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The wife of Tai Tokerau MP Hone Harawira has spoken out against what she says is a culture of fear around drugs in an isolated Far North community.
In November police arrested nine people, including three from Whangape and an Orewa real estate agent, closing down what they said was a major P-manufacturing operation,
Police seized $2 million worth of assets including methamphetamine and $154,000 in cash, $100,000 of which was in an ammunition case buried on Whakakoro, a waahi tapu that was the subject of an occupation in the 1990s.
The week before Christmas six holiday baches at Whangape were burned to the ground in what owners says was retribution for allegedly narking on the gang.
Hilda Halkyard-Harawira, who has links to the settlement, wrote to the Northland Age newspaper saying kuia and kaumatua were afraid to look out of their windows lest they be accused of being narks.
She says that putting that kind of pressure on the elderly of Ngati Haua was despicable, and it was police who had uncovered the manufacturing operation on the sacred maunga.
Mrs Halkyard-Harawira said there was no mana in making, selling or using P, or hiding it on a sacred mountain.
Copyright © 2013, Uma Broadcasting Ltd.
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