The Premier of Canada’s French-speaking province of Quebec has claimed that anti-pipeline blockaders in Kahnawake are armed with AK-47 rifles, as their protests continue to cripple the Canadian rail system.
Premier Francois Legault, leader of the populist-conservative Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), told Canadian media that members of the Mohawk First Nation were armed with Kalashnikov rifles and that he has limited police ability to remove rail blockades, broadcaster CTV reports.
Legault said he was releasing the information to make it clear to the general public why the Quebec Provincial Police (QPP) had been reluctant to enforce a court injunction to dismantle the rail blockade in Kahnawake.
The Kahnawake longhouse, meanwhile, slammed the Premier’s comments, claiming that those attending the blockade were not armed with rifles and that the accusations were “absolutely and totally false.”
Kahnawake is the home of the Mohawk Warrior Society, also known as the Rotisken’rakéhte, which looks to assert First Nation sovereignty in lands the group deems as traditionally theirs.
The group is most famous for taking part in the 1990 Oka crisis, a 78-day standoff in which armed Warriors engaged in a firefight with Quebec police and fatally shot officer Marcel Lemay before the Canadian Federal government sent in the armed forces to end the standoff.
The Canadian Department of National Defence (DND) later classified the group a violent insurgent group in 2006 before removing the group from the list in 2007 following aboriginal and media backlash when the classification became public.
Wednesday also saw an attempt at derailing a train near the city of Belleville in Ontario along with an attempt to light the train on fire. Both incidents were caught on video and uploaded to social media.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has been slammed by many for his inaction during the ongoing rail blockades, commented on the Wednesday incident saying, “It is extremely concerning to see people endangering their own lives and the lives of others by trying to interfere with the trains.”
Transport Minister Marc Garneau, who confirmed prior acts of sabotage that far-left Antifa activists had previously taken credit for, also slammed the actions of the blockaders.
“This was an extremely reckless act, I saw the video this morning, and something that not only put in danger the life of the people who were actually lighting this fire under a moving train, but also could have been very dangerous for many other people, because what if this train was carrying dangerous materials? It could have ignited, depending on the size of the fire,” he said.
The rail blockades, which led to delays across the Toronto area’s Go Train system Tuesday, have crippled parts of the Canadian rail system and are said to be in support of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation.
Hereditary Chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en, who are located in British Columbia, have rejected the $6.6 billion Coastal Gaslink natural gas pipeline project, while the elected council has approved of it along with the elected councils of 20 other First Nations peoples.