by Keith Locke
So far, the National Government has gotten off fairly lightly following a critical report on its record by the UN Human Rights Committee released last weekend.
The issue most covered was the Committee’s recommendation that our government ‘should consider relinquishing the use of Tasers’ because of the ‘severe pain’ and injuries they cause. I was quoted in the media as saying that we ‘should take heed of this esteemed international body’ but Police Minister Judith Collins simply joined in the Police Association’s bashing of the UN Committee. It was good to see the Maori Party back the UN Committee on Tasers in Parliament yesterday. Half of the Kiwis tasered have been Maori.
Prime TV picked up another Committee recommendation and interviewed me on the Committee’s criticism of the weak status of our Bill of Rights Act 1990 (BORA), and the way laws pass through our Parliament even when the Attorney-General says they are not consistent with the Act. Just this month Paula Bennett’s Social Assistance bill received a negative Bill of Rights audit from the Attorney-General for its discrimination against certain categories of beneficiaries, like those on the DPB. But the Bill has just gone through Parliament in urgency, with its discriminatory provisions unaddressed.
If you want a fuller picture of the UN Committee’s critique of our human rights record you can go directly to the report.
The Green Party welcomes the Committee’s suggestions to improve the lot of asylum seekers – namely that they should not be detained with convicted prisoners, or sent to supposedly ‘safe third countries’ from where they could be returned to their persecutors. The UN Committee is helping redress the balance in favour of asylum seekers, who are often treated as political football in this country.
“The Terrorism Suppression Act has rightly come in for a bit of stick, because it lacks a provision to challenge terrorist designations. The committee is also on the mark in asking if rights were violated in the October 2007 ‘anti-terrorism’ raids and why there has been such a huge delay in any resulting trial.
“The Committee also makes pertinent comments on the need to address low participation of women in high-level business positions, and ‘the over-representation of Maori, in particular Maori women, in prisons’.
All in all, it is a good morale boost for the Green Party on some key issues we’ve been challenging National and Labour governments for some years.
Published in Justice & Democracy by Keith Locke on Wed, March 31st, 2010
Tags: human rights, Maori, Taser, UN
More posts by Keith Locke | more about Keith Locke
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Sorry, all comments by the Greens on Human Rights are officially null and void until they start supporting Human Rights here in New Zealand.
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How dont they support human rights locally already? The DPB changes are local, and the greens are very social justice orientated….
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http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
Greens do not support Article 20
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Hypocrisy again and again within the green party and to think I oonce have been considering party voting them…no longer while this keeps up- stick to green issues and don’t get involved in other areas!
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What authority does the UN Human Rights committee have?
It is sort of assumed that groups from the UN have a lofty higher moral authority whereas they seem to be a magnet for dingbats with a political axe to grind (such as happens in the green party which is stuffed full of individuals with an “eco-socialist” paradigm).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-socialism
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Further:
a case in point is http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/declaration.html
when the treaty was signed the issue of sovereignty was avoided by having two versions, after all Maori were in the majority (98%) of the population but colonisation was going ahead as the NZ Company colonists were on the way at the time of signing. This doesn’t stop purists from insisting we honour tino rangitiratanga although the term is given a modern interpretation which may lead people to confuse it with something like pilates.
http://blog.greens.org.nz/2009/07/24/time-is-now/
“National is prevaricating about recognising the Declaration because they are afraid it might actually mean something and affect the law of the land.
They are failing to embrace the opportunity the Declaration offers us of a deeper engagement over the relationship between the indigenous people of Aotearoa and the Crown. A fear based approach to the collective rights of Maori is sad given the patience, reasonableness and compromises that tangata whenua have already made in working on the Te Tiriti o Waitangi relationship with the Crown.
National appears to fear that the Declaration might mean Maori are actually entitled to the land they had before colonisation and for full compensation for the losses. We are already engaged in a long term process around these issues. It seems to me that whanau, hapu and iwi fully understand the limitations of the situation and are negotiating imperfect settlements as the best deal they feel they can get. They are continuing to express patience and willingness for co-management of resources when Te Tiriti o Waitangi let alone the UN Declaration actually recognises tino rangatiratanga.”
