Of course, Charlotte Bellis has now got an MIQ place. As she should. However, the reason for her successful bid was wrong. That she has been made the deserving supplicant and poster momma of the monstrous iniquity that is MIQ is wrong. She is no different from all the thousands of people who miss out on being able to come home through the appalling raffle of places the Government offers or withholds or, worse, gives to the teacher’s pets.
Charlotte Bellis’s successful approach was a manipulation of a broken system but there have been many others who have had their lives and those of their loved ones decimated by this rort. MIQ should be dismantled on humanitarian grounds; not because a young, pregnant, and media-savvy woman managed to draw attention to it. Everyone who has been subjected to the distress, humiliation, loss, and heartbreak of MIQ is every bit as deserving as Charlotte Bellis.
“This is ridiculous. It is my legal right to go to New Zealand, where I have health care, where I have family. All my support is there.”
Taliban to Stranded, Pregnant New Zealander: ‘You are Safe’ | Time
It is indeed ridiculous, as it is the legal right of every NZ citizen to come home to New Zealand. Charlotte is not special. There have been other pregnant women faced with the same entry issues.
She played her trump card. The pregnant woman who was being so badly treated. She flashed images of her naked pregnant belly around the world and then she complained that her rights had been abused. She framed the story, took the selfies and posted them. All to get home. A home that it is her right to return to.
It is also the right of thousands of NZ citizens trapped in their own versions of hell, unable to return home to their support and healthcare and family. Charlotte’s pregnancy does not make her any more deserving of safe passage home to New Zealand than the thousands of others who also long to return.
Charlotte got what she wanted in less than a week. Many others are still waiting after months or years of hardship.
A pregnant New Zealand journalist stranded in Afghanistan, whose story shocked the world has been offered a place in a hotel quarantine facility so she can enter the country.
The spot for Charlotte Bellis in a quarantine hotel, and flight arrangements alongside it, had been communicated to her today by the New Zealand government.
‘There is a place in MIQ (managed isolation and quarantine) for Miss Bellis and I urge her to take it up’, Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson said at today’s post-Cabinet press conference.
Pregnant reporter Charlotte Bellis is granted entry into New Zealand by Jacinda Ardern | Daily Mail Online 1 February 2022.
Nowhere does it say in our Bill of Rights that a citizen’s right to enter our country is conditional upon pregnancy. Nowhere does it say that pregnancy is a reason to be placed before others who all have their own stories of hardship to tell. Nowhere in the NZ passport does it say that entry is only for pregnant citizens. It says we all have right of entry. Except we don’t. We have entry by political allowance – or not – as the rules, the quotas and the number of rooms change at the government’s whim.
It seems that they will now be shamed into making changes, and how ironic it is that it is the Taliban rather than an expectant mother that has brought this about. There have been others before Charlotte Bellis but this was not about others, this was just about Charlotte. She was not voicing her concerns for the rest of the team of one million, she was on a solo mission to have herself repatriated, and at a time to suit her. Her support from the Taliban regime successfully embarrassed the Ardern regime, forcing it to change its stance lest the world sees it as it truly is… a tyrannical, uncaring and cruel government.
Charlotte knew what she was doing. She took risks in a country not known for its sympathies toward women in general, let alone those embarking on a sexual relationship outside of marriage. That she had the protection of the Taliban certainly put New Zealand in an exposed position, and the world’s media revelled in the story.
There is a worldwide sense of disbelief that NZ citizens are denied entry to their own country.
New Zealand’s Zero Covid zealots tell pregnant Kiwi journalist who is stranded in Afghanistan, ‘We’ll get back to you as soon as we can’, and ask her to fill in MORE forms before deciding if they’ll allow her to escape the Taliban.
World News | Global News & International Headlines | Daily Mail Online
Read the brutally bureaucratic letter a pregnant woman trapped with the Taliban in Afghanistan was sent in reply to her 52-document application to come home to New Zealand.
World News | Global News & International Headlines | Daily Mail Online
The government either changed the MIQ rules to get around their dilemma in order to save face or they let themselves be conned into giving Charlotte what she wanted and when she wanted it. She is now on her way with everything arranged for her return to New Zealand while thousands of others will read the headlines of her triumph and weep as they remain trapped overseas.
The whole sorry story is an example of this Labour Government’s arrogance and their willingness to apply grease to squeaky wheels while others, equally deserving, remain consigned to ongoing disappointment and tough circumstances.
MIQ is not necessary for the double-jabbed or negative-tested pre and post travel to our hallowed shores. Supported with technology and RATs, all can safely isolate at home. An electronic monitoring system that requires immediate response and image upload to verify a location is already operating in many other areas – why not in New Zealand?
Charlotte Bellis has her return to suit her schedule and will give birth in the safety of New Zealand and with her family. No one would deny her that, but it was her approach and sense of entitlement that really grated as thousands of other New Zealand citizens in equally distressing circumstances continue to be denied entry by Ardern’s cruel and uncaring government.
