Former music journalist who went on to chronicle the deforestation of the Amazon
In 2008, as a British inquest heard how Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian electrician, had been shot dead three years earlier at Stockwell Tube station in south London by police who mistook him for a terrorist bomber, Dom Phillips was meeting the victim’s family at their home in Brazil. ‘‘Maria de Menezes, angry tears edging her eyes, asked me, again and again, ‘Why did they do it? Why did they kill my son?’ ‘‘ he wrote in a powerful piece for The Times.
Fourteen years later it was Phillips who was killed along with Bruno Pereira, an indigenista or expert on indigenous people. One theory is that the pair were considered a threat to highly profitable but illegal fishing in the lawless western Javari
Valley, Brazil’s second-largest indigenous territory.
Phillips, a former music journalist, had settled in Brazil 15 years ago, becoming a regular contributor to several leading international newspapers. He found evidence of thousands of tonnes of hazardous waste from Britain being dumped in Brazil; wrote about a Brazilian television crime show host who boosted his ratings by organising murders so that his cameras could get to the scene first; and covered both the preparations for, and the aftermath of, the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games two years later.
Increasingly he was drawn to the plight of the natural world and the indigenous people of Brazil. He travelled deep into the Amazon rainforest, reporting on the environmental effects of deforestation and the encroachment of commercial interests in the region.
‘‘What happens when you put a paved road through the middle of a rainforest is that you bring development, loggers, people who illegally deforest a patch of forest and then put cattle on it and then farm it and then hope that at one point they’ll be able to legalise it,’’ he told ABC’s Late Night Live podcast. ‘‘This is what happens when you open up these forests. You just bring all kinds of towns, logging, goldmining. You should just really leave them alone.’’
In 2018 he was given rare permission to join Pereira on a risky 17-day journey into the Amazon, covering almost 1000 kilometres by boat and more than 70km on foot. At the time Pereira was working for Funai, the Brazilian government’s indigenous foundation, charged with protecting Brazil’s estimated 235 indigenous tribes, many of whom have little or no contact with the outside world. Along the way the pair made powerful enemies who were emboldened by the election that year of President Jair Bolsonaro, a right-winger who has often clashed with environmentalists. Pereira was soon forced out of Funai and latterly had been working with Univaja, an indigenous rights organisation.
On one occasion Phillips had a heated exchange with Bolsonaro, asking about his commitment to protecting the rainforest. The president replied: ‘‘You have to understand that the Amazon is Brazil’s, not yours.’’ A video of the exchange was widely circulated by Bolsonaro’s supporters, promoting the idea that their president was under attack from the media. ‘‘Dom was very shaken by that video,’’ Andrew Fishman, an American journalist in Brazil, said. ‘‘He felt that it put a target on his back and made his work more difficult.’’
Dominic Mark Phillips was born in Bebington, on the Wirral, one of three children of Gill and Bernard Phillips. He dropped out of college to see the world, visiting Israel, Greece, Denmark and Australia while doing a succession of jobs including fruit picking, working as a chef and cleaning in a meat factory.
Back in Britain he discovered that the music scene of his youth had changed. ‘‘Entranced by what I was hearing on pirate radio and in clubs and raves, I started writing about dance music in 1988 on a small Bristol magazine I set up and in magazines like Soul Underground and i-D,’’ he wrote in the introduction to his book Superstar DJs Here We Go! (2009).
Three years later he joined Mixmag, the fashionable journal for clubbers, where he was ‘‘swept up, like many, in the acid house wave’’. He became editor, but was not only concerned with music and its personalities. David Davies, another former editor, recalled how his colleague rooted the magazine in social issues. ‘‘There was the front cover story of a riot in Trafalgar Square as police fought against the underground rave scene,’’ Davies wrote. ‘‘There were features exposing gang activity, others highlighting racist door policies and much more.’’
journalist b July 23, 1964
d June 2022
‘‘ ... when you put a paved road through the middle of a rainforest ... you bring development, loggers, people who illegally deforest a patch of forest ...’’
Under Phillips’ editorship, Mixmag’s monthly circulation rose from 11,000 copies in 1991 to 90,000 by 1997. By the turn of the century he was writing about clubs, music and drugs for The Guardian while producing a style column for The Independent.
He first visited Brazil in 1998 to cover the music scene in Rio de Janeiro, returning in 2007. This time he never left, instead carving out a career as a foreign correspondent. He learnt Portuguese and married Alessandra ‘‘Ale’’ Sampaio, who survives him. He loved the Amazon, especially its fish. His favourite was the tucunare, a speckled peacock bass whose indigenous name means ‘‘friend of the trees’’.
As his interest in music dimmed, so his passion for the environment grew. Phillips, along with Pereira, 41, disappeared on June 5 in the Javari Valley while heading by boat up the Itaquai River in the western Amazon. He was undertaking research for a book provisionally called How to Save the Amazon.