The Egyptian Revolution

Tautoko/Solidarity to the Peoples Popular Uprising in Egypt.

This is what REAL Mana Motuhake & Tino Rangatiratanga is all about POWER TO THE PEOPLE.

Aotearoa Stands in Solidarity

Saturday, February 5 · 2:00pm - 5:00pm
Location Aotea Square, Auckland.

The people of Egypt are not stopping, coming out day after day to demand change. We cannot stop either.

So Saturday Feb 5th at Aotea Square we will gather a second time and show our support for the brave souls out on the Egyptian streets protesting relentlessly for their freedom.

Please pass this onto your friends and family. We want large numbers this time around.

Wear red or black, and bring along your flags (from any and all identities)

See you there!

Viva la Revolucion!



Saturday, February 5 · 12:00pm - 3:00pm
Midlands park, Lambton Quay, Wellington



Solidarity with the Egyptian people supporting their struggle for democracy.
We will start outside the vodafone building midlands park and make our way past parliament to the US embassy. Bring placards, flags and banners :)

Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets calling for President Mubarak to step down after his 30 year autocratic rule.

...The protesters have been met with extreme violence as Mubarak orders the police and the military to quell the street protests. Over 100 have been killed and many more injured. Still Hosni Mubarak refuses to listen to his people.

Mubarak has ordered a complete shutdown of the internet and moblie phone networks in Egypt in order to stop protesters communicating with each other and the outside world thus leaving them unprotected.
Vodafone are blaming the internet blackout on “problems” with their service, refusing to acknowledge their total and utter compliance and therefore support of a corrupt, violent and undemocratic regime.

The USA has issued statements regarding the unrest in Egypt but has stopped short of actually taking any action to improve the situation or state that Mubarak step down due to Mubarak being a close ally of the US administration. America continues to state that it considers it's relationship with Hosni Mubarak to be 'friendly.'

Supported by Unite Wellington and Socialist Aotearoa

The Egyptian Revolution will Continue until Victory

All Power to the People

Egyptian police have arrested at least 1,000 protesters across the country as unprecedented protests against president Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule enter a third day.

"The Black Power Mixtape"–Danny Glover Discusses New Doc Featuring Rare Archival Footage of Angela Davis, Huey P. Newton, Stokely Carmichael

ANGELA DAVIS: You ask me, you know, whether I approve of violence—I mean, that just doesn’t make any sense at all—whether I approve of guns. I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. Some very, very good friends of mine were killed by bombs, bombs that were planted by racists. I remember—from the time I was very small, I remember the sounds of bombs exploding across the street, our house shaking. I remember my father having to have guns at his disposal at all times because of the fact that, at any moment, someone—we might expect to be attacked. The man who was at that time in complete control of the city government—his name was Bull Connor—would often get on the radio and make statements like "Niggers have moved into a white neighborhood; we better expect some bloodshed tonight." And sure enough, there would be bloodshed.

After the four young girls who were—who lived very—one of them lived next door to me. I was very good friends with the sister of another one. My sister was very good friends with all three of them. My mother taught one of them in her class. My mother—in fact, when the bombing occurred, one of the mothers of one of the young girls called my mother and said, "Can you take me down to the church to pick up Carole? You know, we heard about the bombing, and I don’t have my car." And they went down, and what did they find? They found limbs and heads strewn all over the place. And then, after that, in my neighborhood, all the men organized themselves into an armed patrol. They had to take their guns and patrol our community every night, because they did not want that to happen again. I mean, that’s why when someone asks me about violence, I just—I just find it incredible, because what it means is that the person who’s asking that question has absolutely no idea what black people have gone through, what black people have experienced in this country, since the time the first black person was kidnapped from the shores of Africa.

Tainui people reinstate Tania Martin

Workers urged to resist National's privatization plans

Wednesday, 26 January 2011, 3:12 pm 

Press Release: Maritime Union of New Zealand

Maritime Union urges workers to resist National's privatization plans

Maritime Union of New Zealand media release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday 26 January 2011

The Maritime Union says the planned privatization of key public assets must be stopped.
The Prime Minister announced today the National Government were planning partial sales of key state assets.

