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Posts Tagged ‘human rights’

Fiji – our neighbourhood – our concern

Posted by Darien Fenton on August 7th, 2011

Sometimes I wonder if New Zealanders who continue to visit Fiji for its sun and resorts really understand how serious the situation is, especially when it comes to human and workers’ rights. Perhaps if they did, they might not be so keen to visit.

In the past months, the regime has turned its guns on free trade unions and it’s going from bad to worse. This week the President of Fiji’s Trades Union Congress, Daniel Urai was arrested for holding an “unauthorised” union meeting and a new decree placing further restrictions on workers’ rights was introduced. This comes after the recent arrest of the internationally respected Secretary of the Fiji Trades Union Congress, Felix Anthony, who recently visited New Zealand to talk with unions about the situation in Fiji. There are mounting concerns he will be arrested again shortly.

The decree adopted this week is called “Essential National Industries Employment Decree” which appears to:

  • Ban all strikes, slowdowns, sick actions or any action that may negatively impact on the employer
  • Ban unions from representing workers in negotiating collective bargaining outcomes
  • Void all current collective agreements within 60 days
  • Provide that after 60 days period any strike or lockout may take place only with the written authority of the Minister
  • Prohibit overtime payments, including for weekend work, work on days off, and work on public holidays unless agreed to by the employer
  • Cancel all current Wages Council Orders regarding minimum terms and conditions of work in designated industries
  • Require that all members, office bearers, officers and executives of the union be employees of the designated company.

The decree applies to all Government owned industries and any other that the Minister may designate.  Individuals who break the decree can be fined $50,000 and five years imprisonment. Unions can be fined $100,000.

This is another attempt by the military regime to suppress dissenting views, using intimidation tactics designed to instill fear in workers and unions.

And in a bizarre twist, KFC has closed its three stores in Fiji, claiming Commodore Frank Bainimarama’s regime has blocked imports of ingredients until the secret recipe was revealed.

I think the tourists will survive the demise of KFC in Fiji, but the attack on workers’ and human rights in our own Pacific neighbourhood is something we should all be very worried about.

I hope our government will see it that way and let the regime know that this is unacceptable to New Zealand.

And if you are planning to visit Fiji, I don’t begrudge you a nice holiday, but you do need to go with your eyes wide open.

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Filed under: Workers, human rights, international, workers rights
20 Comments

What about taking a leaf out of Hague’s book, Key?

Posted by Maryan Street on January 21st, 2011

William Hague has been here for 2 days and leaves this evening. He is the UK Foreign Affairs Secretary and he has been paying NZ the first bilateral visit of a Foreign Affairs Secretary for perhaps 30 years. He’s a clever bloke. I remember him as the incoming Leader of the Opposition in 1997 when I was in Britain and Tony Blair romped in. He got a terrible pasting from the media (as Leaders of the Opposition do….) but has turned out to be a very significant political presence in the Tory front bench in Opposition and now in the UK Cabinet.

I can’t fault his principled approach to Foreign Affairs. He has been forthright about human rights, calling it the conscience of Foreign Affairs. He has spoken out about the threatened stoning of Sakineh Ashtiani in Iran, for alleged adultery. Our government said nothing. He was quick to call the Burmese elections a charade and prompt to support Aung San Suu Kyi’s release - our government was virtually mute on these events, until pressed.

He has maintained overseas aid commitments, despite the biting impact of the recession in Britain, pledging concretely to save the lives of 50,000 mothers and a quarter of a million babies around the neediest parts of the world by 2015, in pursuit of the Millenium Development Goals.  Our government turns overseas aid into private sector gains because in their view, getting the private sector to provide economic growth is the beginning and end of development assistance. Millenium Development Goals are ignored.

Hague has also committed to getting to .7% of GDP in aid by 2013 – an extraordinary commitment in these times of government cuts. We only got half way to that in the good times at .35%. I can’t see this government prioritising it any higher.

He promotes the participation of women in peacebuilding  negotiations and reconciliation teams in regions of conflict, in line with UN resolution 1325. Our government couldn’t give a toss.

Hague sees an effective global response to climate change as the thing to underpin security and prosperity. Our government promotes an Emissions Trading Scheme which is a laughing stock.

