Onus now on New Zealand police to produce evidence

Dev Nadkarni
Last month’s police raids on communitieS and individuals across the country has sharply and almost bitterly divided opinion in New Zealand.

The police simultaneously raided dozens of properties and homes and arrested seventeen individuals on charges relating to illegally possessing dangerous firearms and Molotov cocktails that were allegedly used in military-style training camps.

The raids were conducted under the country’s Terrorism Suppression Act which came into existence in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. This is the first time the legislation has been invoked.

Many of those arrested have been released but some key individuals have been refused bail after mammoth hearings that dragged on for hours.

Reactions to the raids have ranged from severe criticism for the manner in which the police conducted the operations—particularly the invoking of the terrorism act—to glowing praise for their action that resulted in the seizure of deadly weapons and ammunition.

Protest demonstrations and marches against the raids have been held across the country.

Critics of the raids say the weapons have always been there and were used mainly for hunting camps in the wilds, while others have reported that they were routinely used to threaten outsiders who ventured into the remote reaches of the Urewera national park area.

Outrage: A number of people told the media they had been threatened by armed people in the area on various occasions down the years.

But most communities in the area where the main raids were conducted were outraged at the police action that involved searching of private premises late at night and even the checking of a school bus by armed, balaclava- clad policemen when children were being ferried to school.

The raids were mainly centered around Ruatoki in the Urewera Valley, a remote region on the eastern coast of the North Island, much of which is designated as a national park; but arrests were made throughout the country including in the South Island.

At the centre of the controversy is the Tuhoe tribe and its most high profile and vocal member Tame Iti, who was one of those arrested and continues to be in custody at the time of filing this report.

The Tuhoe tribe claims it was never a party to the Treaty of Waitangi—the treaty signed between the Crown and New Zealand’s Maori tribes in 1840 that is widely considered the country’s founding document.

There have been reports that some elements in the tribe have long wanted their own rule in what the Tuhoe consider their territory. For several years there have been signs in the area allegedly put up by these elements that seek to label lands as being “confiscated” by settlers. 

Some years ago, during a protest, Tame Iti pitched a tent outside parliament in Wellington labeling it the ‘Tuhoe embassy to New Zealand’.

On other occasions, Iti has been arrested and released following charges of unlawfully using firearms at a public function.

But his supporters in the area say his work is solely community based and that he has been running community development programmes for years.

In fact, he has been receiving taxpayer funds as a social worker in the Tuhoe Hauora Health Trust. However, the trust’s chairman Tamati Kruger has said that the alleged ‘military-style training camps’ were not part of Iti’s work with the trust.

At first, the government distanced itself from the police action saying that the police were reacting to their own intelligence reports and that the government was merely informed about the raids. But it is now believed that the country’s Security Intelligence Service (SIS) was involved in the pre-raid investigations.

The government has so far refrained from making any statement on the raids pending developments of the case as they unfold in court over the next several weeks and months.

No one has made bold enough to guess whether the style in which the raids were conducted—especially under the terrorism act—was indeed justified.

Some observers believe the police may have some damning evidence that will help them establish a justification for the raids but will only come out in court as the case progresses.

According to them, it would have been rash and foolhardy on the part of the police to have orchestrated the raids without evidence that might indeed prove damning in the courts.

Indeed, wait and see is what it is for the whole country. Right now, the onus is on the police to come up with the evidence it has so far gathered to justify its action—perhaps the biggest of its kind ever—and convince the courts and the nation that it did the right thing by swooping in on what it thought were terrorist elements capable of causing harm to the country.

The way the case progresses will be watched with bated breath by the entire country in the months to follow as its outcome undoubtedly will have implications on the run-up to the national election due next year.