Maritime Union of New Zealand General Secretary Joe Fleetwood says the loss of further public assets would be a disaster for working people.

He says the Maritime Union would campaign to protect the assets that generations of New Zealand workers collectively contributed towards and built up.

"There is no way we can allow the National Government to flog off any more public assets to their rich mates."
Mr Fleetwood says public assets such as energy and electricity generators and Solid Energy should remain in public ownership.

He says that previous claims the privatization of assets would benefit "mum and dad investors" were nonsense.

"All New Zealand mums and dads are already shareholders in these public assets. The only beneficiaries of privatization will be overseas investors and a minority of the very wealthy."
"Privatization is not a one off, it is a process, and National are trying to get the process underway that will end in the sell off of the last remaining assets we own."

He says that guarantees that majority ownership would remain in New Zealand hands were not worth the paper they were written on.

Mr Fleetwood says that asset sales together with free trade deals would soon reduce New Zealanders to tenants in their own country.

He says the Maritime Union would be mobilizing in election year to ensure all New Zealanders were aware of the threat of privatization.

ENDS

Intervention Intervention

An art exhibition titled “Intervention Intervention” opened in Sydney this week featuring the works of 18 artists, engaging and exploring the realities of the Northern Territory Intervention.

The exhibition was organized to counter what the curators described as a whitewashing of the Intervention in the mainstream media and by Australian politicians.

The Intervention was implemented by the Howard government in 2007 and has not only been maintained but also intensified by the successive Labor governments.

The intervention has been condemned by the United Nations and was slammed by a UN special Rapporteur Professor James Anaya during his visit to Northern Territory in 2009, where he reported that the intervention is in breach of treaties to which Australia is a signatory.

The exhibition is a response by the artists about the little-known realities of the intervention, which have developed since 2007.

The artworks focus on the changes to welfare, law enforcement and land tenure. Under the intervention, whole Aboriginal communities have had their welfare payments quarantined, some moved off their land and stronger police and military presence.

In order to implement the Intervention the government was forced to suspend the Racial Discrimination Act as only Aboriginal people were targeted.


The government says the intervention was necessary to prevent the outbreak of child sexual abuse in some Northern Territory communities.

The exhibition developed out of a general feeling amongst the arts community of concern and despair about the injustices happening to the people affected by the Northern Territory Intervention.

The curators and artists acknowledge that there were serious issues of violence and alcohol abuse exacerbated by poverty amongst the targeted communities in the Northern Territory.

However, they say the intervention has failed to address these issues as well as the claims of child sexual abuse.

Moreover, the same measures have not been taken against non-indigenous communities where these problems occur. It is this stark discrimination that has led both domestic and international bodies to strongly condemn this government measure. 

ChuckD Shoutout Lowkey AusTour

Te Kauhanganui Report

Support Tania Martin Chairperson of Te Kauhangaui meeting Hopuhopu 22 Jan 2011

 

essential reading for misguided people that defend crooks like Tuku Bent Morgan

Tainui - Te - Kauhanganui - Report

Capitalist Punishment:
Prison Privatization and Human Rights

edited by Andrew Coyle, Allison Campbell and Rodney Neufeld

Zed Books (2003), London,
ISBN: 1 84277 291 0

Reviewed by:
Jon Yorke
PhD Candidate
School of Law,University of Warwick

Jon.Yorke@warwick.ac.uk

1. Introduction

Capitalist Punishment: Prison Privatization and Human Rights is a response to the hegemonic practices, which have led to human rights violations caused by the prison privatisation industry. Indeed, this volume offers a timely circumspect dialogue on the debates surrounding the privatisation of prisons around the world. Currently the privatisation prison industry is under the spotlight, and after the events of 11 September 2001, the world is watching to see how effectively the industry will play its part in the incarceration of criminals in the 'war against terrorism'.

