October 15th Solidarity - Remember the state terror raids

Five days have been put aside in September for the solicitor-general's case against Dominion Post editor Tim Pankhurst and Fairfax New Zealand (part of the Murdoch empire and the owner of the Wellington Dominion Post, The Christchurch Press and several other newspapers, as well as TV3). The solicitor-general, David Collins is taking contempt proceedings against them for publishing 'Operation 8' conversations secretly recorded by police over their two year investigation. The court hearing start on 15th September 2008 in Wellington. This decision was announced by Justice Randerson in the Supreme Court.

Two judges, including Justice Randerson will be in court for the hearing. A telephone conference will take place on 9th September to finalise the dates. Jail is a possibility, but only if it is sought by the solicitor-general. In this case, jail is not being sought and only Fairfax could face a fine. Collins has not applied to have Pankhurst fined.

On 14th November 2007, the Dominion Post and The Press published information which they obtained of the 155-pages search warrant which was used to raid over 40 homes on 15th October 2007. The Dom Post called it 'The Terrorism Files'. They printed several quotes without attributing them to anyone. "To help ensure that [revealing what police found relating to the terrorism charges will not influence those firearms cases] we removed the names from the material" wrote Pankhurst in his editorial on 14th November. David Collins said that "the articles were sensational in tone and highly memorable." He went on to say that the decision not to attribute comments to individual defendants had the effect of attributing them equally to all of those charged.

Pankhurst said that "Police needed to treat [what was happening in Te Urewera] seriously and needed to investigate. To do anything less would have been to fail in their duty to protect New Zealanders. We believe that the police were right to act. However, we also believe the public has the right to make its own judgment on the police's credibility, and to do that it needs as much information as possible, within the bounds of the law and within the bounds of fairness to all those involved. That is why we decided to publish." As if to explain his definition of the 'bounds of fairness', Pankhurst then states that those arrested were planning to commit “actions so brutal people would think al Qaeda had arrived”.

Curiously, the Dominion Post did not believe that the public needed to make its own judgement about suppressed information regarding the rapist police officers Brad Shipton, Bob Schollum and Clint Rickards during their gang rape trial in 2006. The suppressed information, that two of these men were already serving prison time for a nearly identical offence and that more trials were forthcoming, might have resulted in a very different outcome had the public been made aware of it.

If the Dominion Post is in fact so interested informing the public, perhaps they could endeavour to publish the entire 25,000 pages that have so far been disclosed to the defendants (plus around 200 DVDs with video and photo material). Reading through these pages, any person will be able to see the racist nature of 'Operation 8' and what this colonial government is really scared of: indigenous sovereignty. WE SAY - Please go ahead - and publish it all!