QASR AL-QARAHBULLI, LIBYA (AFP) – War-ravaged Libya is better known for its oil wealth than its forests, but environmentalists hope to save its remaining green spaces from logging, development and the impacts of climate change.

The “Friends of the Tree” group works to raise awareness about green areas around the capital Tripoli that are quickly disappearing because of drought, human activity and desertification.

“Man has destroyed forests” and much of the vegetation, said the group’s leader Khalifa Ramadan, who has been working in agriculture and gardening for 40 years.

At his farm in Tajura, an eastern suburb of Tripoli, Ramadan has planted eucalyptus, palm and laurel trees, which the group plans to replant around the capital.

The group meets weekly to launch media campaigns and carry out activities to confront “the dangers facing Tripoli and other coastal cities”, said Ramadan.

Rainfall is scarce in the largely desert country, which is only starting to recover from the years of bloody conflict that followed the 2011 uprising which toppled dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

The group, which includes dozens of agronomists, horticulturists and volunteers, ultimately would like to revive a “green belt” project from the 1950s and ’60s that has withered during decades of dictatorship, war and turmoil. Back then, Libyan authorities dipped into the country’s wealth to plant forests across an area stretching from Tripoli to the port city of Misrata, 200 kilometres to the east.

Strict laws at the time aimed to control urban expansion and soil erosion and to stop the desert from sweeping into Tripoli, while also opening new areas for agriculture.

Today Libyan state institutions, weakened by rivalries and continued insecurity, have struggled to bring stable governance, including on protecting the environment.

In recent years, at least 1,700 criminal cases have been identified involving activities such as unauthorised logging and illegal construction, says the agricultural police.

In Garabulli, a coastal area east of Tripoli – famed for its pristine white sands and its centuries-old eucalyptus trees, acacias and wild mimosas – tree trunks litter the ground next to some illegal constructions, recently demolished on judicial instruction.

“The green belt has become the target of numerous violations over the past few years,” said spokesman for the agriculture police General Fawzi Abugualia.

The police unit is ill-equipped to deal with all these challenges, but has nevertheless managed to score some points, he said.

With help from other security services, the agriculture police “have put a stop to these criminal acts”, he said, referring to the destruction at Garabulli.

DENEIA, CYPRUS (AFP) – Standing amid ears of wheat growing tall in the buffer zone dividing Cyprus, farmer Christodoulos Christodoulou can rest easy.

The rodents that once ran rampant in the decades since the no-man’s land was created and destroyed his crops are being driven out by owls.

“Our village was full of rats and mice. They ate our crops, nibbled on our tyres,” recalled Christodoulou, who owns a farm in the demilitarised corridor that splits the internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus and the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

“Then we set up these boxes for the owls,” he said. Around 50 light wooden boxes with circular openings have been installed on tree trunks as part of a 10-year-old initiative led by the BirdLife Cyprus non-governmental organisation and the Cypriot government.

BirdLife says the objectives of the project are to encourage farmers to abandon using poison and to help repopulate the barn owl population of Cyprus, which has been in decline across Europe.

Deneia, one of the few villages in the 180-kilometre buffer zone that is still inhabited, is now home to between 20 and 50 barn owls and their chicks – recognisable by their milk-white plumage.

The birds of prey are only about 30 centimetres tall, but have large appetites, devouring as many as 5,000 rats and mice a year.

Rodents have proliferated in the corridor in the absence of large amounts of human activity – ransacking agricultural areas.

Farmers have often tried to address the situation with rat poison – harmful to both humans and the environment – before the launch of the initiative.

“The owls are a miracle!” said Christodoulou, who first tried spraying poison on his fields.

Their presence has had a “radical” impact in driving away the rodents and he can now practise organic farming.

Today, thanks to the owls, “to find a rodent here, you would have to search for a week”, said Deneia mayor Christakis Panayiotou.

BirdLife director Martin Hellicar, who counts more than 1,300 owl boxes across Cyprus, attributes the success of the project to farmers becoming “attached to the barn owls and reconnecting with nature”.

Further west in the same demilitarised corridor, whole villages have been abandoned for decades since the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, in response to a Greek-sponsored coup attempt.

Bird boxes have gone up in coordination with the United Nations.

Not far from looming watchtowers manned by some of the 800 UN peacekeepers patrolling the area, a ranger wearing gloves pulls two owl chicks out of a box.

