By Canadian Press

Police violated protesters’ rights in Wet’suwet’en pipeline blockades, Amnesty says

Dec 11, 2023 | 9:07 AM

VANCOUVER — A report by Amnesty International says police in British Columbia conducted arbitrary arrests and “aggressive surveillance, harassment and intimidation” of First Nations protesters blocking a pipeline project.

The 94-page report documenting protests linked to a 78-kilometre segment of the Coastal GasLink liquefied natural gas pipeline says the RCMP violated protesters’ rights to free speech and peaceful assembly

The report released today says some protesters were held for multiple days before bail hearings and some Indigenous participants appeared “in shackles in their underwear” in front of a judge.

It also says protesters from the First Nation faced race- and gender-based discrimination in the handling of the protests on Wet’suwet’en territory in central B.C., between 2019 and 2023.

The report says RCMP raids on protesters in 2019, 2020 and 2021 were “disproportionate,” involving dozens of officers “armed with semi-automatic sniper rifles,” dogs, bulldozers and helicopters.

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Amnesty is calling on the federal and provincial governments, as well as Coastal GasLink Pipeline, to immediately halt construction on Wet’suwet’en land.

The pipeline was approved by all 20 elected First Nation councils along its path to transport gas from northeastern B.C. to Kitimat.

But some hereditary chiefs and others say they never ceded the territory, sparking countrywide protests that stopped railways in 2020.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 11, 2023.

The Canadian Press