Capitalist Punishment is an introduction to the issues of how the industry infringes upon prisoners' human rights par excellence, and offers an inter-disciplinary overview of the issues. The aim of the book is to highlight not only a socio-political discourse on prison privatisation, but a legal one too. Hence, all people involved within the prison industry, both academically, and professionally, will benefit from the information presented.

Turning the pages, readers may be shocked by the pernicious human rights violations, which occur within privatised prisons. Shocked, perhaps, because most violations are not brought to the public's attention by the media; as they are shrouded within the confines of the panoptical prison. Furthermore, the reader will notice a limited number of privatisation companies cited by the different authors. This is because there are only a limited number of key corporations, which advance the industry. A reader will quickly become familiar with the two world leaders in prison privatisation - Corrections Corporations of America, and Wakenhut Corrections.

In essence, this book is about the dwindling of the state's monopoly on incarceration, and the effects of the subjugation of prisoners, under the watch of corporations. The corporations advise the governments that privatisation is the only viable option under a burgeoning prison population. But is privatisation the only rhetoric to be considered, with the incarceration of a prison populace? Coyle et al think not.

2. The Growth of the Privatisation of Prisons

The modern phenomenon of prison privatisation derives from the United States, and the first three chapters of the book reflect this. The proceeding chapters detail specific violations of human (and People's) rights within privatised prisons, both in the US and selected countries around the world. The United States is a melting-pot for the advancement of the privatization prisons ideology, and so the book primarily focuses on the situation in the US.

In the 1980s, and continuing today, the US criminal justice system adopted a hard-lined view with the sentencing of offenders. This 'get tough on crime approach' has led to zero-tolerance, 'three strikes legislation' and mandatory minimum sentences, which have overwhelmed the prison services. Such practices were instigated through neoliberal policies formulated by the Reagan Presidency, and to a certain extent, within the United Kingdom. What results is a politically 'claimed' fiscal deficiency, which leads the governments to look to the private industry to solve the problems of the burgeoning prison population.

In the first three chapters of the book this scene is set, with the authors describing the resultant, 'prison industrial complex'. The prison industrial complex is an industry created by severe sentencing policies and a sustained prison populace, which is then governed by private corporations. The public sector is removed by the neoliberal ideology of the free market. Hence economics determine prison governance, which is antipathetically set against the protection of prisoners' human rights. How is this allowed to happen? Chapters Four to 17, detail the reasons for this egregious praxis.

3. Human1 Rights Violations

This volume illustrates that the denial of human rights is endemic within privatised prisons. An intractable amount of deaths have occurred in private prisons, so too have rapes and other physical and mental torture. Medical care is restricted by the corporations, and inmates have died as a result of the guards refusing to allow the prisoners to see medical staff. Minorities are marginalised; racism is systemic; women are subjugated in many private prisons; and juveniles do not receive effective rehabilitation, resulting in a high recidivism rate. The human rights violations caused by the privatised industry is alarming.

Even with a growing body of legal decisions, condemning the practices of the privatised industry in the US, UK and Australia, privatised corporations still obtain contracts to govern prisons. The political and legal mechanism, which allows this status quo, is achieved by a practical immunity from democratic accountability. Katherine van Wormer illuminates in Chapter Nine:

…private prisons tend to distract public officials from responsibility for the way private prisons are run. Under privatization, the internal mechanisms of punishment are cloaked in a veil of secrecy. When a scandal occurs, journalists and other observers will focus on the performance, efficiency, and services of the private prison, rather than on public officials for allowing the conditions to persist. Accordingly, the government is conveniently let off the hook2.

The authors argue that the corporate structure of the prison industrial complex, allows politicians to separate themselves from responsibility when a private prison does not ensure the observance of human rights. Furthermore, the corporations themselves have enjoyed a substantial amount of immunity. In the landmark US Supreme Court decision in Correctional Services Corporation v Malesko, 122 SC 515 (2001) it was held that in the area of offering health care provisions, private corporations who run 'prisons under contract with the federal government are protected from suit for their constitutional violations3. Hence, there is a hegemonic rhetoric created, which drastically diminishes the accountability of the prison industrial complex for human rights violations.