I hope William Hague and Murray McCully had a good talk or two. They are both conservatives after all. We haven’t done what the UK tells us to for years and nor should we. But there is no harm in learning from the efforts of people with whom we have a great deal in common.

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Filed under: Foreign Affairs, human rights, overseas aid
6 Comments

Common Sense from the High Court on Adoption – Now it’s Parliament’s Turn

Posted by Charles Chauvel on June 29th, 2010

Last week, a full court of the High Court (this means 2 judges – commonly the way that test cases are heard and decided) significantly widened the pool of adults who can legally volunteer to adopt children in New Zealand.

The last time Parliament considered the issue was back in 1955 when it passed the current Adoption Act. Not surprisingly, given the values of the time, Parliament restricted eligibility to adopt to married couples by the use of the word “spouse” in the Act. When the civil unions and relationship property acts were passed, the definitions in the Adoption Act were left unchanged.

The test case came before Justices John Wild and Simon France, both highly regarded members of the Court. What they had to decide was whether the term ’spouse’ as used in the Adoption Act 1955 should be interpreted today as including unmarried people living together. It was argued that it should, largely because the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, as enacted in 1990, contains a prohibition of discrimination on the ground of martial status. The Bill requires an outcome consistent with its provisions wherever possible.

The Court found that, to give effect to the ban on marital status discrimination, it had to interpret the word “spouse” as including people in de-facto relationships. The parties to the case had agreed that the interpretation they were seeking extended only to test whether heterosexual relationships were included in the ruling, and the Court records this limitation in its reasons for judgment.

However, logically, the ruling extends eligibility to be considered for adoption to anyone in a marriage, civil union or (straight or gay) de-facto relationship. This is so for two reasons – the definition of “marital status” and the fact that “sexual orientation” is also a ground of prohibited discrimination in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

The number of adoptions that actually occur each year in New Zealand is small -guardianship and other legal forms allowing for the care of children without legally extinguishing the birth relationship are more usual these days. But the decision is important. Children who are in need of adoptive parents should have the right to have those parents selected from the widest pool of appropriately-qualified people possible. Unless amended, the current Act, as now interpreted by the High Court, restricts them to people in a relationship. At some point soon Parliament should widen the pool further. Who can seriously argue today that single, or divorced, or widowed people can’t make great parents? And as you would imagine, there are other anomalies in legislation that is now 65 years old that need fixing up.

Right now, though, it’s good to read a sensible decision from our Hight Court that shows the Bill of Rights to be a valuable tool in keeping the law up to date.

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Filed under: Attorney-General, children, civil liberties, human rights, justice
52 Comments

The right to protest

Posted by Chris Hipkins on November 21st, 2009

Last week there was a bit of coverage in the Dom Post about a court case that I have been involved with over the last 12 years. It relates to a student protest at Parliament back in September 1997 when I was still a fresh faced first year uni student.

The protest was against the then National government’s tertiary education reforms, outlined in what became an infamous ‘Green Paper’. We were a rowdy bunch, but the protest was peaceful. We’d only been in Parliament grounds a short time when the then Speaker, Doug Kidd, issued trespass orders requiring us all to leave.

At the time I thought this was pretty outrageous and over the past 12 years I haven’t changed my view. Parliament is a place where all Kiwis can come to protest, whatever their message. The idea that trespass should be used as a means of silencing dissent appals me.

Thankfully both the District Court and the High Court shared that view and the trespass charges didn’t stick. But there was an important principle at stake here and over the past 12 years I, along with a few of the others, have been keeping a legal action going against the Speaker and the Police.

That case has finally been resolved with letters of apology being issued from both the Speaker and the Police. Monetary compensation has also been awarded based on how long each person was detained, how they were treated whilst in custody and whether they were strip searched at the Police station.

The case is now studied by law students. It promoted a change in the way both the Speaker and the Police treat those protesting at parliament. The principle that every citizen has the right to protest in parliament grounds is now well established. It was worth the fight.

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Filed under: democracy, parliament
8 Comments

Fairness @ Work under National?

Posted by Sue Moroney on November 4th, 2009

Thank goodness I don’t have a fragile ego (if I have one at all). In the past two weeks, the Nats have block-voted against hearing submissions on a petition I championed signed by nearly 16,000 other New Zealanders and they have also introduced a Bill reducing the right for all NZ workers to have a meal break – undoing legislation passed under Labour, based on a members’ bill I drafted.

