Ten arrested as pipeline protest ends
UNITED STATES: Months after a protest of the Dakota Access oil pipeline swelled into a movement that drew thousands of people and national attention, most of the remaining demonstrators left the protest camp ahead of deadline yesterday, leaving a few dozen to face possible arrest.
Even before the 2pm (local time) evacuation deadline imposed last week by North Dakota’s governor, the main protest camp had already turned into a muddy pit, the ground soggy with melted snow.
Authorities said 10 people in the area were arrested yesterday.
The people remaining at the camp who leave voluntarily will be allowed to go, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum said.
But he said authorities plan to enter the camp today for a cleanup and people remaining will be considered trespassing, noting that anyone who interrupted the cleaning could be arrested.
Video footage showed flaming structures at the camp yesterday that protesters had apparently set on fire in the camp’s final hours.
There were reports the structures were set alight as part of the ceremony involved in leaving the camp.
Burgum said that during the fires, a 17-year-old woman was severely burned and a 7-year-old boy was also injured.
The evacuation deadline was the latest confrontation in a bitter fight over a crude oil pipeline, a standoff on a desolate prairie that drew movie stars, military veterans and investment bankers to an unlikely front line.
The Standing Rock Sioux tribe has argued that a stretch of the $3.8 billion pipeline threatens its water supply, crosses burial grounds and violates treaties between Native Americans and the federal government.
President Donald Trump has supported the project and ultimately cleared the way for it. He signed an order aimed at expediting the pipeline’s approval before his administration approved final permits needed to complete it.
A federal judge has left open the possibility of further court intervention, and the company behind the pipeline has said that oil could flow within the next 30 days.
At the main camp, though, the remaining pipeline protesters – who numbered about 200 earlier this month, down from the thousands who gathered late last year – were preparing to leave the property. About 150 of them marched out of the camp an hour before the deadline.