Cam's speech to West Papua self-determination forum

The spectre of terrorism in Aotearoa - drawing the parallels. Speech to the 'ASEAN and Human Rights' forum to mark West Papua self determination day. December 1 2007

In New Zealand society there has always been elements, whether they be certain politicians, bureaucrats, or bumbling police and SIS agents, who have viewed those dissenting from the prevailing order as at best a problem to be managed or at worst akin to criminals. Authoritarian laws, sometimes with very benign sounding names, have been used to imprison opponents of the government, stifle free speech and make life difficult for those mobilising to support struggles for justice in both Aotearoa and overseas. For example the West Coast Peace Preservation Act, which allowed the Colonial government in the 1880s to imprison Te Whiti and Tohu, leaders of the community at Parihaka, without charge in a dingy cave. In the Twentieth Century the Public Safety Conservation Act, passed in the aftermath of riots by hungry unemployed people around the country during the depression, was evoked during the 1951 waterfront lockout to turn Aotearoa into a police state.

Looking at the War on Terror in this historical sense shows that the plethora of anti-terrorist laws hastily passed through legislatures around the World after 9/11 was not an entirely new phenomenon. Anti-democratic elements always use crises as an excuse to unjusly curtail freedom. Most countries already have legislation against planning or committing acts of violence, like 9/11 or the London bombing. Thus these anti-terror laws are being used to crack down on dissidents, rather than violent thugs. Nicky Hager recently pointed out the disturbing fact that Assistant Police Commissioner, Jon White, who is head of the police counter-terrorism wing, wrote reports on Wellington anti-war protests in 2003 for the Minister of Police.

In Aotearoa the police tried charging Tuhoe activists, environmentalists, anti-war activists and anarchists under the Terrorism Suppression Act, seemingly on the basis of intercepted text messages. In West Papua, only two days after the nationwide raids in Aotearoa, Indonesian police from the anti-terror unit Detachment 88 arrested Iwanggin Sabar Olif, a respected human rights lawyer. He had just forwarded a text message criticizing the Indonesian government for the continued oppression of people in West Papua.

New Zealand’s Terrorism Suppression Act defines terrorism in such a broad way that many activities that don’t usually spring to mind when one thinks of the word terrorism, are covered. Someone can be considered a terrorist if for political reasons they cause ‘serious disruption’ to an infrastructure facility if it is ‘likely to endanger human life’. Actions, such as the sit ins on airport runways during the 1981 Springbok Tour could be considered terrorism.

Amendments to the Terrorism Suppression Act passed just a couple of weeks ago are a huge threat to all of us involved in supporting struggles for justice around the World. Now the Prime Minister gets to decide which groups are designated terrorists and then get to review these designations instead of the High Court. The Indonesia Human Rights Committee delivered submissions opposing this law. During the occupation of East Timor, Timorese people who rose up against the Indonesian Military, such as independence leader, Xanana Gusmao, were labeled ‘terrorists’ by officials in New Zealand’s Department of External Affairs (the previous name of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade). Had the Terrorism Suppression Act have existed in the 1990s all those people in Aotearoa who mobilized to support Gusmao and the East Timorese resistance could have been brandished terrorists.

The Terrorism Suppression Act won’t deal to the real terrorists of our World – murderous governments and their corporate cronies. While the NZ state during the 1990s brandished Xanana Gusmao a ‘terrorist’ New Zealand happily provided ‘counter-insurgency’ training to Indonesian soldiers and ‘ground attack skills’ to the Indonesian air force, even though the Indonesian military was busy gassing, shooting, burning, raping and bombing East Timor’s poor people.

The same thing continues today. The real terrorists have the welcome mat laid out for them. This year an Indonesian Army officer has been taking part in a training course in New Zealand, even though the Indonesian Military is still terrorizing the people of West Papua and earlier this year shot dead villagers, including a pregnant 23 year old and her three year old son, in Java protesting the confiscation of their land for a Navy training facility. The red carpet was laid out for the visit of Philippines President Gloria Arroyo last May, even though the death squads of her regime have murdered nearly 1000 trade unionists, clergy and peasant leaders in recent years. This is not to mention terrorists of the domestic variety who blockade small towns while clad in black, masked to hide their identities and armed to the teeth and smash down glass doors of activist social centres.

A few months ago I went along to an inspiring lecture by former Black Panther Angela Davis. She argued that the campaign to abolish the prison industrial complex as not just a prison campaign but also ‘an equal rights campaign, a women’s rights campaign, a civil rights campaign, a family campaign, and most of all its a human rights campaign’. I strongly believe the same can be said about the campaign to repeal the Terrorism Suppression Act. Abolishing this repressive legislation will not only strengthen freedom and justice in Aotearoa but also help those struggling for justice all across the globe.