But this posting is not about my ego, because that’s not the reason I’m am MP (can’t speak for others). I’m not taking it personally. After all “its not about me.”

It is about the thousands of school support staff, social workers and other ordinary fair-minded New Zealanders who the National Government took deliberate action against by block-voting to ensure they didn’t have to justify the axing of pay equity investigations for these hard-working New Zealanders.

And it is about workers who’s health and safety will be put at risk if National goes ahead with its plans to give employers the specific right to require workers to attend to their duties during their meal breaks and rest periods.

It is highly unusual for a select committee to refuse to hear submissions on a petition – particularly one of that size. However, the Nats were prepared to sacrifice the democratic principles of select committee procedures so that they weren’t put in the embarrassing position of having to defend the indefensible.

The Minister of Labour has already admitted that the Pay and Employment Equity Unit was closed down by her against the advice of her Department of Labour officials. Maybe the Nats blocked the hearing of submissions on the petition because they were worried about what the DOL would say in its submission?

Whatever the reason, David Bennett, Jackie Blue, Tau Henare, Allan Peachey and Michael Woodhouse should hang their heads in shame as the MPs who voted to block submissions being heard.

I bet none of them admit to having prevented the petition from being heard the next time the turn up at their local schools for a visit.

As for the right to a meal break at work, I don’t know about you but when I’m flying, I wanna know that the person in the sole-charge regional control tower is well-rested, alert, hydrated and has reasonable blood-sugar levels when they are giving important information to the pilot of my plane.

The Nats though, are passing legislation to ensure that they have to work through meal and rest breaks and in the process are subjecting all other NZ workers to the same possibility.

Not the brighter future they promised really, is it?

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Filed under: Pay Equity, Uncategorized, democracy, education, human rights, labour, legislation, national, select committee
10 Comments

Free Trade AND Human Rights

Posted by Maryan Street on November 1st, 2009

Last week I was in Kuala Lumpur for the signing of the Malaysia-NZ Free Trade Agreement (see previous blog on that subject). I had arranged before I left NZ to use some of my time there to visit the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) compound in KL. I had been there once before and wanted to know how things had improved – or not. Malaysia had had an appalling record of dumping people, especially Burmese refugees whom it didn’t want, into the arms of traffickers, until an enquiry by the US Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee exposed it and got the Malaysians to improve their practices. I met with a senior staffer in the office of Senator Dick Luger who worked on this committee recently in Washington and got an update on Malaysia from him. 

The UNHCR Rep in KL is Alan Vernon. He told me that things have improved in Malaysia and the UNHCR is no longer getting the reports they had been getting of the trafficking on the Thai-Malaysia border. Burmese refugees used to be rounded up by the Malaysian police and deposited on the Thai border where traffickers would take the women and children for prostitution and domestic service, and the men for labouring work who knows where. They are only hearing of about 100 such cases a year now, compared with 1000-2000 a year previously.

91% of the 300-400 people being processed per day at the compound are Burmese refugees. They end up in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and NZ, among other countries. Some of them end up in my town, Nelson, as well as Auckland, Palmerston North, Hamilton and Wellington. These are people with desperate stories of human suffering inflicted by the most evil regime on the planet. Some have become good friends now and they appreciate everything NZ has given them, while they are not blind to our faults. They retain their ardent politics and live for the day Burma returns to democratic rule, preferably under Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, their most recently democractically-elected leader (1990), who has been living under house arrest for 14 of the last 19 years.

In Malaysia, there are no laws protecting refugees. Children of refugees are not allowed to go to school; refugees are arrested and detained without charge for prolonged periods of time; they are harassed in their workplace by police. They have exchanged one kind of fear in Burma for another kind of fear in Malaysia.

The day I visited the UNHCR compound, I met families and individuals who were trying to get in to the US.  They are processed in the UNHCR facility, treated well by interpreters, medical staff and teams of interviewers from the soon-to-be host country. They want to be somewhere else. They want to be someone else. They want their children to be educated and have a greater chance of a full and rewarding life than they had.

