NRT: We don’t need new laws to fight terrorism

Written By: - Date published: 2:14 pm, October 8th, 2014 - 10 comments
Categories: john key, national, police, same old national - Tags: ,

no-right-turn-256Reposted from No Right Turn

Over the past few days, John Key has been talking up the “threat” of kiwis fighting in Syria, and the need for new laws to stop them leaving or returning to New Zealand. On the latter point, there’s an obvious freedom of movement issue: every person has the right to leave here, and every kiwi has the right to return. Cancelling of seizing passports and stranding people overseas violates that right unjustifiably. And if done without judicial process, it constitutes an extra-judicial punishment of exile – the sort of thing we criticise foreign regimes for doing.

What about punishing that tiny number of jihadis for fighting overseas? The way Key talks, you’d think that it wasn’t a crime. But he’s lying. The groups he is concerned about – IS and Al-Nuisrah – are both designated terrorist entities [see p. 149 – 150]. Which means that anyone recruiting for them, financing them, or participating in them is committing a crime punishable by up to 14 years imprisonment. New Zealand claims extraterritorial jurisdiction over its citizens for those crimes, so there’s no doubt they can be prosecuted. In short: we don’t need new laws to fight terrorism. All we need is for the police to do their jobs properly to enforce the old ones. And if they can’t be arsed or don’t want to do that before punishing people, then I think we have a much bigger and more immediate problem with them than with people leaving NZ to fight overseas.

10 comments on “NRT: We don’t need new laws to fight terrorism ”

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  1. travellerev 1
    8 October 2014 at 2:17 pm

    The precursor to the no-fly list of every Tom, Dick and Harry our government doesn’t like! But conspiring? Neh, never!

  2. Lindsey 2
    8 October 2014 at 3:06 pm

    The British establishment vilified the people joining the International Brigade. Shows that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.

    • Murray Rawshark 2.1
      9 October 2014 at 4:13 am

      Do you know what the Kiwi government attitude was to anyone who went to help Spain?

      I think the government attitude to any Kiwi who goes to fight for any foreign power or organisation should be the same. What makes helping Israel while it’s massacring Palestinians any different to helping ISIL, for example? I’m not convinced we should care either way, unless they commit war crimes.

      • Tautoko Mangō Mata 2.1.1
        9 October 2014 at 7:48 am

        +1 MR

      • joe90 2.1.2
        9 October 2014 at 10:56 am

        Do you know what the Kiwi government attitude was to anyone who went to help Spain?

        Predictable.

        On the day they were to leave Auckland, 18 May 1937, the nurses were summoned to the Central Police Station and interrogated for three hours about their reasons for going. The police took a ‘slightly different tactic’ with each woman. Shadbolt was accused of being a member of the Communist Party and Dodds of having an illegitimate child. Sharples, the oldest member of the group, was seen as simply naïve. Though the nurses were released in time to board the Awatea, SMAC was outraged. It wrote to the government demanding an explanation and an inquiry.

        http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/page/new-zealand-nurses-detained-way-spanish-civil-war

        Like others who had served in the Spanish Civil War, Shadbolt was marked as ‘dangerously political’ and initially found it difficult to find work. Eventually she was employed at a private hospital in Martinborough. During the Second World War she worked at an Auckland convalescent home for returned soldiers and back at Auckland Hospital.

        http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/people/rene-shadbolt

        • Murray Rawshark 2.1.2.1
          9 October 2014 at 7:38 pm

          Thanks for that, joe90. Our first fighters against fascism got shat on by ngati poaka. What a surprise.

  3. Tracey aka Rawshark 3
    8 October 2014 at 4:11 pm

    thanks NRT

    I didnt know about that law

  4. Pascals bookie 4
    9 October 2014 at 5:22 am

    Weird thing is that while Key has been talking up the threat of ISIS admirers living in NZ and wanting to go and fight, he then says that if we attack ISIS it wouldn’t increase our risk profile for terrorist attacks.

    How does that work? Seems to me that if we go to war on ISIS then jihadis in NZ could save themselves a plane fare.

    • Scott1 4.1
      9 October 2014 at 5:46 am

      +1.
      real answer is probably that there is no significant threat in NZ, and it is more plastic swords than real ones. But Key definitely wants to have it both ways.

  5. Rolf 5
    9 October 2014 at 10:36 am

    Maybe we need to add that the right to leave and the right to return to you country is a fundamental human right under the UN Human Rights Charter, which New Zealand subscribe to. Maybe we should also remember that the organizations the US hegemony, where New Zealand is a part, classify as “terrorist” also consider this US controlled group, including New Zealand”, as just “terrorists”, “axis of evil”, “network of death”, or “depth of evil”. The US, supported by New Zealand, is also driving a terror campaign, as the other side see it, with the invasion of Iraq, bombing of civilians, and terrorize civilians with drone attacks. It is just not that simple.