Neidinha Suruí, an Indigenous rights activist and environmentalist, wishes she could live in a house without doors. But constant threats have forced her to live behind high walls, electric fences, and surveillance cameras.
“My house has become a prison,” she says. Neidinha is one of 1,468 individuals currently being monitored by Brazil’s Program for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, Journalists and Environmentalists (PPDDH), under the Ministry of Human Rights. The program, launched 20 years ago, aims to provide security and support to people living under threat. “I was raised under a tapiri – an open, wall-less shelter. I never liked closed doors,” she recalls.
In 20 years, at least 21 people registered in the program have been assassinated. Seven are currently under armed escort in the states of Roraima, Pará and Bahia. According to the ministry, more than 70% of those enrolled work in rural areas, and many are environmental leaders.
Neidinha, who has spent over five decades fighting for Indigenous land demarcation and protection of the Amazon in Rondônia, is among them. The state witnessed 29 murders in land conflicts between 2021 and 2024, according to data from the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT).
“We defenders are a bunch of madwomen and madmen,” she says. “But we’re the good kind of mad – we fight so that everyone can have clean air to breathe, stable climate, and working agriculture.”
A legacy of threats and assassinations
In 1992, Neidinha co-founded the Kanindé Ethno-Environmental Defense Association, which supports more than 50 Indigenous peoples, including the Uru-eu-wau-wau. This group faces frequent land invasions and serious violence. In 2021, activist Ari Uru-eu-wau-wau, who monitored land encroachments, was assassinated in the region.
“Environmental defenders have died protecting the Amazon,” she says. “We lost Ari, we lost Sister Dorothy, Chico Mendes, Paulino Guajajara…”
The list is long. It includes Bruno Pereira and journalist Dom Phillips, killed in 2022 in the Javari Valley; activist José Gomes (known as Zé do Lago), murdered alongside his wife Márcia and stepdaughter Joane in Pará; the 10 landless workers massacred in Pau D’Arco in 2017; and the sole eyewitness to that massacre, Fernando Araújo dos Santos, murdered in 2021.
According to Global Witness, Brazil is the second deadliest country for environmental defenders after Colombia. Between 2021 and 2024, the CPT recorded 126 murders in rural conflicts.
‘They blocked our car and opened fire’
Neidinha recalls her first serious attack in 1996. While helping relocate a semi-enslaved Indigenous community in Alto Jamari, she and a colleague were ambushed by armed men. “They blocked our car and opened fire. We managed to escape by speeding away.”
Three decades later, the threats persist. Armed men have broken into her house, once pointing weapons at her daughter, Indigenous leader Txai Suruí. She’s lost count of the anonymous phone calls and veiled warnings in public places.
“You go to the bank, and someone you’ve never seen touches your shoulder and says: ‘You talk a lot. Aren’t you afraid of dying?'”
Rural defenders face daily violence
Outside the official protection program, countless others face threats: environmentalists, Indigenous peoples, quilombolas, landless workers, river dwellers, and other traditional communities.
A recent report by Terra de Direitos and Justiça Global documented 486 acts of violence in 318 incidents between 2023 and 2024. About 80% targeted land, territory and environmental defenders. The state of Bahia had the highest number of killings (10), while Pará had the most recorded incidents overall.
The year 2024 saw a decline in total cases (188), but the threat remains concentrated in the Amazon. There, armed groups, illegal loggers, land grabbers, and even state agents (such as politicians and police) are responsible for much of the violence.
“Powerful economic interests are behind many threats. They even hire militias to intimidate and drive people off their land,” says Luciene Aviz, deputy coordinator of PPDDH at Unipop, the civil society group managing the program in Pará.
‘The program isn’t enough to keep us alive’
Because of threats, Neidinha once went into hiding in Bahia under state protection. The experience, she says, was psychologically damaging. “People think the solution is to take activists out of their territory. It’s not. That only breaks them,” she says. Two months later, she returned to the Amazon. “If you want to kill an activist, take them away from their land.”
In the Amazon, where violence is more extreme and travel more difficult, protection efforts fall short. One defender, Joana*, lives in a remote part of Almeirim, Pará, and has been enrolled in the program since 2017 after receiving death threats linked to her work on land reform.
“I was harassed, persecuted, defamed,” she says. Although she receives periodic visits from police, the vast distance to urban areas often leaves her unprotected. “My life is in God’s hands. If I depended on the program alone, I’d be dead by now.”
The state program in Pará struggles with logistics and funding. “Sometimes it takes a boat and bus to reach defenders. The police can’t always go that far,” explains Aviz.
Adding to the challenge, Joana discovered her local police chief was close to the very businesspeople threatening her. She had to file a formal complaint with the police oversight agency.
To address such risks, the program now assigns specific officers as “focal points” responsible for each defender. “We’re telling the state: this person is your responsibility,” says Aviz. No one under the program’s active protection has been killed.
When the threat comes from the police
The report by Terra de Direitos and Justiça Global categorizes perpetrators as either private or public agents. Among the latter, military police officers are the most frequently reported aggressors.
“I was afraid of the police,” says Joana. “You see what happened to Chico Mendes – he was killed while two police officers were inside his house.”
Chico Mendes, the iconic rubber tapper and environmentalist, was assassinated in 1988 in Acre state. His killer, rancher Darci Alves Pereira (now known as Pastor Daniel), shot him in the chest in his backyard. At the time, Mendes was under the protection of two military police officers.
*Name changed to protect the interviewee’s identity.
