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

By: John Eades

John Eades — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 23:59:05 +0000

Yea right
The inference that part maori in New Zealand are treated different to other “New Zealanders” is bollocks…The only problem in NZ is that the Govt fail to reconize that all people born in NZ are New Zealanders..
If you dont believe that have a look at all Govt form’s and see if you can find New zealander on it for ethnic group. Even the NZ census had every other group bar New Zealander..When I queried this with the census supervisor’s I was told to put it down under “other”..so as you can see the country does not have an ethnic group..we are other’s by birth right…NO WONDER NEW ZEALAND has an identity problem..
No pride in who we are, divided by Govt decree..dont show the flag
divide and rule

By: Kelly Patrick Gerling

Kelly Patrick Gerling — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 02:23:35 +0000

I find the article interesting but also quite one-sided. I’m not a citizen of New Zealand but of the United States. When I’ve participated in Maori events in New Zealand, my impression is that Maori rights and New Zealand’s adherance to the Waitangi Treaty are much better than the record in my own country to our Indian groups. Compared to the US, the democratic system in New Zealand is a progressive paradise with its MMP-based, multi-party democracy free of money influences in elections and an absence of an imperial foreign policy, but rather having benign, non-nuclear-weapon-possessing, peace-keeping foreign policies. From my USA vantage point, New Zealand would be a welcome addition to the UN Human Rights Council.

Here are two articles that offer some of the other side to the story regarding the rejection of the non-binding treaty:

Māori Affairs Minister Parekura Horomia on the UNDRIP Treaty
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411368/1347674

PM Helen Clark and others on the reasons for the rejection of UNDRIP:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0709/S00272.htm

As for the recent police actions, I will await what happens regarding the charges, whether illegal weapons were seized, and how due process works.

By: Glenn

Glenn — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 01:30:17 +0000

May I respectfully suggest Mr Choudy, in his eagerness to push his own barrow, has jumped the gun in this matter. It would also be helpful if he would not be so selective in his presentation of the facts, our history, and current society.
Jum and Herb, thanks for your responses. I too am a Kiwi.
Yes, its easy to become overcome with patriotic fervour and indignation when reading this article. But we do have to acknowledge that NZ is far from perfect. Yes, land was stolen. Yes, injustices were committed. But action has been taken in recent decades to attempt to at least partially remedy these things.
Yes those injustices can be attributed to the arrogance of our early European settlers (predominantly British). But we now have our own identity, our own society, and our own way of doing things . Britain is of little relevance to us today.
Our members of parliament are not selected from a ‘power elite’. Our political system ensures any New Zealander has an opportunity to represent their peers, IF THEY ARE MOTIVATED to do so.
Many NZers are unhappy about what has transpired this week in our country. Many have been reminded of nefarious government actions of the colonial days. But we still have some faith in our justice system (though again we recognise it is imperfect). So we wait, to hear the other side of the equation.
If justice and fairness is really what Mr Choudy wants, I suggest he show some patience too. For we will hear the alternative viewpoint, as the judicial process takes its course. If Mr Choudy truly understands Kiwis and Kiwi society, he will know that. And he will know that if injustice has been perpetrated by our police force, or this draconian legislation wrongly applied, there will be an almighty backlash.
Personally, I am very concerned about the use of the Suppression of Terrorism Act, and doubt that such a statute is even warranted. But I for one will hold my anger at bay, waiting to learn of the arguments supporting this weeks police action, rather than coming to an uninformed premature conclusion.

By: Herb Christophers

Herb Christophers — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:46:40 +0000

Aziz Choudry forgets to mention that the New Zealand Government’s Waitangi tribunal provides opportuntiy for indigenous Maori people to take their grievences to a panel and get confiscated land back, to confirm their role as equals in society and to strive to assert themselves in society. OK it aint perfect but it is proving to be an effective tool in meeting some of the needs and aspirations of Maori. Look at the Tainui and Ngai Tahu settlements which have made them real potent forces in the economy of New Zealand. Tinorangatiratanga - Self determination, is good but lets get things going well for all at the same time. Azziz talked about the Labour-led reforms of the 1980’s What does he want? - Continued total state control of many large businesses as it used to be in the 60s ? And cut this racist crap too. I am an ethnic minority from the Pacific Islands and I don’t look in the mirror everytime I do something to remind myself that the colour of my skin makes me different and my culture is supposedly inferior. I just get on with life and love and be a part of society. And NO I did not grow up in a priviledged household and yes, the school I went to was more than 50% Maori. Get out there do something constructive instead of using your pen to attempt to destroy a society that is addressing issues on inequality. And also, don’t prejudge the reason for the Urewera issues until you hear the full story. Stop sucking up your own exhaust fumes. Conspiracy is alive and well and living in your imagination.

