CREDIT: OSSIE MICHELIN, AP
Peaceful protests by First
Nations members over a planned shale gas project in Rexton, New Brunswick
exploded into violence and led to over 40 arrests on Thursday after Royal
Canadian Mounted Police tried to break up a roadblock.
All summer, members of the
Elsipogtog and Mi’kmaq First Nations tribes have been protesting plans by oil
company SWN Resources Canada to perform seismic testing of land the tribe
considers its traditional hunting ground. This testing could lead to a shale fracking
operation in the area, and many are concerned about what that would mean for
drinking water.
“We don’t want shale gas
here,” former chief Susan Levi-Peters told the Globe and Mail. “We have been asking for consultations for
three years now and nothing has happened. Instead they just put our people in
jail.”
Their request? A meeting
with the provincial government and SWN Resources over the project.
On Thursday morning, around 100 officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrived near a SWN
Resources storage facility to enforce an injunction to break up the protest.
The company obtained the injunction earlier this month.
Several hundred protesters
refused, and then chaos broke out.
Protesters say that police
arrived with guns drawn, used pepper spray and fire hoses on elders, and began arresting people. Police say
that protesters held firearms, uttered threats, and used Molotov cocktails.
Tear gas and rubber bullets clouded the air. One gunshot rang the air, not
fired by Canadian Police. At the end of the conflict, 40 people were arrested
and 5 police cars were burned. No major injuries were reported.
Many protesters were
shocked at the militaristic response to a peaceful protest, while others
thought that the escalated response of protesters — and burning police cars —
obviated the benefit of what had been a peaceful protest.
Could a meeting between
government, First Nations, and the oil company have prevented such escalation
over the summer? Protester Al McLaughlin told CBCin
September: “We’ve tried to speak to politicians, we’ve petitioned, we’ve
marched on the legislature, we’ve done everything that we should be doing and
Alward and his government just keep saying they have a mandate. I don’t know
who he got it from, it sure wasn’t the people of New Brunswick.”
On Thursday, people in
Ottawa, Halifax, Vancouver, and other citiesdemonstrated in
support of the New Brunswick protests by closing highways and blocking traffic.
On Friday, New Brunswick
Premier David Alward was to meet with First Nations members to discuss what
happened on Thursday.
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