By arresting Palestine Action protesters – Britain is enabling War crimes and Genocide – Will NZ Government do the same?

Britain’s arrest of over 500 Palestine Action protesters has sent a chilling signal across Western democracies — dissent is being recast as extremism. Now the question for New Zealand is simple: will our Government follow the UK down the same authoritarian path?

More than 500 arrested at UK protest against Palestine Action ban

Police have arrested more than 500 people during a mass vigil in central London to oppose the ban on campaign group Palestine Action.

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More than 1,000 people gathered in Trafalgar Square for the demonstration on Saturday, with many holding signs saying, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

Al Jazeera

The despicable ongoing arrest culture of Palestinian protesters by the British, who have capitulated to Zionist extremists ever since Keir Starmer used fake antisemitism to undermine Jeremy Corbyn, continues farcically with protesters arrested for holding  signs saying you support Palestine Action, which the British have declared is a terrorist group.

Is New Zealand quietly preparing to criminalise protest?

In New Zealand, our Right Wing what critics describe as a Zionist-apologist Government who has refused to criticise Israel for what many international observers have described as genocide in Gaza, or highly controversial military escalation with Iran or their war crimes in Lebanon, have quietly started legislation to come after protesters.

Late last year, investigative journalist Mick Hall (the very same Journalist fired from RNZ for being falsely accused of being a Russian agent), released a special investigation into how the New Zealand Government is secretly moving against Palestinian protesters…

Secretive terror laws review targets protest and dissent

A leaked document has revealed secretive plans to revise terror laws in New Zealand so that people can be charged over statements deemed to constitute material support for a proscribed organisation.

It shows the government also wants to widen the criteria for proscribing organisations to include groups that are judged to ‘facilitate’ or ‘promote and encourage’ terrorist acts.

The changes would see the South Pacific nation falling in line with increasingly repressive Western countries like the UK, where scores of independent journalists and anti-genocide protesters have been arrested and charged under terrorism laws in recent months.

The consultation document, handed to the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties (NZCCL), reveals the government has consulted with a limited number of unnamed groups this year over plans to legally redefine what material support involves, so that public statements or gestures involving insignia like flags can lead to charges if construed as support for proscribed groups.

As part of a proposal to revise the Terrorism Suppression Act, the document suggests the process for designating organisations as terror groups should be changed by “expanding the threshold to enable more modern types of entities to be designated, such as those that ‘facilitate’ or ‘promote and encourage’ terrorist acts.”

The Ministry of Justice has been contacted in an attempt to ascertain which groups it has been consulting with and why it believed the changes were necessary.

NZCCL chairman Thomas Beagle told Mick Hall In Context his group was concerned the proposed changes were a further attempt to limit the rights of New Zealanders to engage in political protest.

“When you look at the proposal to expand the Terrorism Suppression Act, alongside the Police and IPCA conspiring to propose a law change to ban political protest without government permission, you really have to wonder what’s going on,” he said.

A report by the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) in February proposed to give police the right to ban protests if they believed there was a high chance of public disorder and threats to public safety.

That would potentially mean bans on Palestinian solidarity protests if far right counter protesters posed a threat of violent confrontation

…we constantly see Bishop Brian Tamaki calling for his Christo-fascist Destiny Church to attack Palestinian protesters in the streets to tear down their flags!

This isn’t about terrorism — it’s about silencing dissent

…this is what concerns me most…

The stand-alone legislation would put New Zealand in line with other Five Eyes and NATO-aligned security jurisdictions such as Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

…this is being set up as a new sedition law that the Five Eyes are all privately agreeing to with barely any public oversight! This starts to look less like modern lawmaking and more like the quiet return of sedition laws — dressed up in the language of national security.

The document says the Government wants to progress “targeted amendments” to the Act, creating or amending offences “to capture contemporary behaviours and activities of concern” like “public expressions of support for a terrorist act or designated entities, for example by showing insignia or distributing propaganda or instructional material.”

It suggests that the existing process for proscribing an organisation is slow and cumbersome, noting that: “Specific provisions need to be followed to designate entities not on a UN list, but the decision-making process is lengthy and the designation period is short. This impacts timely decision-making and the usefulness of designation as a tool to prevent terrorism.”

It proposes to improve “the timeliness of the process, by considering changes to who the decision-maker is” and extending the renewal period from three to five years.

The document suggests consulting the Attorney-General over designation-related decisions to ensure legal requirements are met may not be required and questions whether the designation process requiring the Prime Minister to review decisions twice is necessary. It asks whether others, like the Foreign Minister, should be involved in the decision-making process.

Beagle believes the secretive proposals pose a threat to New Zealand’s liberal democracy.

“Political protest is an important part of New Zealand’s history,” he said.

“Whether it’s the environment, worker’s rights, feminism, Māori issues, homosexual law reform or any number of other issues, political protest has had a big part in forming what Aotearoa New Zealand is today. It’s a right protected by New Zealand’s Bill of Rights and is a critical part of being a functioning democracy.”

The move forms part of a wider trend of moves to intimidate the public and close down dissent and criticism, particularly among academics and journalists, over New Zealand’s foreign policy, now closely aligned with NATO and US interests.

The government is also widening the definition of foreign interference in a way that could see people who ‘should have known’ that they were being used by a foreign State to undermine New Zealand’s interests prosecuted.

The Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill, which passed its first reading in Parliament on November 19, would criminalise the act of foreign interference, while also increasing powers of unwarranted searches by authorities.

The Bill is effectively a reintroduction of the country’s old colonial sedition laws inherited from Britain, the broadness of the law having allowed it to be used against communists, trade unionists and indigenous rights activists.

…Zionist apologist astroturf fake Union, the Free Speech Union, is currently attempting to force free speech laws onto Universities, it’s only a matter of time before they start playing the antisemitism game here in NZ.

If these new secret powers go through, will The Daily Blog be banned in New Zealand?

The Daily Blog has been relentless in our criticism of Israel’s occupation and their ethnic cleansing war crime genocide and we will only stop being critical of Israel when they stop butchering Palestinians.

The Daily Blog will not bow the knee to Zionist apologists and we will continue supporting the Palestinian movement in Aotearoa.

The State will have to take this blog out of my dead cold hands before I agree to any restrictions in criticising Israel!