[Calling the raids a “defining
moment” in New Zealand’s history, Ardern said she plans to deliver a formal
apology at a commemoration later this month. New Zealand’s government has
issued similar apologies for discriminatory policies that targeted Chinese
immigrants in the 19th century and injustices carried out during the colonial administration of Samoa, she noted.]
The unexpected Monday announcement
from Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who characterized the raids as
“dehumanizing,” left some Pacific Islanders in tears. “I felt there was a chance this might happen but
I never thought it would happen so quickly,” Josiah Tualamali’i, who had
started a letter-writing campaign to request the apology, told Stuff.co.nz.
The “Dawn
Raids,” so named because they often occurred early in the morning,
took place from 1974 to 1976 after New Zealand’s economy crashed. Samoans,
Tongans and other Pacific Islanders who had come to the country as desperately
needed migrant laborers were suddenly accused of taking jobs away from New
Zealanders, prompting a crackdown on those suspected of overstaying their
visas.
Armed police officers would wake up
families in the middle of the night to demand proof of citizenship, while
people who did not look White were told to carry identification at all times
and would be randomly stopped on the street. Churches, schools and workplaces
were routinely raided.
There is “clear evidence” that the
raids were discriminatory, Ardern said Monday. When computerized immigration
records were introduced in New Zealand in 1977, they showed that 40 percent of
people who overstayed their visas were British or American. But those
immigrants, who were largely White, evaded scrutiny and were rarely targeted
for deportation. Meanwhile, New Zealand’s native Maori people frequently faced
harassment because they were mistaken for migrants.
At a Monday news conference, Aupito William Sio, New Zealand’s minister
for Pacific peoples, tearfully recalled how officers showed up at his family’s
home early one morning with a “frothing” police dog. He described a sense of
helplessness as officers shined flashlights in his father’s face, then
took away two family members whose visas had expired. He said they had been
preparing to go home to Samoa and wanted to do a few more overtime shifts
before they left.
The experience was “traumatizing”
for his entire family, Sio said.
“We felt as a community we were
invited to come to New Zealand. We responded to the call to fill the labor that
was needed,” he said. “When the country felt they no longer needed us, they
turned on us.”
Calling the raids a “defining
moment” in New Zealand’s history, Ardern said she plans to deliver a formal
apology at a commemoration later this month. New Zealand’s government has
issued similar apologies for discriminatory policies that targeted Chinese
immigrants in the 19th century and injustices carried out during the colonial administration of Samoa, she noted.
“While we cannot change our
history, we can acknowledge it, and we can seek to right a wrong,” Ardern said.
The Polynesian Panthers, a New
Zealand-based organization advocating for the rights of Pacific Islanders and
the native Maori population, had campaigned for the apology. But in the wake of
Ardern’s announcement, some activists said they wanted concrete policy actions.
Will 'Ilolahia, a co-founder of the
group, told Newshub that roughly 10,000 Pacific Islanders
living in New Zealand today have overstayed their visas and should be given a
pathway to permanent residency. Many have been living in the country and paying
taxes for well over a decade, he noted.
“This is a good chance to show the
rest of the world that this is how we treat people,” he said.
New Zealand has not indicated
whether it plans to compensate Pacific Islanders who were affected by the
raids. Manase Lua, another co-founder of the group, said he feared doing so
would only spark division. “You cannot compensate my family, my dad’s already
passed away,” he told Radio New Zealand.
A better response, he said, would
be to create a pathway to citizenship for Pacific Islanders with expired visas
so such injustices do not recur.
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