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Issue Number 22, January 2003
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Kapatiran Issue
No. 22, January 2003
TERRORISM
SUPPRESSION ACT PASSED
Major Implications For Solidarity Groups
- Murray Horton
Kapatiran 20 (January 2002) reported on the Terrorism
Suppression Bill (which started life, in 2001, as the
Terrorism [Bombings and Financing] Bill) and on the
campaign against it. Rather than go over all that again,
your best bet is to check out the excellent Webpage on
the subject at www.arena.org.nz, which includes several expert
analyses.
We wrote then that this law has major implications for
international solidarity movements. The best critique of
the Bill was written by David Small, somebody who knows
what he's talking about, from personal experience. He and
(fomer PSNA committee member) Aziz Choudry were the
central figures in the mysterious 1996 chain of events in
Christchurch centring on David catching NZ Security
Intelligence Service agents breaking into Aziz's home,
and David being raided by the Police for his troubles. In
2000, David Small, representing himself, successfully
sued the Attorney-General (i.e. the Government) in
relation to that raid. These events featured in Kapatiran
in the late 1990s.
We strongly recommend that you read it and familiarise
yourself with this most dangerous of laws. It has an
extremely broad definition of what constitutes a
"terrorist act" and specifically says that it
covers acts in "any country". To quote from
David Small's critique:
"...As it stands however, literally thousands of New
Zealanders could have been charged under these provisions
if this law had been in place before. Most of the
international solidarity groups that have been active in
New Zealand in recent years would be outlawed -
Philippines Solidarity, Nicaragua Must Survive, Kanak
Solidarity, the anti-apartheid movement, East Timor
Independence Centre, as well as fundraising events for
Bougainville, West Papua, Native Americans, Chile,
Eritrea, El Salvador and many others. Clearly this part
of the Bill (i.e. Financing, Property Dealings, Providing
Services, Being A Member Of Or Recruiting Members For
'Terrorist Or Associated Entities') would seriously
impede international solidarity work. It would make it
very difficult to fund many groups or to bring people
from those groups to New Zealand. We know that overseas
visitors to many conferences and speaking tours are
routinely spied upon, harassed and used as a
justification to do the same to activists with whom they
are associated in New Zealand. This Bill would make it
much easier for the State to engage in such
activities..."
The Bill was reported back in March 2002 - unchanged. The
only dissension came from Green MP, Keith Locke, who
consistently opposed it all the way through. Keith (the
former national coordinator of PSNA) is a member of that
Select Committee but his colleagues refused him
permission to table a Minority Report on the Bill (both
it and his accompanying press statement can be found at
the NZ Terrorism Bill Webpage, on the ARENA Website).
It disappeared for the next few months and did not
feature at all in the July general election. Then, voila,
it reappeared in October 2002, with the Government taking
Urgency to get it rammed through its final stages in the
House. It was duly passed by 106-9, i.e with only the
Greens voting against it. Keith Locke continued to argue
that it undermined individual liberties and threatened
lawful protests. For his trouble, he was roundly abused
by both Labour and National, who disputed that the
existing Crimes Act was sufficient for the purpose.
However, compared to the openly fascist type of
anti-terrorist laws enacted in both the US and Australia,
New Zealand's piece of post-September 11 legislative
hysteria is not so bad (speaking comparatively). It
criminalises terrorist acts using explosives and the
financing of terrorist acts (National has complained that
membership per se in designated terrorist organisations
is not illegal; Prime Minister Helen Clark says that it
criminalises "participation", which is the same
thing). It defines a "terrorist act" as conduct
intended to induce terror; it must constitute serious
disruption which threatens human life.
If PSNA Are Terrorist Sympathisers, Then So Is
Helen Clark
One major concern had been that New Zealanders supporting
liberation movements overseas (which more often than not
have to resort to armed struggle - East Timor is the most
recent example) would be swept up in the scope of this
anti-terrorist law. The law as passed allows Kiwis to
make donations to such foreign groups if they intend them
to be used for humanitarian aid.
