Posts by Kracklite
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
I'm never happy about people wearing masks on a demo (how do you know who they are) However given the context of police dawn raids nicking activists it is rather more understandable than usual eh?
That's why some dressed as clowns with full face paint during the Springbok tour protests and more recently outside Te Papa... didn't stop the boot/head interfaces though.
While it may seem trite to say so, there is a strong and entrenched antagonism between the police and activist groups that's going to have a wider effect on the overall role and position of the police and the level of trust that ties them to their communities. As Phil Wallington pointed out a while back, it's going to undermine "Safer Communities Together."
-
A couple of notes about "activists" as that word, as well as "terrorist" and "traitor" have been thrown around rather immoderately in some cases, with the (not necessarily intentional) implication that they are synonymous.
There is a wide range of possible meanings for "activist" and there is a wide range of activities. There is a world of difference between an anarchist vegan who protests outside a Te Papa weapons conference and a would-be bomber and assassin. I don't know the latter, but I do have personal contacts with the former who are generally based at 128 Abel Smith St (though I'm far too carnivorous to be involved myself).
I don't have anything to say here about Tuhoe or terrorism except to say that I am against terrorism - and child abuse and whatever else I'm supposed to state public opposition to. I think that the Wellington anarchist community are being tarred with the terrorism brush or the supporting terrorism brush, and not by accident. There is a history here, and it does have a bearing on how the police have acted in Wellington.
Ross Meurant's article on the insular police culture is particularly enlightening here.
The "hippy protestors" of the Peace Action and Anti-Vivisectionist and feminist groups as I've heard them called, have long been a thorn in the side of the police here and there have been a number of confrontations at protests where the police have acted violently and aggressively and then charged those they assaulted with assault on a number of occasions (you know the joke: violently attacked an officer by flinging themselves on his boots and his fists). The police assault charges have always been thrown out of court, but nonetheless the injuries have lingered (one I know of has permament memory loss and has left NZ), others I have spoken to and have known for years have been severely bruised in the process of being arrested - and these are all fairly small, slightly-built women who were not likely to have offered much of a real threat to a cop.
Moreover, they were intimately linked with the Louise Nicholas cases and associated protests outside the police station and college, something that rather pissed the police off.
Some of them have been raped in the past and didn't get any help from the police and see that Rickards is still receiving pay and benefits (even if he is IMO certain to be sacked soon). This matters to them - a lot.
The left is not some huge monolith (Judean People's Front/People's Front of Judea and all that) but there are personal links and contacts of someone-who-knows-someone-who-knows-Kevin Bacon and someone from the Urerewas may have couch surfed in Wellington, or more likely, the police saw an opportunity to go on a fishing expedition and rope in a few "subversives" who have irritated and embarrassed them in the past. My contacts tend towards the latter interpretation. The clearly vindictive nature of the leaks to the media would also support that.
It has been asked, well, why didn't they go to the police if they heard about something bad happening up north? The answer would be (and I think that RB suggested this above) that they have no trust for the police at all - and they have good reason not to. Moreover, there is no grand left-wing conspiracy so in most cases, one group simply doesn't know what another group was up to. From what I hear, there are divisions, with some supporting the Ruatoki people, others wanting the separate themselves - they DO hate violence, but haveing been on the receiving end of it from police none of them want to talk to them.
They have held events and an open day in Wellington to show what sort of people they really are. I didn't see much mention of that in the Dompost or the Herald, but that's not simply because they all support bombing and assassination - there's a lot more to it than that.
Sorry about the long essay, but I get pissed off by simplistic statements alonmg the lines of "well if you don't stand on a street corner and shout that you're against it, you must be for it."
Oh yes, and I'm also against... oh, whatever. Bad stuff.