The small creatures blink, blinded by the daylight. With an expert hand, Nikos Kassinis attatches a ring to them with an identification number.

Every year, authorities find the bodies of around 20 owls. Autopsies reveal that many die as a result of consuming rat poison.

“They lose their capacity to fly and get hit by cars,” added the mayor, noting that this most often takes place outside in more populated areas.

Scientist Iris Charalambidou describes the no-man’s land as a “unique” environment for its expanse of largely untouched nature in comparison to the unbridled real estate development on other parts of the island.

With permission from the United Nations, the Greek Cypriot specialist sometimes comes to the area with a Turkish Cypriot colleague.

The researcher says being able to work together to observe barn owls in the buffer zone that divides them is invaluable. “Because no bird will ever respect the borders drawn by man,” she said.

CNA – Lydia Lok runs an enrichment centre offering phonics, English and mathematics. Known as Curious Thoughts Academy, it currently has more than 700 students, from toddlers to secondary school students. This is not surprising given the highly competitive education system in Singapore.

But that’s just half of the story. Lok then takes the money she earns from these more affluent families to fund free phonic lessons to teach kids from low-income families how to read.

Every three paying kids funds one underprivileged kid whose parents are struggling to make ends meet and simply cannot afford enrichment. Some come from non-English speaking families where parents may be first-generation Vietnamese or Thai. Some are also diagnosed or suspected to have special needs such as dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or mild autism.

Most of these children were referred to the Academy by social workers or child psychologists.

Low-income parents who want to enrol their children for free may also get a referral from a social service agency. Lok’s mission: To help level the playing field for vulnerable children.

“In Singapore, many parents who can afford it are sending their children for enrichment classes to learn to read before primary school. So by the time kids enter primary one, by our estimates, 80 per cent would already know how to read simple sentences,” said the 38-year-old.

The remaining 20 per cent who cannot read come largely from underprivileged families, Lok observed. “I want to minimise the gap between these two groups so that vulnerable children don’t enter primary school with a disadvantage,” she said.

THE WIDENING GAP FOR THE UNDERPRIVILEGED

Should five to six-year-old kids be expected to be able to read? Lok said that a dyslexia intervention programme she attended in Portland, United States, noted that it was developmentally appropriate for seven to eight-year-olds to start reading. “But in Singapore, this is not the case because it is so competitive,” she stressed. “Since 80 per cent of kids enter primary school knowing how to read, it is very hard for the 20 per cent who are lagging behind to catch up.”

“It is like a domino effect,” she added. “If you start learning to read at a later age, you start spelling, and writing sentences and paragraphs at a later age too. That is why, in primary school, we often see the gap widening between underprivileged kids and their peers.”

Some of these children only get flagged in primary three or four when they still cannot read or write. Lok and the Curious Thoughts Giving team, try to help them catch up. Some children manage to catch up and enjoy exponential development in the nick of time, said Lok. Others are so far behind that they struggle to make up for lost time.

“We have a child who couldn’t read at primary four when she joined us. We managed to teach her to read sentences, but she’s now in primary five where children are tested on inferential questions in page-long comprehension passages.

“Because of the lag effect, she’s still struggling. And we don’t have another four years to catch up before Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE),” lamented Lok.

A SERENDIPITOUS ACCIDENT

Though Lok had been a volunteer since her student days and always knew she wanted to help the underprivileged, she never imagined she would be teaching.

Before starting Curious Thoughts Giving, Lok was a policy officer at the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) working on child protection, probation, and delinquency and homeless issues.

“By the time the cases go to the ministry, they are already very troubled and it’s very hard to remedy the situation. So I started reflecting on what I could do that is more upstream and preventive, instead of reacting to things that have already happened and that I have no control to change,” she said.

Everything clicked when she unknowingly registered for a phonics course in 2014.

“I was not a teacher or parent then. I just didn’t know it was a course to teach children how to read. I thought it was a phonetic course on pronunciation. And since I was working with a lot of lawyers on legislation, I wanted to buck up on my pronunciation,” she laughed.

“On the first day of the course, I realised to my horror that it was not a course on pronunciation!”

During the course, Lok learnt to teach kids how to match letters or groups of letters to sounds when learning to read and spell. She did not expect to apply her learning.

However, a few months later, a friend unexpectedly shared a troubling encounter with her.

