Demonising dissent - New Zealand-style

From Global Peace and Justice Auckland's newsletter:
"It’s a grim time for democracy and civil rights in New Zealand with 17 'terrorism suspects' arrested in para-military raids across the country this month. For many people the situation is confusing at best but for those who know the people arrested it is astonishing. How could the police believe a group of Maori sovereignty activists, peace campaigners and environmentalists could pose a credible terrorist threat to New Zealand?
The police have raised the spectre of terrorism despite, after 15 months of intensive surveillance, no decision yet being made as to whether terrorism charges will be laid. In the meantime the damage is being done. The public are being softened up to accept that we have terrorism in New Zealand. Under the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002 a terrorist is defined as someone who, for political reasons, causes '…serious disruption to an infrastructure facility, if likely to endanger human life…' This broad definition would include many of the protests against the 1981 Springbok tour. It threatens to demonise legitimate political dissent. Even people committed to non-violence with no intention to harm anyone or damage property can qualify as terrorists.
"Meanwhile the latest Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill is being pushed through Parliament. Under this law New Zealand would automatically adopt the UN (effectively the US) list of terrorists and terrorist organisations. A law like this in the 1980s would have made it illegal to provide support for the African National Congress in the fight against apartheid or for campaigns to have Nelson Mandela released from jail. Today groups such as Hamas, despite being democratically elected to government in occupied Palestine, would be a designated terrorist group (as it is in Australia).
"A Kiwi added to the list by another country (as a result of police action last week for example) would have great difficulty being removed from the list. Sweden and the Canada have faced huge difficulties with their citizens being designated in this way through the UN process. The new legislation also sidelines our courts in favour of the Prime Minister designating and then reviewing terrorist classifications. Why should the PM be judge and jury? Under this proposal someone like Ahmed Zaoui wouldn’t have had a chance. Prime Ministers are susceptible to international pressure. It is only a phone call away. At least with the courts there is the semblance of independent scrutiny.
"The government says the police, SIS and lawmakers are all working hand in hand to keep New Zealand safe. The truth is that our lawmakers are blindly putting in place savage attacks on civil rights while the police and SIS are eager to test their new powers and are excited at the prospect of joining the war on terror.
"As it is New Zealand’s anti-terror legislation is set up to demonise dissent and legitimate political protest while removing civil rights safeguards. Dissent provides the oxygen on which a democracy depends. We throttle it at our peril."

• No terror charges
• Immediate bail for all arrestees (innocent until proven guilty
• Withdraw the Terrorism Suppression Act and its amendments
  
  Check out the website http://www.civilrightsdefence.org.nz/

Moana Jackson - extract from his "primer on terrorism allegations":
"Maori see symmetries between the Terrorism Suppression Act and the 1863 Suppression of Rebellion Act. The targeting of mainly Maori as 'terrorists' in fact mirrors the earlier legislative labelling of those Iwi [that] resisted the land confiscations as 'rebels'. Tuhoe see particular parallels with the fatal police raid on Maungapohatu in 1916. The unthinking or deliberately provocative setting up of the latest police roadblock on the confiscation line simply add to the grievance and the sense of colonising deja vu."

Primer on terrorism allegations

GLOBAL DAY OF ACTION OCTOBER 27:
Saturday 27 October is an international day of action to defend civil liberties and oppose the use of terror laws. Stand up for all our rights. What is happening where.
Auckland: Demonstration Saturday Oct 27th at 12 noon meeting in Aotea Square.
Auckland marches against 'terror suppression' raid - Joe Barratt at Scoop