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Our approach might better be described as “Green politics”, who’d have thought, but jh knows best I’m sure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_politics
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Our approach might better be described as “Green politics”, who’d have thought, but jh knows best I’m sure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_politics
I doubt that Malthus features prominently.
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Yes, organising society around Malthusian concepts would indeed be poor policy.
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Sure do jh.
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I don’t have an issue with our police having and using tasers, providing their use is treated in the same way as the use of a gun, with each use reviewed by an independent person, etc.
The cameras on the tasers will act to discourage inappropriate use.
Trevor.
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Using a Taser to subdue a violent suspect is safer than police batons and fists. That is the surprising conclusion of a study of incidents in which US police used force to tackle a person who was resisting arrest.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18168-tasers-safer-than-batons-and-fists.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=dn18168
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The Government of New Zealand, it said, “should consider relinquishing the use of electro-muscular disruption devices” and ensure officers used stun guns only when they would otherwise need to shoot to kill.
The committee appeared to base its reasoning on the fact that the Tasers could cause life-threatening injuries and severe pain.
The committee’s view on police deployment of hand guns – which regularly not only cause life-threatening injuries and severe pain, but actually do kill people – is not recorded.
Nor does there appear to be any constructive advice forthcoming on how, precisely, police are supposed to deal with drunk, drugged or otherwise crazed individuals who pose an evident risk to the life and health of law enforcement officers, but also to members of the community.
As has been suggested, the committee’s thinking on such matters appears to be devoid of any of the context and harsh reality that faces the police every day in this country. ”
http://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/editorial/99931/stun-guns
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Tazers were used on two seperate occasions in Southland last weekend.
Two.
Where previously ‘soft-tech’ methods like negotiation and other unarmed methods have been deployed, the police decided to instead, electrocute members of the public.
This is a significant change of behaviour for Southern police.
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“Using a Taser to subdue a violent suspect is safer than police batons and fists”
Batons and fists ???
The police regards fists as one of their tools for subduing violent suspects?
Those ‘suspects’ wouldn’t have been shot by Southland police, had they not been packing tazers, they would have been subdued in the usual fashion.
Electrocution. It’s the new control option for the police.
You wouldn’t electrocute a dog, would you?
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I think you could always find situations where tasers may have solved a problem that may have become more dangerous. The real argument against tasers is the misuse that generally occurs despite assurances of tight controls.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/18/national/18TASER.html?pagewanted=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/us/01taser.html
http://glenngohr.wordpress.com/2007/12/28/compliance-can-be-important-look-out-for-tasers/
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does Keith think we should have punishment quotas so as not to be seen as racist?
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Why ignore context when a cheap snipe is possible?
The Maori Party is supportive of the UN committee (which asks that tasers only be used as an alternative to using a gun) – which Keith Locke notes is unsurprising when half those tasered have been Maori. The UN is only calling for the police’s stated policy – only using instead of guns – to be applied. In some countries there are concerns that the application becomes one of convenience in subduing offenders rather than in accord with the original standard.
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Good description of UN here:
“Now pardon me while I fall about laughing. Would this be the same United Nations whose sundry human rights bodies, until recently anyway, included such leading proponents of the rights of man as Libya, Iran, and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq? The United Nations whose soldiers, at times anyway, did nothing to stop genocidal massacre in Rwanda, and who have sex with children in the Congo and Darfur? Whose senior officials were in a fraudulent oil racket? Which is so concerned about human rights that (according to Mark Steyn) there is only one example in recent years of a senior U.N. figure having the guts to call a member state a ‘totalitarian regime’, and that was Boutros Boutros-Ghali talking about the United States?
At its best, which is not saying much, the United Nations is a giant gravy train and talk-fest, and a useless hand-wringing ditherer where just about anything needs to be done anywhere. And because this intellectually bankrupt organisation’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (China is among its members. No discrimination there) and a special Swedish rapporteur who, as I recall, spent only a couple of days in New Zealand and listened to no-one but the usual malcontents ~ because these two ‘commentators’ urge reconsideration of the 2004 Act we must leap to obey. ..”
http://www.nzcpr.com/guest189.htm
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