As a single mum, her friend had been saving up for her four-year-old child to learn to read at a phonics centre. She did not expect him to be rejected by the centre because he was deemed to be too far behind. “I was outraged,” Lok said.

She offered to teach him phonics for free every weekend. And within three months, he started reading.

A few months later, Lok’s twin sister connected her with a Japanese woman who asked if she could teach eight Japanese students aged between four and 10 to read for free. She did and again, they started reading within three months.

“That was when I realised how useful phonics can be in teaching kids to read. So I decided to start a social enterprise to level the playing field for kids from less privileged backgrounds,” she said. In August 2016, Lok and her husband Yao Shuo Han, 40, a former secondary school teacher, founded Curious Thoughts Academy with the idea that paying students would support low-income beneficiaries.

She started with a small grant from the Singapore Centre for Social Enterprise and SGD20,000 of her own savings. Enrolment was slow. For the next six months, the Academy only had five paying students. Lok offered business consultancy on the side to pay for rental and utilities. Nonetheless, by October, their personal bank accounts had been drained.

RISKING EVERYTHING FOR A DREAM

“My husband and I couldn’t even pay our Housing and Development Board (HDB) mortgage and got a pink slip from the HDB department. We reached a point where we thought we would have to close down the business,” she said. Under incredible financial stress, Lok did something completely unexpected. She decided to use her centre to help as many low-income children as possible before shutting it down.

“I wrote to many social workers and shelters telling them to send their kids to us for free. They sent us 10 beneficiaries,” she said.

Little did she expect that this act of kindness in her darkest moments would become a turning point for the enrichment centre. As the public saw more students at the centre, they started to register their own children, not knowing they were beneficiaries. Enrolment grew by five paying students each month, and soon, they broke even and hired their first full-time teacher.

HONG KONG (AFP) – Bent over a low bench in his cluttered Hong Kong workshop, dark-framed glasses perched on his nose Lui Ming deftly assembles a bamboo steamer, a utensil essential to Cantonese cooking. It’s a craft the 93-year-old has been perfecting for seven decades, and steamers like his are an indispensable part of yum cha, the Cantonese brunch involving tea and dim sum – perhaps the most prized culinary ritual in the city.

The circular bamboo baskets are ferried in small trolleys around yum cha restaurants, filled with bite-sized dumplings and other delicacies.

“My only hobbies are yum cha and Cantonese opera,” Lui told AFP while twisting thin strips of bamboo to build the single most important dim sum-making tool. “Those are the joys of my life.”

Hong Kong is equally acclaimed for its fine dining restaurants and its street-side eateries, and the enduring use of handwoven steamers in both is part of a set of unique food traditions that have shaped its culinary landscape for generations.

As in many modern metropoles, the flow of commerce in the finance hub brings constant change, but Hong Kong’s cuisine remains wedded to a network of traditions that residents view as staunch markers of local identity.

“Bamboo steamers absorb moisture and there won’t be condensation (on the lid),” Lui explained, adding that metal or plastic versions would never pass as part of an authentic yum cha experience in Hong Kong. But he does add steel around the bamboo rim to make his steamers more durable and improve insulation, an innovation he said he pioneered.

“For steaming buns, there is no substitute.”

Liu’s shop is located on Shanghai Street, a historic stretch of road in Hong Kong’s Kowloon district that is a treasure trove of kitchenware and utensils. One block north is Chan Chi Kee cutlery – a family-run Hong Kong institution more than 100 years old.

Retired craftsman Chan, who is part of the clan that runs the shop and now in his 80s, spends much of his time there.

He started forging cleavers when he was around 15 years old as part of the already-established family business. “I was given a piece of metal and shaped it into a knife,” he said, giving only his surname.

“It was on the mountainside in the squatter huts… But eventually there was not enough space – they built housing there.” Today, Chinese chefs from around the world visit Chan Chi Kee’s storefront on Shanghai Street to buy handcrafted cleavers and woks.

“At least 80 per cent of Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong use our knives,” Chan told AFP.

But rising property prices and the city’s shift away from manufacturing has pushed the bulk of production for the knives, woks and steamers to Guangzhou, China – though a small select stock is still “Made in Hong Kong”.

Increased wages have also contributed to soaring costs, said a dried seafood trader for over three decades Wong Yan-wai.

“Most dried seafood is not processed in Hong Kong because of the high cost,” Wong, 53, told AFP.

