Marie Loretta
When a group supported by up to 30% of a nation’s citizens request a meeting with a nation’s leader and are repeatedly derided by that leader – supported in her smear by dishonest media portraying the group as unclean, sub human and not worth addressing – the country is in crisis.
When leaders of the group who disagree with the accepted narrative are criminalised, incapacitated and legally silenced – the country is in crisis.
On Wednesday New Zealand witnessed a day of extreme violence by Police (including riot police), targeted at its citizens young and old. Brutality caught on camera included indiscriminate use of pepper spray, punching an elderly man until he fell unconscious, repeatedly punching an already restrained woman and threats that Oranga Tamariki would remove children from families.
The day ended with tear gas, fires and violence on a scale never seen before by the younger generation. The Prime Minister appeared on the MSM and gloated about the success of the mission.
New Zealand is in crisis.
Leighton Baker, who became a leadership figure in Camp Freedom, was pepper-sprayed while peacefully protesting and then arrested for no greater crime than protesting against infringements upon civil liberties in New Zealand and requesting to meet with the Prime Minister.
He was never violent. He was never aggressive. His bail conditions include not being allowed to speak out against the Covid Response Bill. He has been criminalised and silenced.
Victims of the brutality unleashed on the old and young included 78-year-old co-leader of the Outdoors Party, Alan Simmons, who is in Wellington Hospital waiting for an urgent hip replacement after being smashed by Police.
Sue Grey, fellow co-leader of the Outdoors Party gave an emotional update:
“What a terrible day in New Zealand history. I’m sitting outside Wellington hospital where I’ve spent the last few hours in there with Alan who is awaiting urgent hip replacement operation after his thigh was smashed by Police brutality. All he was doing was videoing what they were doing. Trying to get some evidence for the court. They just came storming down the street and repeatedly smashed him with their shields.”
Another leader incapacitated by Police violence.
It started with a convoy and morphed into a civil liberty occupation with a group of hundreds on weekdays, swelling to thousands on weekends. Kiwis from all over the country and from all walks of life: farmers, students, priests, midwives, teachers and entire families, infants to elderly took time off work, off study and away from their lives to express their frustration with mandates and their disillusionment at the government’s lack of respect for civil liberties.
They put up with Trevor Mallard childishly turning Parliament sprinklers on and his low-level torture tactic of playing annoying songs endlessly.
They got through a day of Police attempting to physically push them out of Parliament grounds. They braved Cyclone Dovi and the constant threat of removal and potential violence from Police.
They turned it into a festival, had three different food tents, toilets, showers (briefly), a vegetable garden and a main stage, and showed this Labour government exactly how easy it is to set up good infrastructure.
They had a security team constantly clearing out those seen as infiltrators threatening the peace and attempting to introduce violent ideology. They repeatedly requested to meet with the Prime Minister or any Members of Parliament and were met by one MP, David Seymour.
Seymour met with a group off site and said the protesters were “people who are human, part of New Zealand and we will need a way to glue this country back together when this is all over”. For this, he was chastised by the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition Chris Luxon.
Jacinda constantly wove a negative narrative about the people she refused to meet with and had no real knowledge of, saying in response to David Seymour’s meeting:
“I don’t think it was a responsible thing to do… To meet with those who are obstructing Wellingtonian’s from going about their everyday lives, bullying and harassing people who are trying to go to school or work.”
In response to the violence of Wednesday, she said:
“There has all the way through been an element to this occupation that has not felt like New Zealand and that’s because it’s not”. “We will never ever excuse it. It was an attack on front-line police, it was an attack on our Parliament, it was an attack on our values and it was wrong.”
For those who watched it unfold throughout the day on Livestream we know without a doubt that it was an attack on New Zealanders: by our Police.
For those who watched it, it was an attack by our Prime Minister on our New Zealand values.
Dehumanising other New Zealanders and setting Police upon them for disagreeing goes against our belief in the right to democratically protest, and it is wrong.
Even her churlish reference to the occupation as “Camp Covid” was a double standard. When there were 17 reported cases at Camp Freedom, Victoria University Halls of residence had 648 cases but got no derision from the Prime Minister and no claims of squalor.
Her ability to deride and ostracise New Zealanders who do not agree with her and paint a negative narrative is a constant hallmark of her double standards and hypocrisy.
Another embarrassing example of this double standard is Nanaia Mahuta’s address on behalf of the Government to the United Nations:
“There is no victory in unjustified and unprovoked aggression. We must be clear. The Russian government has repeatedly ignored opportunities for diplomacy, negotiation, de-escalation, and has instead chosen aggression… We must not let diplomacy fail. We must persevere in pursuit of an outcome that prevents further suffering. War, Mr President, must stop.”
New Zealand must also be clear. In New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern has repeatedly ignored opportunities for diplomacy, negotiation and de-escalation, and has instead chosen aggression.
This is a moral and political crisis.
In 1990 Labour Primer Minister Geoffrey Palmer introduced the Bill of Rights in Parliament. He explained that it was a safeguard to protect New Zealanders against the unbridled power of future governments:
“It is unlikely that there will be a wholesale disregard of human rights in New Zealand in the foreseeable future, but… we cannot afford to wait until rights disappear before we take action, because it is too late by that stage. It is better to have a Bill of Rights when it is not needed than to not have one when it is needed.”
In a 2018 address to the Auckland District Law Society Labour MP and Attorney General David Parker said:
“It is fundamentally important to the New Zealand I want to live in that freedoms and civil liberties be maintained and promoted. Liberties such as the recognition of human rights, freedom from violence, freedom of political expression, freedom of religion, protection under the rule of law, secure property rights, liberties for women, as well as for religious, ethnic, and sexual minorities.”
Yet four years later David Parker has not come to the defence of these freedoms, nor attempted to uphold the Bill of Rights when the Prime Minister has blatantly violated it.
She has created a two-tier society that has corrupted our basic kiwi value of equality.
Marama Fox summed up the sentiment of many New Zealanders:
“These people have every right to be here and yes it has caused disruption to the Wellington streets. But no one wants to negotiate.” “They have painted them as dirty castoffs. So they get what they deserve. And now everyone’s going ‘Good on you the Police’, for rampaging through throwing tear gas in people’s eyes and pushing people – old women and children to the ground.
“The Government is not listening to these people. They have cast them aside and now they are sweeping them off the streets and telling them to go home where they come from you dirty unwashed non-vaxed people.
“I’m vaxed, I’m boosted, but I respect their right to protest and I respect their right to do it peacefully. And it hasn’t been the protestors that have antagonised anything today and in the last few days.
“They have been pushed upon and pushed upon and now they are getting pushed right out. Please go away you dirty smelly non-vaxed people. We don’t want to talk to you. Even the ones who have been vaxed, don’t want to talk to you either.”
Because of the Prime Minister’s unwillingness to address the growing unrest in New Zealand and her blind adherence to her failing agenda, New Zealand is in crisis.