Racial issues are at the forefront when considering the human rights violations. Chapter Eight deals with the arrested development of African Americans. Monique Morris talks about the 'legalized apartheid (segregation)'4within the history of American law, and she discusses the wider, social, ramifications and issues surrounding racism; firstly within society, then within the judicial sentencing structure and prison populations. In Chapter 10, Frank Smith discusses the engendered issues resulting in the violations of the human and cultural rights of the Native Americans. He offers a short, enlightened, discourse on the historical perspective of slavery and the repugnant US Supreme Court decision in Plessy v Fergeson, 163 US 537 (1896), which introduced the egregious 'separate but equal' doctrine. Plessy was overruled in the two Brown v Board of Education cases5.

Katherine van Wormer argues that women are treated unfairly and that there is a 'backlash against …women's creeping equality'6. Wormer states that the law is anti-feminist. Also, that through the 'war on drugs', women are singled-out because many will be given up by their junkie husbands. Furthermore, up to 40 percent of incarcerated women were for drug offences7. Indeed, Wormer acutely emphasis the plight of many incarcerated women. In Chapter 178, Amanda George reveals the harrowing experiences many women face within the Australian Metropolitan Women's Correctional Center.

In Chapter Seven, Mark Erik Hecht and Donna Habsha outline the privatisation of juvenile prisons, and the monitoring of juvenile prisons through international law9. The authors include a case study on Canada and the United Kingdom. It is argued that within the UK, juvenile crime rates have decreased, but the juvenile prison population has increased. A reason is suggested:

… numerous highly publicised acts of violence have distorted the reality of youth involved in crime and have led to intense public debate on the matter. Politicians have been driven to introduce harsher sentencing policies and legislation as a result of public pressure to 'get tough on crime'10.

The authors also highlight the failure of the Canadian adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, stating that the juvenile human rights paradigm is thwarted by the practices of the privatisation industry.

4. Selling the US 'Prison Industrial Complex' to the world

One area that is briefly touched upon by this volume (and possibly should/could have been developed further), is the 'threat' of the US prison industrial complex being imposed on other countries. This is a serious point which Stephen Nathan investigates in Chapter 1611. He begins his chapter with a letter penning an earnest worldwide plea by Mr C L Siimane, the Director General of the Lesotho Prison Service. Mr Siimane wrote an open letter to the international criminal justice community asking for help, he begins his letter, 'We wish to inform you that we are under terrible pressure to have the entire Lesotho Prison Service privatized by Group 4 from the UK …' and he goes on to say, '… do anything in your power and means to frustrate the wishes and efforts of Group 4 and its proponents'12.

Why such a desperate plea? The subject matter and detailed examples of this volume make it clear. Many human rights violations are caused by the privatised prison industry, and each government should beware of adopting such a repugnant capitalist model. Certainly, the US privatisation companies are of the view that they can 'make a significant impact on the global corrections market'13. Julie Berg, in Chapter 15, highlights the concerns with the development of the privatisation of prisons within South Africa. She is of the opinion that the modernised 'prison industrial complex' will not satisfactorily cope with the intricate cultural distinctions that exist the South Africa, and hence, Africa as a whole.

It also cannot be stated with any authority that the US model has worked in the UK, and the authors seem to suggest that this is why the industry is moving away from the developed world and focusing their claws on the emerging economies, as stated in chapter sixteen. Disturbingly, when the UK considered how to deal with its burgeoning prison population, the government only considered the rhetorical 'spin' from the US, and did not consider other country's models; such as the French, semi-private model. Hence the US corporations gained contracts within the UK, and brought with them their egregious practices. The author's collective message to the global criminal justice systems is 'stay public'.