By: Jum

Jum — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:40:24 +0000

My goodness, I didn’t realise I was living in such a terrible country. I didn’t realise that the people I work with, play with, drink with, make the rules with, were suffering so much. As they sit in their positions of power and influence in government, I didn’t realise that their votes and their speaking rights were ignored. I didn’t realise that their steady rise in the more affluent side of the economy was so wrong. I didn’t realise that the education they are getting in our universities, under special fee packages were such anathema to them. I must tell my indigenous friends that they’re not meant to be happy. They’re not meant to enjoy the life they live in NZ. They’re meant to live in huts and wear flax skirts and beat the crap out of each other in the Ureweras, to make them tough Tuhoe. They’re meant to be tough men, beat up their women, which is precisely what happened when the All Blacks lost. There was a huge increase in women escaping from their loving men to the refuges, and that is across the colour divide and the economic divide. And here we have Aziz Choudry, that great Kiwi who happens to live in Canada, and is deliberately creating a bad face for New Zealanders. I will support fully any individual in my country who is being treated unfairly because as a woman, I fully understand how women are discriminated against by men, and therefore I hate discrimination of any kind. I’m sure Aziz Choudry would agree with that, since he is so incensed about the rights of Maori. Like Islam controls the way women dress, think, act, speak and controls where they go, who with and why, etc etc. People, Aziz Choudry, who hide away in another country and try to destroy the democratic rights of people in NZ by trying to put in place real control of citizens through racial discrimination and a type of society that would set women’s rights back centuries in New Zealand makes me angry. Come back to NZ and say what you have said to my face, because I am New Zealand. Every Kiwi is New Zealand. Whatever might be wrong with New Zealand and each of us is working on making our relationships better, I cannot imagine what living in Saudi Arabia or Uganda or the Congo or the Sudan as a woman would be like. What I am sure of is that my indigenous friends do not want to live in Aziz’s world, especially my women friends.

By: Terrorism - Page 5 - Interfaith forums

Terrorism - Page 5 - Interfaith forums — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 18:39:16 +0000

[...] Re: Terrorism The reverberations of a declared "war on terror" continue to shake the world. Unfortunately in the general clamor, suppression of indigenous peoples, targets of terror for centuries, continues to be under-reported and generally unacknowledged, even as it escalates–another casualty in a "war" that aims at wiping out resistance and dissent. …[In New Zealand] Maori resistance is being called �terrorism�. As elsewhere, 9/11 has provided a whole new pretext for surveillance of domestic dissent. With the Cold War over, state security agencies in New Zealand and elsewhere, including police forces, have had to find new enemies within to justify their budgets and powers. Yet in colonial-settler states like New Zealand, Canada, Australia and the United States, the new enemies are often the old enemies � Indigenous Peoples who have survived generations of genocidal policies, and who continue to assert their fundamental rights to self-determination. Creating and sustaining a climate of fear is to the benefit of those in New Zealand who would rather conveniently forget some hometruths about the basis for New Zealand�s much-vaunted democratic welfare state. Invasion and colonial occupation. We may well be living in the 21st century, but colonialism is alive and kicking. … There�s nothing �postcolonial� about the era that we live in. This week�s actions clearly illustrate that the governments of colonial settler states, like leopards, don�t change their spots, but just stalk their prey in other ways, to paraphrase Maori lawyer Moana Jackson. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, the non-Maori majority have a responsibility to challenge the New Zealand government�s actions now and in the future, and resist a new wave of McCarthyism which threatens to cast a chilling spell on all who dissent against the status quo. If they do not know it already, non-Maori need to learn the real history of not only the Tuhoe people and their territory, but also the history of colonization in Aotearoa. And to understand that this process continues. Elsewhere, people would do well to see through the mythmaking prancing and posturing of the New Zealand government on the world stage as it boasts about how progressive it is. As a friend said to me yesterday, if this were happening in Burma, the story would have much more airtime. If Burma was applying for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, there would be outrage and protests around the world. Why should the New Zealand government be able to terrorize whole communities and criminalize Maori sovereignty activists and their supporters and not expect strong challenges to its colonial hypocrisy? full article: Dissident Voice : New Zealand Government Is Not Fit to Sit on UN Human Rights Council [...]

