New York-based Human Rights Watch, known for bringing worldwide attention to victims of torture and abuse in places like Syria and Burma, says the eyes of the world should also be on northern B.C.
Two researchers — one from Canada and one from the U.S. — spent more than a month last summer in the province’s north, visiting 10 communities between Prince George to Prince Rupert and hearing accounts from aboriginal women of alleged mistreatment at the hands of police.
First Nations communities they visited are all linked to B.C.'s so-called "Highway of Tears," where 18 women have disappeared over the past several decades.
Meghan Rhoad, a U.S. researcher with Human Rights Watch, told reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday she's hopeful the RCMP will take the recommendations seriously, adding the group's 89-page report could be turning point.
"We met with the RCMP yesterday, and I am encouraged by the level of seriousness in how they are reviewing this report," Rhoad told reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday.
The researchers interviewed 50 aboriginal women and girls, plus family members and service providers.
They heard stories of police pepper-spraying and using Tasers on young aboriginal girls, and of women being strip-searched by male officers, Rhoad said.
“It was very moving to sit across from these women and girls and hear them tell their stories,” she told CBC News.
However, she told reporters that over a five-week period of interviews, researchers found levels of fear among aboriginal women with negative stories about police "comparable to post-conflict situations, like post-war Iraq."
"[The report] is not about painting all members of the RCMP as abusers," Rhoad said. "We know that the great majority of members serve honorably, devoting their lives to the protection of their communities.
"It is about the fact that those good officers deserve better than to see those tarnishing their reputation not be held accountable."
Woman claims life threatened
The report suggests some of the accounts of harm done to women and girls appear to be the result of poor policing tactics, over aggressive policing and insensitivity to victims.
Human Rights watch documented eight incidents of police physically assaulting or using "questionable" force against girls under 18.
The report also contains troubling and graphic allegations of physical and sexual abuse, including from a woman, identified as homeless, who describes how police took her outside of town and raped her.
Rhoad said the woman told her the officers then, "threatened that if I told anybody they would take me out to the mountains and kill me and make it look like an accident."
'Deeply fractured relationship' with police
Human Rights Watch said none of the complainants are named in the report because they feared retribution. The alleged perpetrators also are not named.
Despite the RCMP's repeated requests, the group did not release the allegations to the Mounties until this week, CBC News has learned.
The RCMP says it wants to get to the bottom of the abuse allegations, but Human Rights Watch isn't helping them investigate.
RCMP Chief Supt. Janice Armstrong says the force takes the allegations "very seriously." She says none of the complainants have come forward since the organization approached the Mounties about the allegations five months ago, so police can't investigate further.
"In a written response to a series of questions posed by Human Rights Watch in fall 2012, the RCMP emphasized the seriousness of allegations of police misconduct and that these allegations must be brought forward for proper investigation," Armstrong said in a statement released Wednesday.
The disturbing report does bear some important disclaimers.
"Human Rights Watch does not contend that this information proves a pattern of routine systemic abuse," it says. "But when such incidents take place in the context of an already deeply fractured relationship with the police, they have a particularly harmful, negative impact."
The report also notes that, "the testimonies that Human Rights Watch gathered do not establish the prevalence of abuse."
The organization said it will suggest the RCMP expand cross-cultural training for its officers and eliminate strip-searches by officers not of the same gender.
Original Article
Source: CBC
Author: cbc
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