Rainforest Mafias: How Violence and Impunity Fuel Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon

This report documents 28 such killings, most of them since 2015 – plus four attempted killings and more than 40 cases of death threats – in which Human Rights Watch obtained credible evidene that the perpetrators were engaged in illegal deforestation and the victims were targeted because they stood in the way of their criminal enterprise. Some of these victims were environmental enforcement officials. Most were member of Indigenous communities or other forest residents who denounced illegal logging to authorities or sought in other ways to contribute to Brazil’s efforts to enforce its environmental laws. This report also investigates how police responded to killings in one region of Maranhao state – encompassing four indigenous territories – where Indigenous people have taken a stand against illegal logging report being victim of violent reprisals by loggers.