By: Ruben Botello

Ruben Botello — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:05:37 +0000

Let’s see, what do New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the U.S. have in common that they would all oppose indigenous rights? Is it because their ruling elites are the offspring of the colonial murderers, robbers, rapists and thieves who invaded and occupied these stolen lands not so long ago?

The ancestral lands and freedoms of today’s indigenous peoples were stolen by the ancestors of these nations’ leaders, and this makes them and other offspring of the original criminals guilty of receiving stolen property “for so long as the rivers flow.”

This is why these four nations voted against the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. They refuse to accept responsibility for their ongoing crime.

By: Mulga Mumblebrain

Mulga Mumblebrain — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:00:24 +0000

It’s quite simple David. Indigenous people lived in these lands for centuries, if not millenia. After initially disrupting the land, they generally learned to live at peace with their ‘country’ as the Australian indigenous people call it. Then along came racist, genocidal Europeans, who exterminated as many as they thought necessary, stole the land and threw the first inhabitants into squalour. Where genocide was complete, as with the ‘Indians’ of California, the Tasmanians and the Herrero of SW Africa, no rights remain for the indigenous. Elsewhere the remnants fight on, in the face of continual, bitter and intractable race hatred. The Europeans did not invent race hatred, but they certainly perfected it. All the garbage we constantly hear concerning ‘Western Civilization’ is simply the repetition of a vacuous self-interested mantra that has justified the murder and dispossession of untold millions up to the present day. Indigenous rights are just, and are needed as protection against further genocidal outrages. Not that the word of the European is worth much. The Yanks abrogated every treaty they made with the tribes of America, the New Zealanders treat the Treaty of Waitangi with contempt, and the US and Israel breach every solemn undertaking of international humanitarian law, particularly the Geneva Conventions, every single day. The ubermenschen of Judeo-Christian civilization simply see themselves as a higher type, as James Watson so pithily reminded us just this week.

By: David

David — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 04:34:50 +0000

Why no critical commentary on the concept of rights for indigenous people?

I can understand the motivation to push for these types of rights. However, is the differentiating of rights according to culture, historical disadvantage or other criteria the best approach?

Wouldn’t a set of rights that is universally applicable be superior?

Disadvantage might be easy to spot when it lies along racial or cultural ghetto lines. Addressing these obvious deficiencies in human relationships does not account for the myriad of others who suffer abuse but don’t conveniently fit an “approved” profile.

By: Shabnam

Shabnam — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 21:00:31 +0000

O.rana:

You have forgotten the most important country which is the brain of this extended family and that is BRITAIN. It is true that Britain is not the main imperialist and colonial power of our time but in fact is the mother of these four countries. This is an inseparable package that has destroyed civilization after civilization by most brutal and most destructive forces by the last 500 years. Don’t believe them when they preach “democracy” including New Zealand. This brutal package has been created by work of people like Cecil Rhodes who said Britain must sit his flag on every single corner of the world. They are pretty close to that and continue to do it to finish the job by any means including genocide, mass murders, placing puppets in power who are in fact British in brain and Arab, Pakistani or Indian in Blood and have used nuclear holocaust to hold on to their power. Their most destructive soft tool is the Mass Media which spreads lies and deception by Zionist control media to brain wash their ignorant citizens and continue to keep them as ignorant as they are to sell their weapons of mass destruction and waging wars after wars to continue killing and robbing other nations.

By: o. rana

o. rana — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:13:31 +0000

It is obvious that racism and colonialism is running deep in the four countries mentioned in the article. The ongoing violence against the first people of AOTEAROA are utterly shameful, and the the power elite who has announced the country’s candidacy for the UN Human Rights Council must be bared from that position.
The four countries Australia, Canada, USA and New Zealand are all notorious violators of human right and are unfit for such positions.

By: Russ Wellen

Russ Wellen — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:59:49 +0000

Maori terrorists? Didn’t know New Zealand gov’t was that heavy-handed. Thanks for that report on suppression of native peoples and general overview of political life there.