A week ago today the New Zealand police invaded homes all over the country. They arrested 17 (or 18) people with breaches of the Firearms Act. But the search warrants were issued under the Terrorism Suppression Act. Those arrested were called terrorists.
The police invaded Ruatoki, a Tuhoe community. They set up a checkpoint along the confiscation line. Those who wanted to go in or out of this community had to stand by their cars and have their picture taken. Armed police officers boarded the bus that takes kids to Kohanga Reo.
That paragraph may not make much sense to non-NZers. Maori are the tangata whenua, or indigenous people of New Zealand. Kohanga Reo is immersion kindergarten. Tuhoe are an iwi, or tribe, from the North Island of New Zealand. This is an attack on the indigenous people of New Zealand. On the indigenous people who are fighting colonisation. This has dominated the news in New Zealand for a week. It is the first time the Terrorism Suppression Act (the New Zealand version of the Patriot Act) has been used and it is being used against indigenous people who have been terrorised by the New Zealand state.
If that was all that had happened I would have written sooner. But the police also invaded a house I’ve spent many, many hours in. They took three of my friends.
There is an element of ridicule to all this. The police took a backpack that people had taken to the farmers market – with avocados and potatoes, later they brought it back because they decided it didn’t contain any evidence of terrorism. The paper claimed that groups from all over the country working on many different issues were going to launch co-ordinated attacks. They clearly don’t know us very well (anyone who has ever worked on the left will understand why).
But when I laugh it is only to relieve the stress, because my friends still aren’t free. In New Zealand almost everyone gets bail. The day that our friends were arrested the other news included a man who had serially raped prostitutes who was out on bail. That they are still there, that we are still going out to the prison everyday, would have seemed unreal a week ago.
I have closed this post to comments. I’m sorry, but I cannot handle abstract discussion about people I love, when I don’t know when we’ll get them back. I will be writing more about this, I will be writing about some of the issues involved. Right now I just wanted to let people know why I hadn’t been posting, and explain some of the background for when I have the energy to write about what is involved.
* There is no situation, no matter how serious and stressful, for which I don’t have the perfect Buffy quote.
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