Her Royal majesty’s opposition’s pollster has shown a particularly obsessive streak this week. He has posted no less than six posts in as many days about Golriz Ghahraman and has continued the theme that somehow she has been deceptive in not declaring that she defended as well as prosecuted war criminals even though she said it at various times to various reporters.
He recently claimed to have identified 15 different occasions where he says she has misled us. There are a few problems with his analysis the biggest one being that most of the “occasions” were other people talking about Golriz.
One was in a Green Party newsletter, no doubt relying on the slightly inelegantly worded description of her on the Green’s website.
One was her wikipedia page. But the original post appears to have been written by a user HenryCrun15 who is interested in politics in New Zealand. Chances are he also used the Green’s website for the information.
Six are media references which make generalised references to her work. No doubt they all accessed the original slightly inelegantly expressed CV on the Green Party website or maybe they were just referencing each other. And there are a further five occasions including her own linked in page where reference to her defence work was made.
Three are statements by James Shaw in different speeches where Shaw says variations of “Golriz is now a human rights lawyer who worked as a prosecutor at the United Nations tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. She also worked on the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Cambodia” and claims the statement is totally wrong. Um DPF the statements are pretty well completely correct except for a slight misdescription of her initial role which no doubt was seeded from the original slightly messy statement about her CV.
One article written by Golriz and published in Impolitikal magazine has her stating how she was “prosecuting heads of state for the United Nations”. Farrar claims that she only prosecuted one head of state. The problem with this claim is that she was involved in the prosecution of heads of state and it was more than one. And strangely Farrar’s post went up with the incorrect information
Another source was the Green’s confidential newsletter to Green members during the list selection process where Golriz said that “my work as a lawyer for the UN and in NZ have focused on enforcing human rights and holding governments to account”. Again this is the work she was doing so I fail to see the problem.
One is a Villianesse interview. DPF says “[a]lso in an Orwellian move The Villainesse has edited the story to remove reference to prosecuting”. After complaining that Golriz should have had the stories corrected he then complains when one is.
The problem however is that Farrar has not corrected his mistake. It has been shown to him conclusively that one of his claimed instances of dishonesty is not correct. Yet his post still claims there are 15 occasions when we have been deceived.
The last is Golriz’s maiden speech where she said “I saw that at the Rwanda Tribunal, at The Hague and when I prosecuted the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Holding politicians and armies to account for breaching their powers.” The statement is again correct in fact clearly correct. DPF needs to understand that holding people to account requires defence lawyers working to ensure that their rights are respected.
And he ought to appreciate how a slightly incorrect statement with enough retelling can suddenly become perceived truth. National engages in this all the time.
I suspect the National Party research unit has been scouring the internet seeking traces of text referring to Golriz where the words can be spun to suggest that she has not been completely honest. The funny thing about the English language is that it can be bent into all sorts of ways. If it was as precise as Farrar claims we would have no need of lawyers.
This is just a nasty gratuitous hounding of Golriz.
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