Previous posting - Hundreds protest over NZ state repression

Hundreds protest over NZ state repression

More than 200 people have protested in downtown Auckland on Saturday over this week's controversial dawn raids in New Zealand and the arrest of some 17 activists. The protesters condemned the police actions and ridiculed the country's proposed new terror laws. Scoop's Joe Barratt reported: "Showing a unified front, the protest was attended by a wide range of activist groups, and also included family and friends of the accused. But for many there is also the larger fear of what the arrests represent, and of what could happen if the legislation amending the Terrorism Suppression Act of 2002 currently before Parliament is passed."
Leading Tuhoe activist and campaigner Tame Iti (right) was among the 17 arrested, as police swept Maori sovereignty, peace and environmental activist groups. Tuhoe people accused the police of terrorising an entire community with heavily armed raids and by boarding school buses. The Tuhoe tribe never signed the Treaty of Waitangi and has a long history of resistance for their tangata whenua rights against colonial and state rule. The police raids follow international pressures for New Zealand to adhere to the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. New Zealand was one of four countries that voted against the UN Declaration, along with the US, Canada and Australia. Mainstream media have been accused of being one-sided.
Former Listener editor Finlay Macdonald, writing in his weekly Sunday Star-Times column "Law of the jungle" , said: "Once again, the interests of national security trump those of open justice. Public scepticism quite reasonably grows. Last week's raids and arrests were conducted under both normal criminal law as well as the Terrorism Suppression Act, although no actual charges have been laid under the latter. The question has to be what distinguishes these alleged offences from any ordinary criminal or conspiracy case? As ever with issues such as these, we are implicitly asked to take the authorities on trust. Unfortunately, recent experience only encourages cynicism."

A Defend Civil Rights website has been established.
Auckland protest photo by Joe Barratt.

• Scoop report and pictures - Hundreds march for 'terror' accused
• Police fail to account for all 17 accused
• This average Kiwi bloke has had enough - Aziz Choudry
• Maori protest anti-terror raids
• Tame Iti among 17 arrests - Censored and under-reported news
• Video: Tuhoe - history of resistance
• Rua - Tuhoe prophet
• Civil Rights Defence resource website

Solomons riot 'orchestrated plan' for regime change

"Certain politicians" planning regime change in the Solomon Islands were among those responsible for the April 2006 rioting which destroyed much of Honiara's Chinatown area and forced hundreds of Chinese to flee, according to the commission of inquiry.
The commission, chaired by former Papua New Guinea National Court judge Brian Brunton, released an interim report but did not name the individuals or political groups involved.
Radio NZ International reported the commission as saying a number of leading politicians, political groups and organisations were involved in executing a preconceived plan for a regime change following Snyder Rini’s election as prime minister.
The commission has also found that the Solomons government could be liable for damages of US$20 million for the loss of businesses destroyed during the riots. The report's executive summary says:
There is evidence that the 18th April 2006 civil unrest in Honiara was not spontaneous as was originally claimed but rather the event has the hallmark of having been orchestrated and planned in a broader sense of that word. There is now some evidence connecting the identity of a number of leading politicians, political groups and organisations who had in one way or another contributed to the execution of the planning for a regime change, should the previous government or elements of it return to power. The commission’s investigation is not at this stage sufficiently convinced it is in a position in which it is proper to name those individuals, political groups and organisations that were responsible for the planning.
In an earlier interim report in July, the inquiry found there had been failures by Australian police commanders of RAMSI leading up to the riots which also left dozens of Australians police injured.

• Plan behind riot
• Commission report 'unfair'
• Commission report executive summary
• The intelligence failure behind Honiara's riots - by Yasmine Ryan
• Mission and Justice in the Solomon Islands
  
  

When racism and fascism converge

Mohamed Haneef has become the cause celebre for many who have warned about the consequences of racist and open-book anti-terrorism legislation on the erosion of civil liberties for us all. Creeping fascism in Oz. But many sections of the media are also appalling. The New Zealand Herald's front page story at the weekend headlined " 'Terror' doctor goes free" is a case in point - after the trumped up "terror" case had already collapsed. Six quick questions from the outraged on the Haneef campaign page at TwoCircles:

1. Is it a crime to buy and travel on one-way air tickets?
2. Are all relatives of a terrorist considered terrorists?
3. Dr. Haneef's SIM card was not involved in any terror activity.
4. Why was his wife's visa to Australia canceled?
5. When Dr. Haneef's visa was cancelled, why was he not deported?
6. Why was Dr. Asif Ali, friend of Dr. Haneef, harassed and why is he not allowed to say what happened to him when he was under detention?