As detailed in Aziz Choudry's article, Joma Sison and the
New People's Army of the Communist Party of the
Philippines (NPA/CPP) have been added to the global list
of "foreign terrorist organisations" (along
with the likes of the Abu Sayyaf Group). The NPA has been
fighting the Armed Forces of the Philippines and all the
other guntoting forces of the Philippine government since
the 1960s. Both the CPP and NPA play a leading role in
the National Democratic Front (NDF), the political wing
of the Communist-led revolutionary movement, which is
based in Utrecht, The Netherlands. PSNA exchanges
publications with the NDF (as we do with all sorts of
other groups) and we routinely receive e-mailed NDF press
releases, etc. Back in the 1980s PSNA hosted Joma Sison
(fresh out of his nine years of imprisonment and torture,
without charge or trial, during the Marcos dictatorship)
and fellow CPP/NDF leader Luis Jalandoni when they made
New Zealand speaking tours. We don't believe that this
makes us any sort of "terrorists", simply a
group devoted to maintaining ties with the broadbased
Filipino progressive movement. If we're terrorists, then
we're in good company - none other than Helen Clark
attended one of Sison's New Zealand public meetings in
1986. Attendance at speeches by "terrorists"
years earlier was deemed sufficient grounds for
Australian cops and Intelligence agents, wielding guns
and sledgehammers, to smash their way into the homes of
hapless Indonesians resident in Australia, in the wake of
the October 2002 Bali bombings - we look forward to an NZ
encore performance at any one of Helen Clark's
residences.
"...As a member of the then Labour government you
attended one of his public meetings, and I understand
that you may have also met him. This was in the context
of your active interest in the political situation in the
Philippines in the 1980s. You went to hear what Joma
Sison had to say and recognised him as representing a
significant section of Philippine political opinion.
"Does the Government endorse or oppose the
designation of him as a "foreign terrorist"? It
is not very long ago that governments with whom New
Zealand was aligned designated Nelson Mandela and Xanana
Gusmao as terrorists. Are we fated to learn nothing from
the lessons of the very recent past? By designating Sison
and the two organisations as "terrorists"
simply lessens the chance of a just and peaceful
settlement of Asia's longest running civil war..."
(extract from a letter that I, as PSNA Secretary, wrote
to Helen Clark, 19/11/02. She declined to reply,
forwarding it to Phil Goff, Minister of Foreign Affairs).
A Bad Law, But Not As Bad As It Could Have Been
The Terrorism Suppression Act has no powers of arrest or
detention (unlike the vicious Patriot Act in the US,
which has swept thousands up in a dragnet of secret
imprisonment without charge), nor does it give powers to
NZ Intelligence agencies to behave in the Gestapo fashion
recently demonstrated by their Australian counterparts.
Kicking in doors, smashing windows, and arresting people
remains the province of the Police. The new Australian
laws are a major step towards transforming the likes of
the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO)
from spies into a fully-fledged secret police. Under the
New Zealand Act, alleged terrorists must be tried in the
normal way (no holding people without charge, no secret
trials or military tribunals); the Prime Minister has the
power to designate people or organisations as terrorists,
but is obliged to consult with both the Attorney General
and Minister of Foreign Affairs before doing so.
So, the Act is a bad law, but not as bad as it could have
been (thanks to a concerted campaign against it) and
definitely not as bad as the comparable laws in other
countries. Of course, the murderous Bali bombings
happened only a couple of days after the Act was passed
and immediately the Opposition parties started
complaining that the new Act does not go far enough to
protect New Zealand from terrorism (and the consensus is
that it wouldn't make any difference to such an attack -
expect further repressive laws to give us more
"protection". The more excitable correspondents
to the newspapers blamed it all on the Government's
decision to scrap the RNZAF Skyhawks).
The Act was first invoked in November 2002, when the
Government designated the Indonesian-based Jemaah
Islamiah as a terrorist organisation (this is the group
widely blamed for the Bali bombings). What this means is,
that anyone suspected of being involved with JI, or
collecting funds for it, can be investigated by the
Police. Assets and funds can be seized and members
imprisoned for up to 14 years.
Of course, this Act did not arise from a vacuum. There
has been a whole swag of repressive new laws in the past
few years, giving greater spying powers to Intelligence
agencies and the Police. There have been a couple of
amendments to the Security Intelligence Service (SIS)
Act; the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB
- which runs the Waihopai spybase) has been given legal
status (it has existed since 1977!) and expanded
electronic spying powers; the Crimes Amendment Number 6
Act has given increased electronic spying powers to the
Police and the SIS and GCSB. Since the September 11,
2001, attacks the Government has given an extra $30
million over three years to the Intelligence agencies,
the Police and others, such as Customs and airport
security agencies. Police liaison officers have been
posted to London and Washington and a counter-terrorism
intelligence unit has been established within the Police;
new procedures are proposed for Customs and Immigration
to "screen" incoming passengers before they
leave their country of departure; new terrorist offences
have been created of attacking the food chain and New
Zealand's biosecurity. And on and on it goes.
To put it in fashionspeak, terrorism has become the new
black. Simply invoking its name is sufficient excuse to
abrogate all sorts of individual and community rights. It
follows in the long dreary tradition of other great
bogeymen down the ages - Communism, Satanic ritual child
abuse, witchcraft, etc, etc. Dreadful crimes have been
committed and those responsible need to be caught and
punished. There is no evidence whatsoever that laws such
as these play any role in either prevention or cure.
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