The fresh seafood is caught across the world and dried on-site – in South Africa, Japan, Brazil and Australia – before being shipped to Wong’s shop on Des Voeux Road.

More colloquially known as “Dried Seafood Street”, it and its neighbouring side streets are home to nearly 200 vendors hawking dried scallops, bird’s nest, abalone, sea cucumber and more.

Pulling out a dried fish bladder from an ornate gold box, Wong said it is priced at HKD168,000 (USD21,500) due to its age and size. “For businesses that do well, they can make HKD800 million to a billion a year in revenue.”

Ten minutes away, ArChan Chan deftly flips dried shrimp in a carbon steel Chan Chi Kee wok to make her version of the classic Cantonese dish known as stir-fry king.

The 37-year-old chef at Ho Lee Fook, located in the glitzy Central district, is one of the city’s most celebrated women chefs and among a handful of young innovators redefining Cantonese food.

“One of the biggest challenges I have is how to modernise Cantonese food,” ArChan said.

The answer lies in sourcing quality ingredients while making small tweaks to dishes’ flavour profiles, such as adding fermented aged garlic soy to a classic razor clam dish.

In her sleek kitchen, Archan lifts the lid of a bamboo steamer to unveil three glistening vegetable dumplings, ready to be served.

“There is such a big wealth of knowledge,” she told AFP. “I want to be able to learn and absorb as much as possible and just to pass it on.”

SAMUT PRAKAN, THAILAND (AFP) – A fluffy white cat in a yellow dress perched on the top of a Bangkok cinema seat while, nearby, a Chihuahua in a Sebastian the Crab costume geared up to watch Disney’s The Little Mermaid with their owner. One terrier even channelled Ariel in a red wig and mermaid’s tail. They were among dozens of four-legged film-goers that arrived in strollers on Saturday for the opening of Thailand’s first pet-friendly cinema on the fringes of the capital.

The country’s pet industry is considered the second-biggest in Asia, behind China’s, with some 8.3 million dogs and 3.7 million cats in 2021, according to industry data.

Pet ownership grew further during the coronavirus pandemic, and now some businesses are trying to cash in. Mano, 37, had brought his rescue cat, Kati, to the cinema.

“We take him to work sometimes… today is like an experiment,” he told AFP.

“We are seeing The Little Mermaid. He will enjoy seeing all the fish on the screen.”

The animals had to wear diapers and sit in bags while the sound and lighting were adjusted for their comfort, Major Cineplex spokesman Narute Jiensnong said.

“Bangkok is not a very pet-friendly city,” Narute told AFP, adding that the concept built on their child-friendly theatres.

Narute noted some pets acquired during the pandemic suffer separation anxiety now that owners are no longer working from home or in lockdown. “In the kid cinemas, kids will be running around screaming or shouting… I think pet cinema will be the same. Everyone who comes will own a pet and be understanding (if dogs bark),” he said.

It is not the only business opening its doors to furry visitors. Earlier this month, Swedish furniture giant Ikea announced that small dogs and cats were welcome to visit its Thailand stores, as long as they sit in prams.

Outside the cinema, there were howls of disappointment as a 62-kilogramme Alaskan Malamute named Tungchae – who arrived in a 1.5-square-metre dog trolley equipped with a fan – was considered too big to enter.

Despite the cinemas’ animal welfare safeguards, not all pet owners were thrilled about the idea.

One long-time Bangkok expat said that, while her cat frequently falls asleep beside her on the couch watching television at home, she would never take her pet to the cinema and thinks the concept is “unnatural” and “torture”.

“Being zipped up in this cage, I don’t know if that’s enjoyable for the animal,” she told AFP.

“It’s so ridiculous dogs are not allowed in (most Bangkok) parks but they can go to a movie or cafe. What comes next, you bring your dog or cat to a massage parlour?”

PARIS (AP) – The world’s first lipstick. The first modern perfume. A pivoting toothbrush. The original Nivea cream and serum. Not to mention the intimate secrets of Queen Elizabeth II. These are some of the treasures held in Guerlain’s first archive, which brings stories from the iconic French cosmetic company’s sensational past to life.

Guerlain gave The Associated Press exclusive international media access to its newly opened collection, a warehouse of wonders shrouded in secrecy and hidden from public view by Paris’ Seine River. It’s a gem of documents and mysterious objects spanning three centuries, each with a unique history of its own.

