KEY POINTS:
Maori must not buy into the police tactic of branding their people as terrorists, lawyer Moana Jackson told the Maori Party's annual meeting at a Hastings marae today.
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," he 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.
"We can make an act of resistance by not buying into the language they want us to use. Let's not name each other with the names they give us."
Mr Jackson criticised the use of the term terrorism when search warrants and arrests were done under the Summary Offences Act.
Nearly all charges were laid under the Firearms Act yet in their first press conference after the initial raids, police began using the term terrorism.
People had been arrested under 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.
"To talk about terrorism and not use the Terrorism Suppression Act is at best disingenuous and at worse, dishonest," Mr Jackson said.
Police also claimed the raids were not racist because pakeha and people of other ethnic groups had been raided. All but one pakeha arrested had been released on bail yet with three times as many Maori arrested, all but two were still in custody.
He questioned why in Ruatoki, a whole community had been blockaded and locked down, yet the Wellington suburb of Brooklyn was not locked-down when a house was searched there.
"I do not buy that this was a racially-neutral act."
Mr Jackson told the party to recommit to the spirit of resistance and to write letters to the Human Rights Commission, calling for an investigation into the raids.
He said the Maori Party had been formed as an act of resistance to the prevailing political system and making a stand, whether successful or not, was a legacy its members would leave to their mokopuna.
"Acts of resistance in the past were steps on a journey. That journey is not easy but when our tipuna decided to sail across the greatest ocean in the world to get here, that journey was not easy.
"Constitutional resistance is a journey towards hope."
Earlier in the day, Waiariki MP Te Ururoa Flavell told the gathering that a Maori women's refuge in Taupo had been searched in a police drugs raid.
He had met people whose partners had been locked up for nearly two weeks and who were devastated by the impact on their families.
Defending the bus driver whose claim a busload of youngsters had been searched by armed police had since been rejected by police, Mr Flavell said the driver had not been "fudging the numbers". He had been expressing his pain at having to go through the search exercise.
"From now on, Tuhoe feel they will always be called the terrorist nation."
If police do not produce clear evidence of terrorism, the four Maori MPs will be "on their case", he said.
- NZPA
