People staying at the Gidimt’en checkpoint in Wet’suwet’en territory don’t know when the RCMP will show up again, but they expect it will happen soon.
People staying at the Gidimt’en checkpoint in Wet’suwet’en territory don’t know when the RCMP will show up again, but they expect it will happen soon.
The checkpoint, located at the 44 kilometre mark of the Morice West Forest Service Road, is a gated occupation site where an unknown number of people are staying in defiance of a B.C. Supreme Court injunction order — opting to instead dig in and assert Wet’suwet’en law, at the direction of the nation’s hereditary chiefs.
Coastal Gaslink, a subsidiary of TC Energy, applied for the injunction in late 2018. On Dec. 31, 2019, the court ruled the company is fully permitted by the province to work on constructing a $6-billion, 670-kilometre natural gas pipeline from northeastern B.C. to the coast in Kitimat and granted an interlocutory injunction.
On Thursday, the RCMP began its anticipated enforcement of the injunction.
Six people were arrested Thursday morning between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. in an early morning police operation, with the RCMP announcing they were establishing an exclusion zone in the area.
Several protesters were arrested at a blockade in Wet’suwet’en territory set up to stop construction of a contentious B.C. pipeline. 1:44
In a press release, the RCMP said the individuals were arrested for obstruction. Officers also removed journalists from the area, drawing condemnation from groups like the Canadian Association of Journalists and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.
The RCMP said members of the media, along with others, “were transferred out for safety reasons, but not arrested.”
In a video posted to a Wet’suwet’en Face