Police have set up exclusion zones for protesters and media since enforcing a Supreme Court injunction on behalf of Teal-Jones Group on May 17. RCMP then changed strategies and said they would “escort” media into certain areas.
However, there were reports that two journalists, a documentary filmmaker and Indigenous media representative, were arrested. The CAJ said there have been several cases where media has not been allowed to witness arrests because the RCMP are using broad exclusion zones and, in some cases, refusing entry to media.
“Over the past week, we’ve repeatedly seen the RCMP shift the goalposts on how it plans to allow journalists access in order to cover this important public interest story,” said Brent Jolly, CAJ president.
Police removed “Pony,” a tree-sitter with the Fairy Creek blockades, from her post 100 feet above the ground earlier this week. Photo by Will O Connel
“Pony,” a tree-sitter, dangled on a seven-by-four platform suspended in the canopy of two ancient Douglas fir trees, 100 feet from the ground, as 14 RCMP officers surrounded her below. A helicopter flew overhead. Loggers began to fell trees nearby, less than two trees away from tree-sitters.
It was the second day of the RCMP’s attempt to dismantle Pony’s tree platform, located in a remote area where forest protectors with the Fairy Creek movement have been protesting the logging of some of Vancouver Island’s last remaining old-growth forest. The police tactics of removal were escalating. “They did threaten tear gas and rubber bullets. They asked the officer on my tree sit to put on his tear gas goggles. The whole time during the arrest process I had a large gun pointed at me,” Pony told me over the phone after she
127 People Arrested at Protest Camps near Fairy Creek and Caycuse
SHARE ON: Photograph courtesy of Fairy Creek Blockade Facebook page.
The RCMP says 127 arrests have now been made at logging road blockades on Vancouver Island in the Fairy Creek area near Port Renfrew and Caycuse Valley south of Cowichan Lake.
The RCMP says that several of the people taken into custody had previously been arrested by police at the blockade camps.
A large number of the arrests took place on Tuesday when the RCMP says a group of people had gathered at a checkpoint on the McClure Forest Service Road and blocked traffic.
Canada’s National Observer, along with several other news organizations, is planning to file a legal application requesting the RCMP allow journalists fair access to cover the Fairy Creek blockades happening on Vancouver Island.