“There is a growing trend against migrants in this city,” Hock Beng Lee told the rally that concluded the protest. “Sticks are thrown at them and they are told: ‘Gooks go home.’” Lee, who was born in Malaysia, was one of the organizers of the protest.

Another speaker, University of Canterbury international student adviser Jonie Chan, asked, “why do I have to accept abuse when I walk on the street under bright sunlight?”

The final speaker was Mark Solomon, a leader of Ngai Tahu, a major Maori tribe based in the South Island of New Zealand. “We have to stand up against [racism],” he said. “We can’t ignore it.” Earlier, march organizer Ghazala Anwar had pointed to the inspiring example provided by the recent marches for land rights by Maori.

In the lead-up to the protest, Christchurch mayor Garry Moore issued an April 30 statement calling for its cancellation. Reversing his original endorsement, Moore described the planned action as “a recipe for disaster.

“How will this be perceived in Beijing or Kuala Lumpur [Malaysia] or Singapore?” said the mayor. “This will be seen as proving Christchurch is a racist city.” Christchurch, a city of 325,000 people, is the largest in the South Island and the hub of its lucrative tourism industry.

Moore also said the march could become a “powder keg,” given plans by the racist National Front to stage a counter-protest.

Rally organizers refused to call the march off or to water down its contents. Reaffirming the antiracist character of the action, Anwar told the May 5 Press, the city’s big-business daily, that “the banner is ‘no’ to racism and ‘yes’ to harmony. If we just came with a banner that said ‘yes to harmony’ it would be meaningless. Racism is the context.”

Some 20 members of the National Front—a group with a long history in the city—rallied behind the anti-racism march but were unable to disrupt it. After the rally the rightists were surrounded by marchers until they decided to leave.  
 
 
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