Amnesty International invoked international law Wednesday in urging the Obama administration to take immediate action to defend the civil rights of protesters opposing construction of the Dakota Access pipeline.
The group’s U.S. chapter, Amnesty International USA, sent a team of human rights observers to North Dakota in the last week to report on clashes between police and protesters led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. On Wednesday, the human rights group formally requested that the Department of Justice start an investigation based on its findings into the North Dakota police’s treatment of the Dakota Access pipeline demonstrations.
“The U.S. government is obligated under international law to respect, protec, and fulfill the human rights of indigenous people, including their rights to freedom of expression and assembly,” said the group’s executive director, Margaret Huang. “Public assemblies should not be considered as the ‘enemy.'”
Not only does Amnesty International believe the U.S. government should start an investigation immediately into the policing of the protests, but it is calling on the Justice Depatment’s Civil Rights Division to deploy observers “to ensure that the rights of people opposed to the pipeline are respected, protected and fulfilled.”
If the division finds civil rights violations by law enforcement, then “individual officers should be charged and prosecuted as warranted,” Huang said.
Amnesty International “observers expressed concern that disproportionate force was used by police,” said the group, one week after clashes between police and protesters landed one activist in the hospital with an injury that may require her arm to be amputated.
Amnesty officials said they tried to contact local authorities, which appeared unresponsive to their inquiries about the use of tear gas, concussion grenades and fire hoses in sub-freezing temperatures, leading them to believe “federal oversight is necessary.”
The group’s call follows a statement by Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., the incoming vice chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, who sent a letter Wednesday to President Obama asking him to step in.
“Protesters have a right to make their voices heard peacefully, and the Department of Justice should redouble its efforts to prevent civil rights abuses and prevent the situation from becoming tragic,” he said on the same day a group of 2,000 veterans said it would go to the protest site to peacefully intervene on the behalf of protesters facing an increasingly militarized police force.
Amnesty International also says its observers saw “what appeared to be unnecessary use of force against protesters in a shopping mall on Nov. 25,” the group said. “Although the protesters were complying with officers’ demands to leave the building, police forcefully arrested some individuals as they reached the doors.”
Eric Ferrero, an official with the human rights group, said, “the fact that people were in the process of exiting the mall when they were forcefully arrested raises serious questions that must be addressed.”
Amnesty International USA sent its observers during clashes between police and mostly African-American residents in Ferguson, Mo., last year, and during the Baltimore riots to monitor protests in the wake of police killings.
