UN Special Rapporteur Mary Lawlor highlights Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan land defenders prior to March 6 report to Human Rights Council

Published by Brent Patterson on February 22, 2025February 22, 2025

Mary Lawlor, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, has posted on Instagram:

“On 6 March I’ll present my latest report to the @humanrightscouncil, on human rights defenders in isolated, remote & rural contexts. In the lead up, I am sharing stories illustrating how the risks & challenges these defenders face are often linked to their location.”

Lawlor has also posted this on X, Bluesky and Facebook.

UN Web TV

We will be following the presentation by Lawlor on Thursday March 6 on UN Web TV.

“Land defenders labelled criminals”

The sketches of the defenders featured in the image shared by Lawlor are Indigenous land defenders Sleydo’ (Wet’suwet’en, Gidimt’en Clan), Kolin Sutherland-Wilson (Gitxsan) and Freda Huson (Wet’suwet’en, Unist’ot’en Clan).

A focal point of their resistance to the Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline being built without consent is near the town of Houston, British Columbia, situated about 1,100 kilometres north of the city of Vancouver.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG) has launched three highly-militarized raids on Wet’suwet’en territory and arrested more than 74 land defenders, legal observers and members of the media.

Huson was arrested during the RCMP C-IRG raid on February 10, 2020.

Sleydo’ was arrested at gunpoint by the RCMP C-IRG on November 19, 2021.

And Sutherland-Wilson was arrested on October 27, 2022, after Likhts’amisyu Hereditary Chief Dsta’hyl decommissioned ten pieces of heavy construction equipment being used to build the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

PBI accompanies

On November 19-22, 2021, Brent Patterson of PBI-Canada visited Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan territories in response to this video appeal from Sleydo’ to “come to the yintah now” and to “amplify the message”. We met Huson at the Unist’ot’en Healing Centre and Sutherland-Wilson overlooking CN Rail tracks where a solidarity blockade with the Wet’suwet’en had taken place at the time of the RCMP C-IRG raid.

On September 28, 2022, Kim-Mai Vu of PBI-Switzerland presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva during the Interactive Dialogue with the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

She stated: “The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has called on Canada to stop construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline on Wet’suwet’en territory. Canada ratified this International Convention in 1970 and said in 2016 that it supported the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, however, the construction of this gas pipeline without consent continues as does the criminalization of land defenders.”

On June 26, 2024, PBI-Canada met with Mary Lawlor and Michael Phoenix, her Head of Research and Campaigns, in Ottawa. We appreciate her work highlighting issues about Indigenous land defenders in Canada as well as the impact of Canadian extractive companies in Latin America.

Further reading: RCMP C-IRG snipers repeatedly deployed against Wet’suwet’en land defenders and water protectors (PBI-Canada, February 20, 2025).