Criminal Injustice: Racist Cruelty

November 1, 2018 by
10000 too many

Protest and campaigning inside and out has put the justice system under the spotlight.

Nine years of National rule has left a cruel and brutalising legacy in New Zealand’s criminal justice system. Last year the prison population reached 10,100, an all-time high. The number of people incarcerated has increased by 364 percent in the last 30 years, according to researcher Roger Brooking. The system is racist. Over half of the prison population is Māori, and Māori are more likely to be arrested, prosecuted, and given custodial sentences than non-Māori. National’s changes to the bail laws in 2013 made it much more difficult for those facing trial to get bail, leading to still more people spending time in prison. The situation is stark. According to OECD statistics, as of May 2018 New Zealand has 220 prisoners per 100,000 people, the fifth highest incarceration rate in the developed world.

Two things have got us into this sorry situation. Decades of bipartisan support for neoliberalism resulted in alienation as poverty grew and housing conditions deteriorated. The conditions that drive crime worsened.  Secondly, National and Labour, and the mass media giving publicity to the cranks of Garth McVicar’s Sensible Sentencing Trust, indulged in the crudest penal populism until a vicious “tough on crime” rhetoric was normalised. Crimes rates began to drop in the 1990s, but four new prisons were built in the 2000s as the number of people imprisoned continued to rise. The rate for Māori women is especially awful, as Moana Jackson has shown, growing from around 20 percent of the female prison population in the 1980s to 60 percent today. The prisons are overcrowded, humiliating, a source of loneliness and misery to those inside and their families outside, and they generate ongoing social costs, not least more crime. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Class Struggle, Racism, Tino Rangatiratanga, Tino Rangatiratanga

The struggle for Ihumātao

April 27, 2018 by
SOUL Protest

SOUL Protest, 2017. Image credit: Waatea News.

By Tania Te Hira-Mathie

 

 

Located in Māngere, South Auckland, Ihumātao is Auckland’s oldest settlement and one of New Zealand’s most important historic archaeological sites. This site, northwest of Auckland airport, has been part of a long struggle to save Māori land. Ihumātao is the largest remaining intact gardening site found in New Zealand. “Ihumātao is the beginning of Auckland”, explains archeologist Dave Veart in a Radio New Zealand interview, “with the descendants of the first residents of Tāmaki Makaurau living a kilometre down the road. Compared to other archaeological sites it shows how people lived in a way that’s remarkably easy to understand.”

The land also has significance as an unsettled land dispute. Save Our Unique Landscape (SOUL), the campaign group involving mana whenua and other community groups, attest that Ihumātao is land that was confiscated by the State in 1863, as punishment for local iwi refusing to swear allegiance to the Crown.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Tino Rangatiratanga, Tino Rangatiratanga

Māori struggles and the TPPA

February 16, 2016 by

WaitangiBy Joshua O’Sullivan

 

Earlier this month the blessings of Ranginui washed the hikoi as it made its way to the powhiri at Te Tii Marae at Waitangi in the midst of pouring rain. Around 200 people assembled. Some had made the long march from Northland to Auckland and back, others, like us, joined after the massive anti TPPA demonstrations. Our hikoi was welcomed by the Ngā Puhi elders, who spoke on the marae about the challenges facing Māori today.

Māori sovereignty and all indigenous rights were raised by the speakers: that only Māori and the Treaty of Waitangi are mentioned specifically in the agreement was a scandal.  The Ainu of Japan, the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, Hawaiians, the Mapuche of Chile, and the first nations tribes of Canada and the US are not mentioned at all. Ratana elder and former Mana party leader Kereama Pene said Māori had to represent on an international level: “The whole world is focused on Māori, we were a big part of writing the U.N. Declaration of Indigenous Rights, Māori are the one to win this and if we fight we will have the support of all indigenous people.” [Read more…]

Filed Under: Tino Rangatiratanga, Tino Rangatiratanga

Māori and Communism in the 1930s

July 9, 2015 by

Workers WeeklyBy Dougal McNeill

The miseries of the Great Depression hit Māori workers particularly hard. Mass unemployment, poverty, slave-labour like conditions in relief works, poor housing and slumlords profiteering from renting out hovels – this was the fate of many hundreds of thousands of workers across the country. Māori workers, still concentrated in rural areas and in some of the most isolated and deprived parts of the country, suffered particularly intensely. And, in addition to their economic hardship, they had to face open discrimination and racism from the state and its agencies.

Cuba Street riotUnemployed workers fought back, and the early 1930s saw pitched riots in Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin. Crowds smashed windows and fought with police in Queen Street and up Cuba Street. Labour’s first victory came in these years, followed by its second, more emphatic win on the back of social reforms. How the Communist Party of New Zealand responded in its paper, the Weekly Worker, to the racism Māori faced offers a fascinating insight into how organised militant workers can take up the question of oppression. A few articles from the paper in 1934 and 1935 give a snapshot of the Party’s organising.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: NZ Radical History, Racism, Tino Rangatiratanga Tagged With:

Victory! Patricia Grace Stops the Government Taking Maori Land

May 13, 2014 by

Image

The government has been defeated by the author Patricia Grace in the Environment Court and, seeing the writing on the wall, the government will not appeal.

