Feature - Upfront
Moana Jackson
by Matt Nippert
Moana Jackson, lawyer, activist and spokesperson for the legal team defending the “Urewera 16”, has one word to describe the October 15 raids by police acting under the Terrorism Suppression Act.
Why are Tuhoe planning to sue the police? Although the Police Commissioner was right in stating that people of different ethnicities were arrested, the way in which they were arrested was quantitatively and qualitatively different. The operation had a clearly racist dimension.
How so? Ruatoki was the only community that was locked down and barricaded. The Maori people of Ruatoki were the only innocent bystanders stopped by police and made to get out of their cars at gunpoint. The Maori people of Ruatoki were the only ones hounded out of their homes. When police moved on the house in Wellington, they didn’t lock down the suburb of Brooklyn and they didn’t stop innocent Pakeha people going to work. And police iwi liaison officers, appointed specifically for their knowledge of Maori communities, were excluded from the operation’s planning and implementation. Even the Police Commissioner’s own expert Maori advisory group, made up of respected leaders from around the country, was excluded.
Why do you think that was the case? Because, as with all government agencies, the talk of cultural sensitivity or partnership or biculturalism is largely window-dressing, and when the crunch comes it is ignored.
Do you think that perhaps the police were concerned that word of their planned raids might leak? Either the police trust the professionalism of their officers or they don’t. And if they thought there might be leaks because there were Maori officers involved, then that’s a fundamentally racist presumption – and an unacceptable one.
Is it possible to run a culturally sensitive police raid involving the Armed Offenders Squad? I have no doubt at all that in a different police operation – driven by Maori officers – arrests may still have been made, but they would have been made in quite a different way. They wouldn’t have gone in masked and with machine guns for a start. If they were concerned that there might be a threat of armed resistance, they would have had sufficient, planned backup, but their first move would have been to go into the communities that they knew and use that knowledge to do what had to be done.
Until recently, you were patron for a group of recruits at the Royal New Zealand Police College. What did that role involve and why did you resign? It was really a mentoring role offering support and guidance to the recruits. Two days before the operation we had the recruits at our marae, and representatives from different Maori community groups and MP Pita Sharples came to give them a different insight into the world they might be entering as police officers. I was hopeful that I could support the work that others had done for many years to improve the relationship between the police and our people. But that was betrayed, really, with the raids on Tuhoe.
Can you see yourself ever taking up a similar position? I’m doubtful. I would want to see first how the police begin to mend relationships – not just with Tuhoe, but Maori people in general – and that will take time. The damage that has been done is deep. My future relationship with the police, if any, will be determined by how well I think they are doing that process of rebuilding. Simply saying sorry will not be enough.
What do you make of the public sniping between John Minto, who opposes the raids, and Chris Trotter, who supports them? Well, I see that as a storm in a teacup on the left. Dag Hammarskjöld, who was the second Secretary-General of the United Nations at the time when most human rights conventions were being devised, said that “whenever there has been a breach of basic human rights, and when a state assumes unprecedented power, then questions must be asked.” And I think we have to ask these questions because they haven’t really been asked. The sort of debate and mud-slinging that Chris and others have been involved in is indicative of the silly leftist politics that finds personal attack more important than political analysis.
If the Terrorism Suppression Act was around when you were a young activist, do you think you’d have been in the dock alongside Tame Iti? Absolutely. Even under the pre-existing laws, members of my family have been under surveillance. My brother Syd had his house searched regularly. This is nothing new.
