UN experts back call to halt pipeline construction in North Dakota, citing rights abuses of protestors | WPN World People News

The United States is using excessive force against protestors in North Dakota who are trying to stop an oil pipeline project that runs through land sacred to indigenous peoples, according to a United Nations human rights expert.

Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of peacful assembly and of association Maina Kiai.

The North Dakota National Guard, law enforcement officials, and private security firms have used unjustified force in their response to opponents of the Dakota Access pipeline, said Maina Kiai, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

Some 400 people who were held in detention during demonstrations have suffered what Mr. Kiai called “inhuman and degrading conditions.” He is concerned over both the scale of arrests and the conditions in which American citizens are being held.

“Marking people with numbers and detaining them in overcrowded cages, on the bare concrete floor, without being provided with medical care, amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment,” he said.

Protestors have reported facing rubber bullets, teargas, mace, compression grenades, and bean-bag rounds while voicing their concerns over the environmental impact of the pipeline and throughout their attempts to protect burial grounds and other sites that are sacred to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

“Tensions have escalated in the past two weeks, with local security forces employing an increasingly militarized response to protests and forcibly moving encampments located near the construction site,” Mr. Kiai said in a news release issued by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Source: United Nations