Gidimt’en land defender Sleydo’ highlights RCMP/CIRG collusion with CGL in interview with Democracy Now!

On November 30, Gidimt’en land defender Sleydo’ was interviewed by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now!

Excerpts from that interview include Sleydo’ highlighting:

“The CIRG team of the police, the specialized group of RCMP to deal with specifically industry and Indigenous land defenders, surrounded our camp with tactical teams that they dropped in helis [helicopters].

They bulldozed the entire camp and CGL was present at the raid.

[The CIRG] is basically this rogue group of police that work for private industry. They are directed by private industry. The government has claimed no oversight or direction towards this particular group of police that [have raided our territory three times].”

They don’t have the same accountability as other police do and they take direction and were using CGL vehicles for the arrests, for the raid. They were staying at the man camps with CGL. They had put up an exclusion zone that they were letting only CGL through and blocking all Wet’suwet’en, even our house chiefs, from the territory, during the raids.”

The full interview with Sleydo’ can be seen here.

When Sleydo’ was released on November 23 from the Prince George Regional Correctional Centre she also stated: “CIRG and the RCMP need to be abolished.”

The video of her statement outside that jail can be seen here.

We were also told by Gitxsan land defenders in New Hazelton that the RCMP arrived in CGL-marked buses to break-up their rail blockade on November 19 that had been set up in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en land defenders.

For an overview of what we know about the CIRG, please see What do we know about the RCMP’s resource extraction protection unit?

For updates, please see Gidimt’en Checkpoint on Twitter.