• Nick Bryant's piece on the Keystone cops - why the case disintegrated.
• Haneef's win new blow for Howard government - court quashes cancellation of visa

Death of our civil rights

Anybody who saw the UK film Death of a President in the Auckland International Film Festival this week wouldn't have been surprised by the harrowing consequences of the so-called "war on terror" on civil rights and our fundamental freedoms as we lurch closer to the totalitarian systems we are supposedly being defended against. Gabriel Range's restrospective docudrama (based on the fictitious assassination of George W. Bush in Chicago in October 2007) is a brilliant - and controversial - portayal of the abyss we have been plunged into. Our fundamental concept of innocent until proven guilty is suspended when it comes to Muslim suspects. In that context and in the light of the Kafkaesque detention of Mohamed Haneef in Oz, note this ABC news item yesterday - and now Dr Haneef, as reported in the NZ Herald, has been freed with no case to answer! And the Oz authorities get away with the outrageous arrest without so much as an apology:
ListMail: ABC News
Saturday July 21, 2007
(For more news visit ABC News Online at http://www.abc.net.au/news)

*Haneef predicament 'every Muslim's fear'*
A Muslim civil rights advocate says the handling of the case of the
Gold Coast doctor Mohamed Haneef has confirmed the Muslim community's
worst fears.
Haneef is facing charges of recklessly providing support to a terrorist
organisation involved in the recent UK attempted car bombings.
In Brisbane last Saturday, the court was told that Haneef's SIM card
was found in the car that was driven into Glasgow airport.
But the ABC has been told by sources in the UK and Australia that the
SIM card was first seized by police eight hours later, when his cousin
Sabeel Ahmed was arrested in Liverpool.
Dr Waleed Kadous from the Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy
Network says the fears felt by Muslims date back to the introduction of
the counter-terrorism legislation last year.
Dr Kadous says the Haneef case has left many thinking "there but for
the grace of God go I".
"[It was] every Muslim's fear that this could happen to him," he said.
"They can imagine being in the same situation as Haneef was in, that
they left a SIM card with a relative before leaving country and then
something happens a year later.
"They can imagine borrowing money from someone and paying the loan
back, these are not unusual things."
Greg Ansley in the NZ Herald wrote about the red faces over the collapse of "evidence" against Haneef.

Police and unis violate campus civil liberties

Media academics, journos and students are up in arms over blatant violation of civil liberties at at least two Sydney universities - Uni of Sydney and UTS, as reported in the SMH "Uni lets police see personal records". UTS, for example, has given police access to student and staff information for two years without the subjects knowing anything about it. Since 2005, information has been handed over 22 times to the federal and NSW police, and the Australian Tax Office. One of the critics, Wendy Bacon, has protested in a message to staff:
Dear Colleagues,
It is ironic that when I was a student, universities prided themselves on being places where police intrusions would be resisted. In these days of creeping authoritarianism and securitisation, this is clearly no longer the case.
The reports that a range of state authorised investigation bodies might be given access to information on request will alarm many academics and students.
This issue needs to be discussed at the Faculty level ... However, this issue is of particular relevance to all those linked with forms of professional practice that involve confidential relationships. I will take Journalism as an example but lawyers,nurses, doctors, social workers and others will have similar concerns.
Journalists have a ethical obligation not to reveal confidential sources.
Journalists in the workplace rely on their employers to resist attempts to seek confidential information. Prudence of course means that Journalists use coded names, hide documents and are careful in all communications. Even if an interview is on the record for the purposes of publication however, a journalist does not usually or willingly allow that to be used for purposes of prosecution. We are journalists not arms of the state.
I would argue that the university should actively protect the independence of staff and students. In the meantime, we should consider all the practical ramifications of this situation. We already advise our students against recording the names of confidential sources and we will now reinforce that they should take extreme care with communications they conduct using UTS email and with the storage of digital and other material.
One of the dangers is that practices can become normalised. For example, I believe it is likely that part of the purpose of holding Dr Haneef so long is to establish a base line for detention in future cases. This is why some actions need to resisted on the basis of principle.
Wendy