5. Conclusion

The authors of the articles within Capitalist Punishment: Prison Privatization and Human Rights have produced a sound discourse urging governments to monitor and condemn the illegal practices of the prison privatisation industry, and also a sound portfolio warning prospective governments against blindly handing over their prisons to the corporations. The words of the corporations appear to bring bright futures, but governments should wait to hear both sides of the story. This volume brings the hitherto untold story of those who have suffered behind the panoptical protection of the privately owned prison walls.

Endnotes

1. Within the specific African, and other indigenous human rights rhetoric, 'people's' and 'cultural' rights are recognised. This volume details and argues such 'people's' and 'cultural' rights. See, Chapter Eight: Prison Privatization: The Arrested Development of African Americans, by Monique Morris; Chapter 10: Incarceration of Native Americans and Private Prisons, by Frank Smith; Chapter 11: The Use of Privatized Detention Centers for Asylum Seekers in Australia and the UK, by Bente Molenaar and Rodney Neufeld; Chapter 15: Prison Privatization Development in South Africa, by Julie Berg; and Chapter 16: Private Prisons: Emerging and Transformative Economies, by Stephen Nathan.
2. Chapter Nine: Prison Privatization and Women, by Katherine van Wormer, p 108.
3. Chapter Six: Private Prisons and Health Care: The HMO From Hell, by Alexander, E, p 67.
4.Chapter Eight, supra, note 1, p 87.
5.Brown v Board of Education 347 US 483 (1954) Brown 1, the Constitutional ruling; Brown v Board of Education 349 US 294 (1955) Brown 2, the implementation decision. These cases abolished segregation within schools.
6. Chapter Nine, supra, note 2, p 103.
7. As a legal intern for the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System, in 1996, I visited an Oklahoman women's correctional facility to interview the wife of an inmate on death row in Oklahoma. The woman was handed over to the police by her husband, for drug offences.
8. Chapter 17: Women Prisoners as Customers: Counting the Costs of the Privately Managed Metropolitan Women's Correctional Center: Australia, by Amanda George.
9. Chapter Seven: International Law and the Privatization of Juvenile Justice, by Mark Erik Hecht and Donna Habsha.
10. ibid, p 81.
11. Chapter 16: Private Prisons: Emerging and Transformative Economies, by Stephen Nathan.
12. ibid, p 189.
13. ibid, p 190.

---

This is a book review published on 20 January 2004.

Citation: Yorke, J, 'Capitalist Punishment: Prison Privatization adn Human Rights' edited by Andrew Coyle, Allison Campbell and Rodney Neufeld, Book Review, Law, Social Justice & Global Development Journal (LGD) 2003 (2) . New citation as at 1/1/04: <http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/lgd/2003_2/yorke/>

trailer of the documentary: Trade to Climate Caravan

Part 1 of 3 Maori Activist Tame Iti

Part 2 of 3 Maori Activist Tame Iti

Part 3 of 3 Maori Activist Tame Iti

Frantz Fanon Black Skin, White Mask

Explores the life and work of the psychoanalytic theorist and activist Frantz Fanon who was born in Martinique, educated in Paris and worked in Algeria. Examines Fanon's theories of identity and race, and traces his involvement in the anti-colonial struggle in Algeria and throughout the world

Kue Moana 12-30-2010.

12-30-2010 Free Hawaii Action in Waikiki was a smashing success. We accomplished our objectives and more.

The primary objective was to attract the international press' attention to give them a 'heads-up' about the significance and imminent escalation of the issue of Hawaiian independence. Besides building familiarity to our situation and our undertakings, we used the opportunity to befriend and develop rapport with them for the future. These are people we are going to need as friends when the issue of Hawaii independence really heats up in the next few years.

What we gave them yesterday was a lively, peaceful, friendly 'photo-op' (up-beat nationals with colorful Free Hawaii, Hawaiian Independence banners in Waikiki), something in contrast to the fluff they have been reporting about President Obama's Christmas/New Year vacation in Hawaii.

