KEY POINTS:
Up to 1000 people, including politicians, joined activists yesterday in a march to Auckland's Mt Eden Prison to protest against recent police raids.
A bus filled with people from Tuhoe arrived especially for the march, one of 13 organised in centres around the country.
Seventeen people were arrested under the Firearms Act and the Terrorism Suppression Act on October 15 following raids in Auckland, Wellington, Palmerston North, Hamilton, Christchurch, Whakatane and Ruatoki, 20km south of Whakatane.
The raids were the culmination of a year-long investigation into weapons training camps alleged to have been held in the Urewera country, and netted a haul of weapons.
With those from Tuhoe leading the march, the protesters chanted pro-democracy and freedom slogans and carried signs saying they were not terrorists.
Among them was one of those arrested and the only one of them in Auckland out on bail, Rongomai Bailey.
"We are standing up for ourselves and our communities which are under attack," Bailey told the crowd.
Outside the prison Green Party MP Keith Locke addressed the crowd and said ordinary New Zealanders had reacted badly to the arrests but it was Tuhoe who had been hurt the most.
The protesters were well behaved, amid a heavy police presence around the prison.
Meanwhile, a lawyer has told the Maori Party annual meeting that Maori have been wrongly branded as terrorists. Maori must not buy into this police tactic, Moana Jackson told the meeting at a Hastings marae yesterday. He said the "so-called" terrorism allegations which sparked police raids in the Bay of Plenty and other areas in the past two weeks should be looked at through the lens of Maori resistance.
"Every act of resistance by Maori since 1840 has been met with opposition. Colonising powers don't take challenge to their authority lightly. Those who take power unjustly defend it with injustice," Jackson told the meeting at the Omahu Marae.
"We must not define our people as terrorists. We might not agree with their methods but there's no place for words like rebel, heathen or savage."
Jackson criticised the use of the term terrorism when search warrants and arrests were done under the Summary Offences Act.
People had been arrested under the Firearms Act and held in custody while police tried to accumulate evidence to justify charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act, which requires approval from the Attorney General, Jackson said.
- NZPA
