UPDATE - Canadian Police Force Agrees To Move From Indigenous Lands - Public Safety Minister

TORONTO (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st February, 2020) The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in the province of British Columbia have agreed to relocate from indigenous lands to a nearby town, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair told reporters.

The move comes as the Trudeau government attempts to ease tensions amid two weeks of protests and blockades by indigenous and environmental activists in response to the eviction of activists protesting a natural gas pipeline on ancestral lands of the Wet'suwet'en people.

"The RCMP - I think in a very appropriate pursuit of less confrontation and in the goal of peacekeeping - have agreed to continue to serve the area but by locating their people in a nearby town, which is entirely their decision but I think the right one," Blair said on Thursday.

According to Canada's CBC news, RCMP will relocate on the condition that the road to the construction site at the center of the controversy remains accessible.

Molly Wickham, spokesperson of the Gidimt'en Clan of the Wet'suwet'en Nation, said in a statement that the RCMP has not vacated Wet'suwet'en territory, nor has there been dialogue with hereditary chiefs and traditional leaders. She said the agency's offer seems like a media strategy.

The Canadian government has expressed the desire to meet with indigenous leaders, however, hereditary chiefs have not yet made themselves available, according to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The hereditary chiefs - a title passed down from generation to generation - of the Wet'suwet'en First Nation have indicated that removal of law enforcement personnel from their lands is one of the conditions for a meeting with Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller.

The protests have crippled Canada's rail network, with the Canadian National Railway and the country's national passenger rail company, VIA Rail, collectively cancelling hundreds of trains and laying off almost 1,500 people.

The protests began on February 6 in response to an RCMP operation to enforce a court order against those interfering with the Coastal GasLink (CGL) pipeline project.

Solidarity protests began in the Vancouver metropolitan area, but following a wave of arrests in British Columbia that saw more than 80 protesters detained at the campsite and their sympathizers in the Vancouver area, the protest spread to other parts of Canada, including Ontario, where a group of indigenous protesters shut down Canada's busiest railway corridor between Toronto and Montreal.