Two news services, NBC and CNN sent their cameramen to grab this photo-op, but even the other services were well aware of us and our message (Obama: Free Hawaii, Give us back our nation...) as we have been prepping them with press releases and collateral materials for over a week. Of course Pono Kealoha was there, documenting the event, as was Kaiopua Fyfe for the award-winning program, "Voices of Truth."

Three more added bonuses were: the kokua attitude of the Moana Surfrider Hotel management and security staff; the kokua of HPD; and the many visitors and passers-by who expressed support and encouragement for our cause. We handed out flyers* and talked story with a lot of people. A Canadian visitor made a small on-the-spot contribution, and another visitor insisted on buying a Free Hawaii t-shirt like the ones we were wearing.

Mahalo nui loa to all those who participated! You represented maika'i loa for all Hawai'i nei! Imua! Ku'e!

Malama pono,

Leon

Opportunists exploit migration data to take cheap shots at Maori

Sunday Star Times 2 January 2011 (longer unedited version)

 by Rawiri Taonui

 

 

 Analysis of more than 1,400 radio carbon dates from 47 Polynesian has thrown up some groundbreaking ideas - none more interesting than the proposition that East Polynesia was settled several hundred years later, but much faster than previously thought. After migrants arrived in Tahiti in 1025-1120AD the remainder of East Polynesia was settled via an intense migratory “pulse” between 1190-1290AD probably driven by population growth,technical innovation in sailing vessels, climatic change or environmental disaster.  Opportunists have exaggerated or misrepresented the findings of this specialised but narrow study to cast a negative light on a number of Māori issues in a manner echoing the Warrior Gene debate of 2007. 

The 1250 date for New Zealand has been misrepresented as “new”. One of the researchers, ProfessorAtholl Anderson proposed it in 1999.   Discussion has overlooked that the proposed chronology is based on just 200 of the 1,400 radiocarbon dates canvasses, which although they produce higher precision narrowertimeframes, set aside several hundred more equally important broader rangesamples suggesting Tahiti, the Northern Cooks, New Zealand and Easter Island weresettled as early as 350BC. The researchers admit their hypothesis is “falsifiable” – another piece of a larger puzzle not the lastword on the subject. For instance, rising Holocene sea levels beginning from about12,000 years ago did not reach current levels until around 600AD which may haveobliterated the earliest coastal sites. Rather than a negative for Māori achievement, the new proposition suggests East Polynesian seafarers achieved an unprecedented rate of dispersal in prehistory settling more than 500 islands within just 200 years.

 

It included long migratory voyages across open water without western navigational instruments to Hawaii, New Zealand and Easter Island at a time when European mariners clung nervously to the coastlines of Europe and the Mediterranean several hundred years before Christopher Columbus accidently bumped into the Americas.   The suggestion that the previous 800AD date for the settlement of New Zealand came from Māori oral tradition is also misleading – that date was the standard fare of 1980s archaeology.   There are also no authentic oral traditions that measure dates in years. Those that do stem from the discredited work of European scholar Percy Stephenson Smith who claimed Kupe discovered New Zealand while sailing from Rarotonga toward a rather rare conjunction of the setting sun, moon and Venus on November 27 925AD. The conjunction never occurred that month – though it did on November 27 1896 when Smith was on board a steamer from Rarotonga to New Zealand.

 He also misused a 42-generation genealogy to date Māori arrival. Beyond 20-30generations Māori genealogies display a range of specialised techniques. The one Smith used comprises collateral lines tacked end-to-end for the purposes ofrecital - properly interpreted it collapses to about 30 generations, which coincidentally converts to around 1200AD.   He chose one discoverer to fit a Western model of Māori history that existed only in his mind. Māori oral traditions name 30 Kupe-type ancestors.

 

These were “founders not discoverers” - each tribe or region honouring the first of their communities to settle an area, just as the English named Captain James Cook as the discoverer of New Zealand despite knowing Māori and Abel Tasman arrived before him.   Unfortunately, some Māori continue to promulgate Smith’s thesis but this is more of postcolonial intellectual indoctrination rather than the integrity of original traditions.

