A BC human rights inquiry also found that the police board ‘abdicated its legal responsibility’ when investigating complaints.

An inquiry by B.C.’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner has found that news media faced numerous problems accessing the scene of a decampment operation on April 5 and 6 in 2023, despite the Vancouver Police Department’s continued claim that there were no restrictions.

The actions police took to bar media from entering a two-block stretch of East Hastings Street during the forced removal of numerous tents set up by homeless people was “not in accordance with human rights standards,” the inquiry’s final report found. That in turn affected the rights of the vulnerable unhoused people living in the encampment, the report found.

“Human rights advocates and the press must be permitted to work without unreasonable interference, to gather and distribute information about incidents of forced eviction in order to protect the rights of unhoused people,” Kasari Govender, B.C.’s current human rights commissioner, said during a Wednesday press conference.

“As noted by one resident after his belongings were destroyed during an encampment eviction in Prince George, he said: ‘I want the court in this city to know we are people and we exist. We just want to survive and be treated like human beings.’”