Abolish the C-IRG! Demand Dozens of Land Defenders

About 50 activists gathered in Victoria, in front of the office of Mike Farnworth, Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General, to deliver a petition demanding the abolition of the RCMP’s Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG), a euphemistically-named enforcer branch for various industries committing environmental and human rights violations on indigenous lands.

The C-IRG (commonly pronounced ‘kirg’) is a militarised police group, said to dress like masked insurgents and to use similar methods in terrorising peaceful protesters desperate to have their voices heard. It has made headlines in particular for its heavy-handed response to the Fairy Creek protests, resulting in multiple legal challenges, such as a class-action lawsuit by the protesters and another lawsuit by the Narwhal for the arrest of its journalists.

Among speakers was Molly Murphy, an outspoken land defender who was brutally arrested with many at Fairy Creek, in an experience she described as terrifying. The officers were purposefully masked and dressed in black to make them unidentifiable so they could get away with using the worst tactics and suppress evidence without being held accountable. As already stated, even the media weren’t spared.

Of course attempts at legal recourse via the civilian watchdog miserably failed, by design, as police watchdogs exist for the sole purpose of dangling the illusion of recourse in front of victims while shielding persecutors from prosecution. In this particular case, obtaining any relevant information proved impossible. Molly herself bemoaned that she couldn’t even challenge her arrest because she hadn’t been charged with a crime and camera footage of the events was denied to her.

So that’s basically why these protesters exercised the last recourse available to them: hold a grill on the sidewalk right in front of the Ministry’s office, reaching out to our elected officials so they put a stop to the oppression of remote communities by rogue racist police thugs at taxpayer’s expense. Well, that would be second-last; the ultimate recourse is of course to double down on blockades, preferably with live-streamed footage of the atrocities this time.