New Zealand Government Is Not Fit to Sit on UN Human Rights Council

The New Zealand Government must be stopped. At home and abroad.

On 14 September this year, the New Zealand government and three other
governments (Canada, USA and Australia) shared the dubious distinction
as the only states to vote against the adoption of the United Nations
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. On Friday, it
announced its candidacy for the United Nations (UN) Human Rights
Council, for the period 2009-2012. The announcement came at the end of
a shocking week where Maori sovereignty campaigners,
environmentalists, and other activists had been arrested in a major
series of Police raids throughout the country, under the post-9/11
Suppression of Terrorism Act, and where armed paramilitary police
besieged and terrorized the Tuhoe Maori communities of Ruatoki and
Taneatua, in the "Bay of Plenty" region in the east of the North
Island. Some 15% of Aotearoa/New Zealand's population of just over 4
million are Maori. Ruatoki Maori charge that among many other
outrages, armed police in black commando gear traumatized children by
searching school buses.

Clearly Helen Clark's supposedly centre-left Labour Party-led social
democratic government has no shame. The Maori Party Minister of
Parliament and co-leader Dr Pita Sharples said that the raids had
taken race relations in New Zealand back 100 years. Many agreed, while
a torrent of racist anti-Maori sentiment flowed forth in the nation's
media. Meanwhile, prominent Tuhoe Maori sovereignty campaigner,
community worker, and artist, Tame Iti, his nephew Rawiri, and 15
others have been arrested. Most have been denied bail and remain in
jail. Activist homes and offices were raided, searched or visited by
police in several centres, on a major fishing expedition against those
who would challenge the status quo. Protests against the raids, and
in support of those targeted, have been organized in a number of
cities and towns throughout New Zealand, with an impressive 1500
people turning out in the small, largely Maori East Coast town of
Whakatane where Tame Iti was arrested at gunpoint last Monday.
Placards included: "He taonga te mokopuna [our children are
treasures]", "We are not terrorists, we've been terrorised" and "Don't
point the gun at me! I'm under 5". Solidarity protests have taken
place in Australia, Germany and other countries. More are planned.