Amnesty International Canada says it will have representatives in a Smithers, B.C., courtroom this week to witness sentencing hearings for three people convicted for blocking work on the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

“We don’t believe that they should be on trial in the first place,” said Mary Kapron, a researcher at Amnesty International.

Sleydo, also known as Molly Wickham, a wing chief of the Gidimt’en Clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation, Shaylynn Sampson, a Gitxsan woman with Wet’suwet’en family ties and Corey Jocko, who is Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) from Akwesasne, were found guilty of criminal contempt in January 2024.

They were arrested in November 2021 at a blockade on Wet’suwet’en traditional territory for breaking a 2019 injunction against people blocking work on the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

Coastal GasLink was building the 670-kilometre pipeline to carry natural gas across northern British Columbia to a terminal in Kitimat, B.C., for export to Asia. The company signed benefit agreements with 20 elected band councils along the project’s route in 2018, but several Wet’suwet’en hereditary leaders refused to allow the pipeline to cross their territory.

Kapron said the injunction was too broad and not in line with international human rights law, as it restricted the Indigenous rights of the accused.

“We consider that the three defenders who are on trial were undertaking peaceful actions to protect Wet’suwet’en territory against pipeline construction,” said Kapron.

“They weren’t doing anything violent, they weren’t doing anything dangerous. And so for all these reasons, Amnesty believes that the injunction itself violates international law. Any sort of criminal prosecution and then any sort of criminal sentence… we believe, also violates international law.”