.”

The UK government on Monday introduced legislation to rip up post-Brexit trading rules for Northern Ireland, despite the possibility that could spark a trade war with the EU.

London says it still prefers a negotiated outcome with the European Union to reform the Northern Ireland Protocol.

But with talks stalled, the bill proposes overriding the EU withdrawal treaty that the UK signed, although the government in London insists it is not breaking international law.

The EU quickly threatened legal action in response while Dublin called it “a particular low point in the UK’s approach to Brexit”.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said any solution must not threaten the US-brokered 1998 deal that has largely brought peace to the territory.

He urged British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss “to continue good faith negotiations with the EU to reach a solution that preserves the gains of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement,” a statement said.

The US has said any breach of the peace deal would threaten a bilateral trade deal with the UK.

That could not come at a worse time for the UK, which is grappling with inflation at 40-year highs and rising household bills that have left many Britons struggling to make ends meet.

London claims the new legislation  will address “burdensome customs processes, inflexible regulation, tax and spend discrepancies and democratic governance issues” that are “undermining” peace in Northern Ireland and have paralysed its power-sharing government.

– ‘Reasonable’ –

Truss spoke to European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic and Ireland counterpart Simon Coveney on Monday to inform them the bill was being introduced in parliament.

She called it a “reasonable, practical solution to the problems facing Northern Ireland”.

But Sefcovic said that the EU would not renegotiate its divorce deal and that Brussels would now consider reopening a suspended “infringement procedure” against Britain, as well as opening fresh cases.

“It is with significant concern that we take note of today’s decision by the UK Government to table legislation,” he said in a prepared statement to reporters in Brussels.

Sefcovic tweeted earlier that he had warned the UK minister that “unilateral action is damaging to mutual trust and a formula for uncertainty”.

Coveney told Truss the move marked “a particular low point in the UK’s approach to Brexit” and was “deeply damaging to relationships on these islands and between the UK and EU”.

“The UK’s unilateral approach is not in the best interest of Northern Ireland and does not have the consent or support of the majority of people or business in Northern Ireland,” he added.

But Prime Minister Boris Johnson insisted that the move was “the right way forward” and was needed to maintain the “balance and the symmetry” of the Good Friday peace agreement between pro-UK unionists and nationalists who want a united Ireland.

– Open border –

The pro-UK Democratic Unionist Party argues that the protocol’s creation of an effective border in the Irish Sea is jeopardising Northern Ireland’s status in the wider UK and makes a united Ireland more likely.

It is boycotting the local government in Belfast until the deal is scrapped or dramatically overhauled.

Northern Ireland’s first minister-elect, Michelle O’Neill, of Irish nationalists Sinn Fein, said Johnson was “in clear breach of international law”.

But DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson welcomed the bill as “the kind of action that is required” to remove what he said were barriers to trade within the UK.

The protocol requires checks on goods arriving in Northern Ireland from England, Scotland and Wales, to prevent them from entering the EU’s single market via the Republic of Ireland and to avoid a return to a “hard border”.

Border infrastructure was a flashpoint during 30 years of violence over British rule in Northern Ireland and an open border was central to the peace deal.

– Green and red channels –

The UK bill proposes scrapping most of the checks, creating a “green channel” for British traders to send goods to Northern Ireland without making any customs declaration to the EU.

The EU would have access to more real-time UK data on the flow of goods, and only businesses intending to trade into the single market via Ireland would be required to make declarations via a “red channel”.

The EU would need to trust the UK to monitor the flow, London said, promising “robust penalties” for any companies seeking to abuse the new system.