Yet what is perhaps most remarkable about the collection is that the company founded in 1828 that invented modern perfumery hadn’t assembled it before.

“It’s what we call our little secret,” said Guerlain heritage director Ann Caroline Prazan, who sifted through a mine of artefacts to compile it in a years-long labour of love.

“It was hard to whittle down 18,000 pieces to just 400 from so many years, but we did it… Some of the pieces are so fragile, I’m scared to touch them.”

The ambitious project exists thanks to Prazan’s passion – and patience. Through a mist of perfume, she reels off vignettes about Guerlain’s innovations and famous patrons, including French Empress Eugenie, Josephine Baker, Grace Kelly, Jacqueline Kennedy, Barbra Streisand, Margaret Thatcher and the late United Kingdom queen.

As Prazan turned to handle the collection’s most prized object, a lipstick created in 1870 and housed in a contemporary looking gold bullet, she carefully took off her white gloves as if she were performing a sacred ritual.

“It’s so modern,” she whispered, her finger carefully operating a push-up mechanism to reveal a dark Bordeaux wax pigment still intact after 153 years.

The refillable lipstick has a remarkable story, like everything else in the archive seems to. An employee of Aime and Gabriel Guerlain was walking in a street and happened upon the store of a candlemaker, whose wax and coloured pigments gave him a eureka moment.

At the time, women used tubs of coloured powder to paint their lips with a clunky brush. Seeing the candlemaker’s tools gave the Guerlain employee the “mad” idea of creating a waxy, lip cosmetic as a stick, Prazan said.

“That small object revolutionised women’s makeup forever,” she said.

Prazan also procured the world’s first ever lipliner, also in sleek gold casing, and a third stick – that one AP journalist couldn’t identify. It turned out to be a liner that women used to paint the veins on their arms and necks blue, a popular technique women used in late 19th Century Paris to appear paler. Thankfully, Prazan said, it has gone out of fashion.

That Guerlain is a family-run house across five successive generations is perhaps one reason why these archival pieces have been so fastidiously kept. The company was bought by luxury conglomerate LVMH in 1994, but has managed to keep its unique identity.

Innovation, including beyond the sphere of perfume, is the brand’s hallmark. Among the archival treasures is the patent for the first pivoting toothbrush. Documents revealed a 1845 design that looked like a precursor to today’s electric toothbrush.

A tub of moisturising cream called Nivea that was whisked out of a drawer told another tale that connected past and present. The cream, which contained ingredients to whiten the skin of European women, was sold off by the house to create the famous skincare company of the same name. Then there is the old bottle of Jicky, the world’s first modern perfume.

Created in 1889, it revolutionised the market with the concept of a scent cocktail – not just one note like previous fragrances – that featured hints of spice, lemon, lavender, wood and vanilla. It also included synthetic ingredients and is, incredibly, the world’s oldest continuously produced perfume.

Yet it is the anecdotes of the house’s stars that bring the most dazzle to a collection which seems so alive despite its history.

Queen Elizabeth II, featured in a photo on the wall wearing a glamourous white fur stole, was such a fan of Guerlain’s L’Heure Bleue perfume, Prazan said, that she emptied a bottle and filled it up with the oil from her 1952 coronation. It was kept for years, such was the late monarch’s emotional attachment to the scent.

From another archive shelf, a bottle for a different perfume gleamed with allure. It was the fragrance created for the baptism of the queen’s uncle years before he became King Edward VII – and famously abdicated the throne for love. Sometimes the collection seems like a potted timeline of the key moments of the world’s historical figures. While the archive is an secret affair, the brand has created an exhibit open to the public for the 170th anniversary of its most famous design, the Bee Bottle. The exhibit, called “Chere Eugenie”, is on view at Guerlain’s Champs-Elysees shop until September 4.

There, the original Bee Bottle – a historical artefact – is on display like a crown jewel with light reflecting off hand-painted bee reliefs. It was created in 1853 for the nuptials of Empress Eugenie and Napoleon III.

The bee was the French imperial emblem and also the emblem of Clovis, first king of the Francs. It has come to represent Guerlain to this day.

For the bottle’s anniversary, 11 international artists and actors, including Charlotte Rampling and Audrey Tautou, created a series of photographs inspired by the Bee Bottle.

A foot in the past with eyes to the future seem to define Guerlain, a mantra its longevity has forced the company to perfect.

