Amnesty International is calling for an immediate halt to construction and use of the Coastal GasLink pipeline and the withdrawal of police and private security forces from Wet'suwet'en territory in northern British Columbia, citing what it considers ongoing human rights violations against activists resisting construction.
In a report released Monday, the global human rights group describes "the years-long campaign of violence, harassment, discrimination, and dispossession" Wet'suwet'en members and their allies faced while fighting the project.
After a spring 2023 research mission, Amnesty is expressing concern about reports of heavy-handed police raids, aggressive and intrusive surveillance tactics, intimidation, arbitrary arrests and detention, racial discrimination, and criminalization of pipeline opponents.
The conduct amounts to "a concerted effort by the state to remove Wet'suwet'en land defenders from their ancestral territory to allow pipeline construction to proceed," the nongovernmental organization says in its report.
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