Win Myin Htut - Chin Burmese refugee at UNHCR compound, KL

Win Myin Htut - Chin Burmese refugee at UNHCR compound, KL

People wait all day in the heat for their chance at freedom.

These people are in the final stages of processing. Next stop - the US!

These people are in the final stages of processing. Next stop - the US!

People present at the compound with a range of health problems – most frequently anxiety disorders, as well as the illnesses of poverty, malnutrition, some with HIV/AIDS. Parents must go crazy with worry for their children. Here is a family who have been in Malaysia for 4 years and who are hoping to move on soon. He is a farmer – although the difference in the meaning of that word in Burma and the US is striking.

Chin family at UNHCR in KL - UN interpreter front left

Chin family at UNHCR in KL - UN interpreter front left

Malaysia has a Human Rights Commission and I met one of its Commissioners. But they are kept on a tight leash and their Annual Report has never been presented to, or debated in, Parliament. The national Human Rights Day is boycotted by the human rights NGOs. Sometimes people say “how can we trade with countries which have such appalling human rights records?” The truth is, trade happens. We can make some gains through the labour clauses we negotiate alongside the FTAs. But even more importantly, a country gets opened up by trade and exposed to other ways of doing things. Trade becomes the vehicle for other conversations.

I hope John Key is having those other conversations, as Helen Clark used to do on a regular basis in the context of free trade negotiations and settlements.

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Filed under: Foreign Affairs, ethnic, human rights, international
6 Comments

Nats vote against civil liberties, as usual

Posted by Charles Chauvel on October 15th, 2009

Parliament is in the process of passing the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill. It would allow the Police to take DNA samples when they arrest anyone.

I can see the possibilities for better crime prevention in this proposal. But I’m troubled by the lack of any checks and balances in the Bill. A similar English law was set aside by the European Cout of Human Rights on that ground, and the Attorney-General has certified that the NZ Bill breaches the NZ Bill of Rights Act.

I put an amendment up tonight, further to a Labour caucus resolution, that would have required the Police to get a warrant before taking DNA. I reasoned that if they need a warrant to search a building they should need one to apply literal physical compulsion to a person. They don’t have problems finding a JP to grant these warrants so I don’t think getting one to take a DNA sample would be an administrative problem. And we’d have Bill of Rights compliant legislation.

The Greens, Progressives and Maori Party voted with Labour for the amendment. Peter Dunne voted against. So did ACT (so much for being “the liberal party”). And so did the Nats, without really bothering to say why. I guess they think it will play well out in talkbackland.

The Nats adjourned the House before we got to my other amendment – a requirement that Parliament review the operation of the law within 5 years. But it looks like they’ll vote that one down too when we get to it next week. I hope I can be in the House for it. But instead I’ll probably be in the Finance and Expenditure Committee, working through what is becoming pretty much a universally-condemned Emissions Trading Amendment Bill. Sigh.

Not a good day for civil liberties.

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Filed under: civil liberties, climate change, human rights, law and order, police
49 Comments

Washington on Burma

Posted by Maryan Street on October 8th, 2009

I spent my first day in Washington (Monday) meeting people engaged with the long struggle to get Burma back to democracy, a topical issue here as Kurt Campbell, Assistant Secretary of State and a speaker at the Partnership Forum I am here for, just last week announced the final result of the revision of the US’s position on Burma. The US will engage with Burma more actively, without lifting sanctions.

People I spent time with, thanks to my clever human rights lawyer friend, Jared Genser, included Tom Malinowski, the CEO of Human Rights Watch in Washington and former National Security Council member under the Clinton administration, and Michele Bohana, the extraordinary director of the Institute for Asian Democracy.

The point of all that, apart from expanding my horizons, is that the tyranny of the junta in Burma is a threat to the stability of our region, quite apart from the legitimate concerns about the appalling treatment of the Burmese people. New Zealand is engaging fully in trade in that region. Everybody needs stability there in order to prosper. The businessmen and politicians and officials here at the NZ/US Council Partnership Forum are interestingly talking as much about nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament as they are about the nuts and bolts of trade. They get it.

Watch for next post – now I have my web access working properly – about the Partnership Forum itself. Lots to say.

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Filed under: Foreign Affairs
4 Comments