The War on Terrorism in Aotearoa

…goes on.

Word on the street is that Helen Clark may have bitten off a little more than she can chew by authorising the ‘anti-terrorism’ raids of last week.

To begin with, while the 300 or so police who conducted the raids were — especially in the case of the Tuhoe — expected to deliver their orders in Maori, they did not (although the exact reasons why remain a little obscure). And when Clark claimed that “she’d been informed of the raids in advance”, and evinced “surprise… at the scale and numbers of people involved”, she was actually attempting to minimise the extent of her own involvement, which apparently included her helping to prepare this strategy (NZ police raid military-style camps, AP, The Age, October 15, 2007).

Secondly, the authorities have a list of approximately 60–70 or so individuals they wish to speak with in relation to the investigation, but are having some small difficulties in actually finding them, and so activists (of all sorts) can expect further raids on and searches of their properties. According to Tim Johnston of the International Herald Tribune (Anti-terror raids cause turmoil in New Zealand, October 22, 2007):

…According to the police, the investigation started in December of 2005, when two hunters in the remote Urewera mountains in northeastern New Zealand stumbled across a camp where armed men, some in balaclavas, were training. They reported what they saw to the police, and the camps were put under surveillance.

In the following months, the police logged 74 people passing through, although people who attended more than one gathering would have been counted every time. The police also intercepted telephone calls and monitored a number of computer accounts…

In addition, the raids involved the use of not only regular police, but paramilitary and military forces, including — supposedly — elements of the SAS, as well as having involved political and secret police forces in its planning (if not execution). Also included in the planning, in addition to the NZ PM, were the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) — a bunch of spooks created in 1977 by ex-NZ PM Robert ‘Piggy’ Muldoon — and the Security Intelligence Service (SIS). Naturally, so as to avoid overly-‘politicising’ the issue, Clark’s Government seeks to minimise not only her, own personal involvement in the ‘counter-insurgency’ operation, but that of the spooks too.

In other schnews, one of the seventeen (18?) accused, Rongomai Pero Pero Bailey of Auckland, a 28 year old unemployed filmmaker, was today granted bail by the courts. He’s been charged with four firearms offences. “Prosecutor Ross Burns said police had reason to believe Bailey had attended the alleged military-style training camps near Ruatoki three times in the past year and that there was a chance he would follow through with violence should he be released on bail.”

Fortunately for the filmmaker, the police claim didn’t wash with the judge. As a result, Bailey is the second person to be released on bail by Judge Bouchier, the first being James Lockett, whose release was overturned by a higher court (Man arrested in terror raids given bail, Kim Ruscoe, Fairfax Media, October 23, 2007).

So where to now for the state? Despite increasingly widespread criticism, both national and international (see, for example, Claims of Maori separatist plot begin to unravel, Kathy Marks, The Independent, October 23, 2007), it would be difficult to envisage Clark’s Government instructing the relevant authorities not to lay charges of terrorism against at least some of those arrested. Certainly, a failure to do so renders inadmissible much of the evidence police (and other agencies) claim to have collected over the last year or more. The spectre of such charges being laid is also a useful device to threaten vulnerable arrestees into collaborating with police, just as has been the case in the United States in the state’s ongoing campaign against radical activists there. At this point, however, and unlike at least one of the cases in the US, there is no suggestion that state agencies actually employed someone to entrap activists.

In the meantime, this Saturday, October 27, has been designated a Global Day of Action in solidarity with the accused. In Melbourne, a solidarity demonstration — possibly consisting of terrorist hordes currently hiding deep within the sacred Dandenongs — will be held in Federation Square, at 12 midday. In Sydney, a public meeting and demonstration is being held on Thursday, October 25, @ 5:30pm, outside the New Zealand Consulate-General, 55 Hunter St, City.

See also : Aziz Choudry, New Zealand Government Is Not Fit to Sit on UN Human Rights Council (A Highly Unsuitable Candidate), Dissident Voice, October 22, 2007 | Anti-terrorism raids continue to cop flak, Niu FM, October 23, 2007 | Paul Buchanan, Guantanamo On The Pacific?, October 23, 2007 (“The arrest and detention without bail of seventeen individuals on grounds that they were planning terrorist attacks against political targets in New Zealand represents a step towards the “Guantanomisation” of national security policy in this country, at least as it applies to political dissent…”) | Civil Rights Defence… Oh yeah. Apparently, there’s thirteen men rotting in Barwon Prison too. According to Kath Wilson: “ONE OF THE MOST extraordinary features of the Barwon 13 case was that an undercover agent had infiltrated the group and influenced the men’s activities. The Age reported that an agent provocateur “of Middle-Eastern heritage” befriended the group “by pretending he shared similar beliefs”. The agent allegedly showed the men how to use explosives…” Thought Crime and Punishment, Overland, No.186, Autumn 2007.

ALSO :

Background: Friends Of Wellington Terror Arrestees
October 23, 2007
Press Release: Friends Of Wellington Terror Arrestees
Background From Friends Of Wellington “Terror” Arrestees