 

 The research also has no bearing on the Waitangi Tribunal. Its  main concern is identifying which tribes occupied what lands in 1840 and how those lands were stolen. Oral histories assist the former, but more importantly, the bulk of the Tribunal’s work investigates post-1840 land theft, the evidence for which rests exclusively on the Crown’s vast self-indicting records, not oral history. 

  Use of the study to question Māori indigenous status is disingenuously.  Professor Anderson described it as “illogical.”The United Nations defines indigenous people as the descendants of the first occupiersof a land who have a distinct culture and language. Whether Māori arrived in350BC or 1250AD - the fact remains they beat Europeans to our foreshores by several hundred years.     

 

The UN also describes indigenes as colonised peoples whose lands were stolen, culture, lifeways and languages disrupted, and who continue to suffer discrimination and prejudice. The asinine anti-Māori comments this week reinforce the latter is alive and well – perhaps even 2,360 years after first settlement.

 

Dr Taonui is writing a book on Māori origins and oral traditions to be published by the University of Hawaii Press  – rtaonui@xtra.co.nz

 

 

 

NYTMARE . REAL HIP HOP

Happy New Year

Terror raids defendants denied jury trial

The 18 defendants in the so-called Terror Raids trial are being
denied a jury trial.

We are being railroaded by the crown and judiciary and there is no way that we can get a fair trial. This is an egregious miscarriage of justice, says Valerie Morse, defendant in the case.

The Auckland High Court ruled this week that the defendants are to be tried before a judge alone, despite pleas to have a trial by jury. The Crown has dragged out the case at every opportunity in order to wear down the defendants and force them into long and expensive legal battles in the hope that the public will forget about the case and ultimately to force the defendants to plead guilty to end this
nightmare.

We are continually having to fight for our most basic rights in this case. The Government is doing everything in their power to deny us a trial by jury. A jury would quickly see through the police spin that has surrounded this case, which is why the crown wants a judge alone to hear the case, said Ms Morse.

The highest lawyer in this country, Solicitor-General David Collins, said in November 2007 that there was no case under the Terrorism Suppression Act, yet more than three years later the crown continues
to relentlessly pursue Tame Iti and 17 other activists in an unabashed crushing of political dissent and aspirations for tino rangatiratanga.

The Terror Raids trial follows a long history of political and racial discrimination in New Zealand's court system. When the people of Parihaka pulled out survey pegs to stop the theft of their land, they
were imprisoned indefinitely under the Maori Prisoners Trials Act 1879 so that the theft could continue unhindered. In 1916, following the armed invasion of the Tuhoe community at Maungapohatu, Rua Kenana was forced to sell his land and cattle in order to pay for his court defence.

The changes to the criminal justice system are criminal. It was part 1 of the Criminal Procedures Bill, passed under the previous Labour government in 2007 that gave the Crown the right to apply for trial by judge alone. Previously only a defendant could request this. Now the government is intent on further removing the right to a jury, the right to silence, the right against self-incrimination, and has just
taken away the right to vote for all prisoners. This is not a democracy, let us not delude ourselves any longer.

The October 15th Solidarity group reiterates its demand that these charges must be dropped.

ENDS

Notes:
1.18 people are facing charges under the Arms Act. Five of the  defendants also face a ridiculous charge for participation in an organised criminal group.

2.Of the 18 defendants, 13 are Maori. They whakapapa to several iwi: Tuhoe, Taranaki, Maniapoto, Te Ati Awa, Ngapuhi and others.

3.The raids took place on 15th October 2007 and the defendants spent
up to one month in jail.

4.A book has recently been published by Rebel Press with the stories
by people (including some of the defendants) affected by the raids. It
can be downloaded for free as a PDF at
http://www.rebelpress.org.nz/publications/day-raids-came

5.You can also email info@october15thsolidarity.info to get in touch with the October
15th Solidarity group.