“I plan well into the future, easily 100 years away,” Prazan noted while putting away her nearly 200-year-old objects. “I know the house will be around for that long, long after we’re gone. How many people can say that?”

JAVARI, BRAZIL (AFP) – In a remote pocket of the Brazilian Amazon under siege from illegal fishermen, poachers, loggers and drug traffickers, indigenous people have taken it upon themselves to defend the land and its resources.

With bows, arrows and spears, young men of the Sao Luis village patrol the Javari River by motorboat in the valley of the same name.

They call themselves the “Warriors of the Forest”, the self-styled heirs of Indigenous rights defender Bruno Pereira, who was murdered in the Javari Valley one year ago along with British journalist Dom Phillips.

“We must always be prepared for the worst. But we do not want violence,” said Lucinho Kanamari, his face painted red, insisting the traditional weapons are merely a “precaution”.

“When we spot intruders, one of us will talk to them. The others stay back, ready to react if things go wrong,” he told AFP.

“We are there to teach, to act as a peaceful deterrent. We talk, we explain.”

Lucinho is a member of the Kanamari Indigenous group, one of six in the Javari Valley which holds Brazil’s second largest protected indigenous reservation.

Like many others who live here, he takes his surname from his tribe which lives in a part of the rainforest the size of Portugal that contains many of the world’s last uncontacted Indigenous groups.

The patrolling warriors particularly fear the illegal fishermen in search of pirarucu – one of the world’s largest freshwater fish, its flesh considered a delicacy worth a small fortune.

Such poachers are believed to have killed Pereira and Phillips on June 5, 2022, hacking up their bodies and hiding the remains in the jungle.

For a while, the crime brought international attention to this threatened corner of the planet long-abandoned under former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and his pro-industrial agenda.

“With Bolsonaro, and then COVID-19, the invasions exploded,” said vice president of the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley (Univaja) Varney Todah da Silva Kanamari.

“As the state abandoned us, we had to assume our responsibilities… We defend what belongs to us: our lakes and forests,” he said.

It is not only fishermen the watchmen fear.

There are also narco groups growing coca crops on the Peruvian side of the river, and in April, loggers threatened to kill a Kanamari chief, forcing him into exile.

The warriors have built two floating wooden observation posts on the river near their village of Sao Luis. One of the structures has come under fire.

Their task is immense and dangerous, their means lacking. The team has only two motorboats and little fuel.

The “warriors” avoid violent conflict, and in tense situations, withdraw back into the forest.

With government forces absent from the area, the Sao Luis warriors work with another Indigenous group known by its acronym EVU – a sort of commando unit attached to Univaja. Pereira helped set up the EVU before his death.

EVU members – about 30 in total – are equipped with motorised barges, GPS, drones, phones and satellite internet, much of it made possible by private donors. They carry no weapons.

EVU volunteers from different Javari Valley communities undergo training by non-governmental organisations and security specialists in “how to intervene, make surveys, confiscate equipment or boats”, explained EVU co-founder Cristobal Negredo Espisango, known as Tatako.

According to Univaja coordinator Bushe Matis, the EVU does not “replace the state”.

“We monitor, we collect information and evidence, and we pass it on to the relevant authorities. Then let the state do its job.”

EVU leader Orlando de Moraes Possuelo said a key goal is “to occupy terrain” in areas with an abundance of sought-after fish and animals.

“We arrive as soon as possible to catch the intruders in the act, before they disappear or return to Peru.” Legally, they cannot detain anyone.

Many of the group’s members have received threats.

“I am under threat of death. I am afraid of course, but there is no other option,” said Tatako.

“The EVU is the only organisation that really fights organised crime in the Javari Valley,” he added.

With the return of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to the presidency, many in the Amazon hope help will soon be coming. This week, as Brazil marked the anniversary of the murders of Pereira and Phillips, Lula vowed that “we will not abandon this struggle for the planet.”

“We are fighting to revive policies to protect Indigenous peoples and the Amazon,” he said in a statement to The Guardian newspaper, to which Phillips was a contributor.

But just last week, Brazil’s Congress passed bills cutting the powers of Lula’s environment and Indigenous affairs ministries and dramatically curbing the protection of Indigenous lands.

Univaja’s Matis fears for the future.

“There can be a tragedy at any moment. The invaders will never back down: they will always want to lay claim to the Javari,” he said.