This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Karla Mendes is a fellow. SANTIAGO — The screening of a Mongabay video at Chile’s Supreme Court this month is expected to help prosecutors in a landmark case against impunity against the killings of Indigenous people in Brazil. The video centers on the killing of 26-year-old Indigenous leader Paulo Paulino Guajajara in an alleged ambush by illegal loggers in the Brazilian Amazon. Four and a half years since the incident, the case still hasn’t gone to trial in Brazil, even as clamors for justice continue to get louder. In Chile, the video was in the spotlight as a key case for the workshop “Environmental crisis: The role of the judicial system to ensure safety of the critical voice” at the Supreme Court on May 2 as part of UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day Conference in Santiago. Paulo was a member of the “Guardians of the Forest,” a group of Indigenous Guajajara in the Arariboia Indigenous Territory who risk their lives protecting their ancestral land against illegal logging, hunting and other environmental crimes amid the lack of government enforcement in the region. In the past 20 years, 53 Guajajara individuals have been killed in Maranhão state, with none of the perpetrators ever being tried, according to the Indigenist Missionary Council (CIMI), an advocacy group affiliated with the Catholic Church. Of this total, 24 were killed in the Arariboia territory, according to data from CIMI; six were guardians like Paulo,…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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