Amnesty NZ
RNZ:
Amnesty International has told the United Nations that New Zealand is continuing to discriminate against Maori through the Marine and Coastal Area Act.
The organisation made a submission to the UN Committee on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights meeting in Geneva. [...] Every few years New Zealand gets looked at. This is its third assessment.
In a submission, Amnesty says the Marine and Coastal Areas Act was intended to replace discrimination against Maori in the 2004 Foreshore and Seabed Act.
But Amnesty says the new act is also discriminatory, because the customary interests it promotes exclude the right to exclusive occupation, preventing Maori from excluding the public as freehold owners can.
It notes former Attorney General Hon Simon Power agreed with this view, but justified it as a balance between the rights of Maori and the general public.
I find it odd that Amnesty International would take a stand on the issue of indigenous land rights. I find it odd because when the time came, Amnesty International was not prepared to support others who had taken a stand on indigenous land rights in 2004 when the predecessor (Foreshore and Seabed Bill) legislation was going through.
When I was facing sedition charges I emailed the NZ chapter of Amnesty and they did precisely nothing. Zippity do dah - nought. Zero. Like it wasn't happening. Like all that media somehow never reached them. They had their chance and they failed. They failed to protect human rights in this country and they failed me.
So forgive me when anytime those precious Amnesty people in this country announce that they've made some important statement or other that I just don't give a fuck.
posted by Tim Selwyn @ 3:39 pm
4 comments
4 Comments:
Amnesty have a very dodgy agenda nowadays - maybe they always did. I stopped giving them money sometime in the early noughties, I think it was when they published a range of books that promoted women's rights in Mid East countries by way of islamaphobia, even though they must have been aware that th amnesty stance was playing into the hands of imperialist invaders who merely use issues such as women's rights as an excuse to destroy the social fabric of nation states. The failed state that results from western imperial adventures in the ME;(see Iraq & Libya for example) actually sets back the cause of women's rights along with the ability of that nation state to do anything much especially prevent the theft of resources by the western invader.
An organisation such as Amnesty can only be efective as long as it doesn't have an agenda, yet Amnesty has a pro-western, pro-zionist bias reflective of the middle class ninnies who still think it's about the secret policeman's other ball.
Best guess is that the bourgeois liberals of Amnesty criticize the actions of tory governmnts in NZ when they shit on Tangata Whenua, but stay schtum during, or even promote egregious acts by pseudo leftist, so called 'social democrat' NZ governmments.
Damn shame because if there is one thing the world needs right now it is an organisation unafraid to stand up for human rights anywhere, one that calls for the prosecution of war criminals - be they Bibi Netanyahu, Saddam Hussein or Barack Obama.
Instead all we've got is the friends of empire, Amnesty and its equally corrupt companion the George Soros/National Endowment for Democracy funded Human Rights Watch.
They also refused to support Marx Jones, saying that flying his plane over Eden Park was a violent act. I have very little time for them.
Amnesty normally only acts against cases in other countries. If you wanted Amnesty to take up your case it would have been better to target Amnesty in somewhere like Australia rather than NZ.
Well put Debs.
Post a Comment
<< Home