Patricia Grace owns part of a block of Maori Freehold Land in Waikanae that was once in a Maori village and is full of significance. The government tried to take some of this land under the Public Works Act for its Roads of National Significance programme; specifically the Wellington Northern Corridor. Much of this road scheme will be completely new sections of road running parallel with State Highway 1, causing swathes of environmental destruction. At a time when National keep telling us that government must cut spending, they are throwing billions of dollars of our money to the roading contractors for roads that we do not need. And, it seems, little matters such as pieces of Maori land full of historic significance must not stand in the way of this travesty.

One of Patricia Grace’s ancestors, her great-great-grandfather, was Wiremu Parata Te Kakakura (as known as Wi Parata). Te Kakakura donated land for the railway to run through the area. He also donated land for a government school. In the 1870s, he entered Parliament as the member for Western Maori. In 1877 he famously took legal proceedings against the Bishop of Wellington. The Anglican Church had reneged on an agreement to open a school that Ngati Toa children could attend. He lost, of course, the Treaty of Waitangi being declared a “nullity” by the Chief Justice. [Read more…]

Filed Under: All Posts, Environment, Racism, Tino Rangatiratanga, Uncategorized

The Criminal Injustice System: from Aotearoa to the USA

April 23, 2013 by

the-new-jim-crowMichelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow (2011) has caused a huge storm of discussion, debate and controversy in the United States. It may well be a book that sparks a new social movement. Alexander documents the rise of mass incarceration in the USA, and link this to entrenched racism, poverty and injustice. The privatising and ‘outsourcing’ of prison as business, and the ‘law and order’ turn are part of neoliberal politics the world over.

This has obvious relevance in Aotearoa. The prison system disproportionately affects Maori and Pasifika people. The powers of the state – to harass, humiliate, detain and lock-up – are felt every day in brown people’s lives. The history of white settler colonial rule has relied on locking up and disenfranchising Maori people. A new phase in capitalism, and the symptoms of poverty in recession, looks to imprisonment again. [Read more…]

Filed Under: (In)justice System, Racism, Revolution not Reformism, Tino Rangatiratanga, Tino Rangatiratanga

Maori teacher brutalised by police

March 22, 2013 by

579842_623457754349105_464419270_nWe are sharing this story of police brutality from tangatawhenua.com . Without their pioneering work sharing this it would not have got the further media attention that has come in recent days. 

TangataWhenua.com was asked to share this story as few other mainstream media outlets felt it was “newsworthy” enough. What follows is provided verbatium, nothing has been edited or changed. Remember whanau if at all possible WHENEVER dealing with police, if you have the ability to video the encounter always do, this serves as powerful evidence in the case of a police complaint.

Corina Tairua’s Statement

  • Time and date of incident: Approx 3am 17/3/13
  • Arresting Officer: D Ward
  • QID Number: TWZ644

My name is Corina Tairua. I am a mother of 7 children. Ages, 17, 16, 15, 13, 12 and 18 months. I am four papers off graduating to receive my teaching degree as a primary school teacher. I have never been in trouble with the police or law in my life. As I write this I am deeply traumatised by what has happened to me at the hands of the people I had always believed in and had great respect for, our police, our New Zealand police. [Read more…]

Filed Under: (In)justice System, Liberation from oppression, Tino Rangatiratanga

Anti-Chinese rants won’t stop asset sales

February 14, 2013 by

There was an evening rally against asset sales in Wellington on February 13. As a gathering of the committed the attendance was quite good. Estimates vary, but 400 would be about right I think. The unions – which could potentially turnout thousands of members against privatization – are not able to do so in their present state of passivity. Indeed, the unions were barely visible. There was not one union speaker, and no Labour Party speaker either, for that matter. The character of the rally did not represent the organized labour movement – that means unionised workers and members of parties based on the working class. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Racism, Tino Rangatiratanga, Tino Rangatiratanga, Topic: Racism, Uncategorized

Treaty settlements, Maori workers, and the corporate model

December 5, 2012 by

Stand by Affco WorkersThe wealth of Maori business is estimated to be around $37 billion but with 60,000 Maori children living in poverty, Mana MP Hone Harawira has suggested to iwi leaders that “maybe it was time we turned our corporate bus around and went back to get all the kids”.

 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: AFFCO Meatworkers lockout, Tino Rangatiratanga, Topic: Racism, Workers Struggles

Maori Money: A giant awakes?

October 20, 2012 by

Iwi corporates, estimated to be worth $37 billion in 2010, are changing the rules of New Zealand’s economy and politics. Maori capital has been criticised from the red-neck right as rent-seekers, from the pseudo-left as an iwi aristocracy, and from within Maoridom itself. But in two major battles this year, Maoridom’s elite weighed in on the side of the working class.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Issues in depth, Theory and History, Tino Rangatiratanga, Topic: Racism
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