Vol. 71/No. 45      December 3, 2007

This is the first time the New Zealand government has tried to use the 2002 law. The raids and arrests are strikingly similar to “antiterrorist” police operations familiar to workers in other countries. After a year and a half of surveillance, an army of cops invaded the Maori community, rounded people up, and seized personal property said to be evidence of “military-style” activity on the part of the activists. Their methods—from dragging people out of bed in the early morning hours to subjecting their victims to public humiliation, to holding people for hours without food, water, or access to toilets—are not unlike what immigration cops have carried out in raids across the United States.

A government-orchestrated media campaign has labeled those arrested as “violent extremists.” The case is a frame-up of Maori rights activists for their political views and their work to combat discrimination against the Maori, an oppressed nationality in New Zealand. It should be condemned and the charges dropped.

Capitalist rulers around the world adopted “antiterrorist” laws like New Zealand’s in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, to prepare for coming conflicts with workers and farmers inside their borders. The rulers anticipate greater resistance from working people increasingly pushed to the wall by the employers’ offensive on wages, working conditions, and standard of living. “Anti-terrorist” laws widen police powers of surveillance and detention, curtail defendants’ rights at trial, step up the use of federal identification cards, and introduce new sanctions against immigrants without documents.

They go hand-in-hand with moves to win acceptance for the use of federal armed forces at home, such as the U.S. Northern Command; “preventive” detention without charges; secret courts; and deployment of troops and cops at airports, transportation centers, and public buildings. Attacks on democratic rights are justified as a way to protect “us” from “the terrorists.”

Public protests, like those that continue to unfold in New Zealand, are needed to oppose these anti-working class “terror laws” and their implementation. Supporters of democratic rights scored a victory when Wellington ruled it would not proceed with prosecution under that law, although the 16 defendants still face other charges. At the same time, the rulers’ are working to make the law more palatable to working people.

The “war at home” is the other side of the “war on terror” abroad. The imperialist wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond stem from the same source: the deepening crisis of world capitalism. Only by replacing the capitalist misrulers with rule by the workers and farmers can we disarm the war makers and end their terror against the toilers of the world.
 
 
Related articles:
Marchers in New Zealand protest police ‘antiterror’ raids, arrests  
 
 
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