Amazon crime 'related to misery'

BRASILIA - Blanketing an area bigger than Western Europe in dense forest and river mazes, the Amazon jungle where New Zealand hero Sir Peter Blake was fatally shot by pirates is a fertile breeding ground for crime.

The Amazon is home to 30 per cent of the world's animal and plant life, but its often impenetrable forest and crisscrossing waterways also provide camouflage for drug and arms traffickers and roving bandits.

Sir Peter, an America's Cup winner and one of the most successful sailors in yachting history, fell victim to that lawlessness when pirates attacked his moored vessel near where the Amazon River opens into the Atlantic Ocean in northern Brazil.

While international statistics show that Brazil, home to 85 per cent of the Amazon, rates no worse than other parts of the globe for river piracy, those familiar with Brazil's impoverished Amazon states say violence is part of daily life for those who live there.

Amazon crime "is related to misery," said Paulo Adaria, international coordinator for the Amazon at Greenpeace.

"People are trying to make a living from stealing clocks and wallets and there is no control, no law enforcement," said Adaria, who has received death threats after denouncing illegal logging and is under police protection.

The pirates who attacked Sir Peter's Seamaster vessel about 1.15 pm yesterday (NZT) night stole watches, cameras and an inflatable dinghy, police said yesterday.

Federal police in Manaus, the jungle capital of Amazonas state, said that they had no statistics on river piracy but that cases were rare in the region.

The steamy jungle port of Manaus is the departure point for hundreds of tourists who trek into the world's biggest rain forest or take a river cruise down the Amazon.

According to a forest engineer at Greenpeace in Manaus, there have been no cases of pirate attacks on tourist boats this year, although Greenpeace registered two cases of piracy against local boats in the area, where rivers replace roads.

The remoteness of parts of Brazil's Amazon, which borders on seven South American countries, makes gathering statistics on any type of crime there difficult.

It is only after high-profile cases, like that of Blake or Chico Mendes - a rubber tapper turned environmentalist who was killed for his fight against deforestation - that the world notes the wild side of the "lungs of the earth."

Advocates of sailing along the Amazon warn Brazil visitors against alarmism after Blake's killing.

"It is a known fact that the mouth of the Amazon has some pirate activity, but I don't want to say that it's a pirates' nest," said Patrick Estebe, a professional maritime bodyguard who accompanies "executive exhibitions" of high-profile sailors on the Amazon.

"Thousands of boats go up the Amazon without any problem. Piracy is a fact of life. There is nothing wrong with Brazil or the Amazon," said Estebe, a former member of the French special forces who runs security consultancy Affair Action.

- REUTERS

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