Common Dreams – by Lauren McCauley
The increasingly violent attacks by North Dakota police and private security forces against peaceful, Indigenous water protectors have caught the nation’s attention as well as that of the United Nations, an arm of which has begun an investigation into the protesters’ claims of human rights abuses, including “excessive force, unlawful arrests, and mistreatment in jail,” the Guardian reported late Monday.
Observers have begun collecting testimonies from those protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline and, on Monday, Grand Chief Edward John, a Native American member of the U.N. permanent forum on Indigenous issues, met with police officials in Mandan, North Dakota and visited the cages where some of the 141 arrested protesters were held after last week’s military-style police raid.
Those detained at the Morton County Correctional Center said that while they were held in the 10-by-14-foot cages they were forced to wait for basic necessities, such as “access to bathrooms, food, water, and medical attention,” the Guardian reported.
“We embarked upon a peaceful and prayerful campaign,” Standing Rock Sioux member Phyllis Young told the U.N. representatives. “They were placed in cages. They had numbers written on their arms very much like concentration camps.” Young said that the police’s treatment of native people was “not only conditions of colonialism, but conditions of war.”
“The government is allowing the police force to be used as a military force to protect an oil company,” added protester Kandi Mossett, a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara nation.
The Morton County Sheriff’s office has also been accused of tracking the activists through a feature on Facebook, a claim which spurred more than one million people worldwide to “check in” to the Standing Rock Sioux reservation on Monday in an attempt to “overwhelm and confuse” law enforcement and express solidarity with the demonstrators.
The fact that a campaign of “intimidation and repression” is being waged on behalf of a private company is not to be overlooked, according to a coalition of environmental groups, which late last week sent a letter (pdf) to the owners of the $3.7 billion tar sands pipeline, reminding them of their “complicity” in the ongoing human rights abuses.
“As joint owners of the Dakota Access Pipeline, you have a corporate duty under international law and the laws of the United States to respect human rights and to avoid complicity in further human rights abuses. It is imperative that you take action to stop the attacks on peaceful occupiers immediately,” states the letter, which is addressed to officials with Energy Transfer Partners, Phillips 66, Enbridge Energy Partners, and Wells Fargo bank.
The violent raid and mass arrest last week “has created a situation of urgency in which the companies must take immediate responsibility for the human rights impacts of their actions, including the companies’ complicity in the actions of others,” the letter continues:
As a matter of international law, your companies have an affirmative responsibility to protect human rights, including the responsibility to: avoid causing or contributing to adverse human rights impacts to peaceful protestors through your companies’ own activities; and to seek to prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts that are directly linked to your companies’ operations. These responsibilities also apply to banks and other institutions that provide financing for a project that will cause such adverse human rights impacts.
“We emphasize and caution that the active involvement by persons acting under color of governmental authority, including state or local law enforcement, does not absolve your companies of these duties,” it further states.
The signatories, who are leaders with the Center for International Environmental Law, Honor the Earth, Bold Alliance, Climate Justice Programme, EarthRights International, Oil Change International, and Greenpeace USA, note that they “have spent decades advocating and litigating on behalf of Indigenous communities outside the United States,” whose rights are too often “violated by proponents of extractive industries around the world…And we are alarmed that these all-too-familiar patterns are playing out in the United States at Standing Rock.”
Similarly, Roberto Borrero, a Taino tribe member and representative of the International Indian Treaty Council, who is assisting the U.N. in collecting the testimonies, told theGuardian, “When you look at what the international standards are for the treatment of people, and you are in a place like the United States, it’s really astounding to hear some of this testimony.”
International human rights watchdog Amnesty International has also sent a delegation of human rights observers to monitor the police response to the ongoing protests. Meanwhile, the water protectors have vowed to maintain their vigil throughout the winter and continue their resistance as the pipeline construction encroaches upon their sacred land and water.
“We embarked upon a peaceful and prayerful campaign,” Standing Rock Sioux member Phyllis Young told the U.N. representatives.”
Failure to recognize the depth of depravity in one’s enemies is simply naive. You need to spend more time on the internet finding out what’s REALLY going on. Come to think of it, WHOSE idea was it to begin with? I seem to recall something about there being more fed informants at the Malheur Refuge ‘standoff’ (joke), than ‘protesters’.
“Young said that the police’s treatment of native people was “not only conditions of colonialism, but conditions of war.”
HELLOOOOOOOO…
Oh here we go….the United Nations is going to step in and “fix” everything.
10 by fourteen foot cages?
Holy moly. You got the penthouse treatment as far as prison cells go.
Pssssst. You can pull apart chain link fence with a little knowledge and effort. The weak part is the posts. they’re hollow.
The funny part is where they appeal to their slave masters about the conditions of their slavery.
Makes me laugh every time.
Who gives a shit what the UN does? The F**Kers are as illegal of a foreign entity as BLM. GET THEM THE F**K OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!! We don’t want them and we sure as HELL don’t need them. We can fix our own shit, so don’t be thinking your “PROBLEM-REACTION-SOLUTION” scenario is going to make us want to crawl to you like Kissinger hopes. All you Blue hats and your white cars are gonna be hung or shot once this shit gets started anyways. I’m sure the UN cars that we saw over the summer being trailer-ed around the country are all there waiting for them to drive. If you see one, blow their tires.
Glad to see that you recognize the problem. They are quoting “International Law”.. we are NOT under the NWO.
I see this event as a way for the elite to have the UN get its feet wet in our country with the people. Now that the UN has inserted its foot in a small part of our business without any harassment or problems from the people, it will then continue to immerse itself even more in future protests and false flag events. How Communist of them. We have just let them in and if you think they are going to go away afterwards, then you’re gonna need to have your head examined.
Kick the SOBs out while they’re here!
Observing or not, they are most certainly NOT wanted nor invited by Americans.
GET THE F**K OUTTA HERE!!!
Regardless of what we think of the UN, the very fact that international observers are condemning “our” pigs and “our” government for human rights abuses should give pause to many Americans. It’s yet another indication that our country has been turned into a banana republic.
Good post. I hate the UN with a passion, but when a corrupt government leaves you with no where to turn for justice, where do you go? No one can tell me that the FED’s haven’t been consulted on this protest. Given the amount of military equipment being used against the protestors, the FED’s are in this, up to their teeth. How does a county, in North Dakota, afford to hire contract security personnel (mercenaries)? Anyone believing that, has too much air pressure in their brain housing group. In time, perhaps at trial, we will learn that the FBI was not only involved, but was instrumental in providing tactical instructions, equipment and financing. The FBI are all students of the Rahm Emanuel School of Policy: “Never let a good crises go to waste “.