Blockade of CN rail line lifted

Last Updated Fri, 21 Apr 2006 22:32:43 EDT
CBC News: http://www.cbc.ca/news

[SISIS note: The following mainstream news article is provided for reference only, as an example of how mainstream media treats indigenous resistance to genocide. Mainstream media often presents biased and distorted information, lacking pertinent facts and/or context. Inclusion of this article on our site should not be considered an endorsement by SISIS.]

CN Rail won a court injunction on Friday ordering the removal of a group of Mohawks who stopped rail traffic between Montreal and Toronto for most of the day.

Mohawks from a reserve in eastern Ontario had stopped at least a dozen freight trains and disrupted Via Rail passenger service. The move was in support of natives who are staging a protest at a construction site in Caledonia, about 90 kilometres southwest of Toronto.

The Mohawk protesters from the Tyendinaga reserve about 20 kilometres east of Belleville, Ont., lit bonfires beside a CN track.

Late Friday night the protesters removed their blockade, confident they had made their point.

In court, CN argued that the rail line is an essential link in its transcontinental network. The line handles CN's freight and Via Rail passenger service in both directions between Toronto and Montreal, and Toronto and Ottawa.

Other sympathy demonstrations have sprung up, including in the Montreal area where aboriginals showed their support by putting Mohawk flags on the Mercier Bridge across the St. Lawrence River.

The bridge was temporarily closed Thursday morning when Mohawks from Kahnawake blocked traffic in both directions while the flags were being put up.

Meanwhile, the standoff continues between native protesters and police at the construction site, although tensions appear to have eased.

More than 200 protesters moved in Thursday, setting up barricades of burning tires, after Ontario Provincial Police staged a pre-dawn raid to remove native demonstrators from the disputed tract of land they had been occupying since late February.

Demonstrators first occupied the site on Feb. 28 to stop construction by Henco Industries on land they say was stolen from the Six Nations more than 200 years ago.

The province says aboriginals gave up the land in 1841 to make way for a new highway, an agreement a Six Nations spokesperson said was only meant to be a lease.