Kiwi woman watched by security services for most of her life
Spy movies are one thing, but state surveillance for this Kiwi activist has been all too real.
The file on Maire Leadbeater was opened by the security services before she was even a teenager. Now, the veteran activist has written about the history of state surveillance in Aotearoa — and on her own family connections — in her new book The Enemy Within.
“It is time for the state to stop spying on society’s critics,” she told Q+A. “I’m coming down with the conclusion that there are other ways in which we can approach those issues other than secretive, unaccountable security services and intelligence agencies.”
Leadbeater has been prominent in New Zealand’s peace movement for decades.
A key figure in the campaign for nuclear disarmament, she’s highlighted human rights issues in South East Asia and the Pacific. Leadbeater is the daughter of communist parents, Jack and Elsie Locke and sister of former Green MP Keith Locke.
Maire Leadbeater’s Security Intelligence Service (SIS) file is a hefty 90 pages.
The State have spied on Marie and her brother Kieth since they were 10 years old.
Maire is one of the most lovely and kind individuals I have ever had the privilege of knowing, and she blogs her occasionally on TDB.
Kieth was one of the best human beings I have ever met, he lived around the corner from me and we had a very long friendship.
Both are the kind of people we want in a society, intelligent and compassionate critics who put human rights before brutal national interest.
The idea that the SIS and GCSB have been spying on them both since they were children is a grotesque Orwellian thought crime that demands accountability and scrutiny.
When human beings as fine as Maire Leadbeater and Keith Locke are the enemy, how can there be truth?
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We have the biggest enemy within in our lifetime in the guise of a puppet prime minister doing the heavy lifting for Mr. 8% and grumpy old 6 %. Things are happening so fast in the name of democracy that we are powerless to stop it. History will show that the media colluded with this government in power and in opposition and it will take us beyond the point of no return .
It’s Keith not Kieth.
The true enemies of the state are those who would change it, not for their own gain, but for the benefit of all. They are the ones the state truly fears.
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