"Amazon Defenders Face Death Or Exile"

"Brazilian activists who inform on illegal loggers laying waste to the rainforests can expect a visit from the gunmen."



"A single shot to the temple was Mouth Organ John's reward for spilling the beans. His friend, Junior José Guerra, fared only marginally better.

Guerra's prize for speaking out against the illegal loggers laying waste to the greatest tropical rainforest on Earth? A broken home, two petrified children and an uncertain exile from a life he had spent years building in the Brazilian Amazon.

"I can't go back," said Guerra, one of the Amazon's newest environmental refugees, three months after his friend's brutal murder forced him, his wife and his two children into hiding. "We've been told that they are trying to find out where I am. The situation is very complicated.""

Tom Phillips reports for the Guardian February 12, 2012.

Source: Guardian, 02/14/2012