Exclusive: Canada police prepared to shoot Indigenous activists, documents show
Exclusive: Canada police prepared to shoot Indigenous activists, documents show
Jaskiran Dhillon in Wet’suwet’en territory and Will Parrish
Fri 20 Dec 2019 05.30 EST
Canadian police were prepared to shoot Indigenous land defenders blockading construction of a natural gas pipeline in northern British Columbia, according to documents seen by the Guardian.
Notes from a strategy session for a militarized raid on ancestral lands of the Wet’suwet’en nation show that commanders of Canada’s national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), argued that “lethal overwatch is req’d” – a term for deploying snipers.
The RCMP commanders also instructed officers to “use as much violence toward the gate as you want” ahead of the operation to remove a roadblock which had been erected by Wet’suwet’en people to control access to their territories and stop construction of the proposed 670km (416-mile) Coastal GasLink pipeline (CGL).
In a separate document, an RCMP officer states that arrests would be necessary for “sterilizing the site”.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/20/canada-indigenous-land-defenders-police-documents
