August 14, 2014
Reparations rather than apology needed
Lawyer and Mana candidate Annette Sykes says there is still too much unfinished business to accept an apology for the 2007 Te Urewera terror raids.
Police Commissioner Mike Bush was in Ruatoki yesterday to apologise to Ngai Tuhoe and those affected by actions the Independent Police Complaints Authority subsequently found were unlawful, unjustifiable and unreasonable.
Ms Sykes says any apology should have included the police commissioner at the time, Howard Broad, then-police minister Annette King and former prime minister Helen Clark.
She says she acted for 16 people who were affected but not charged, and for another seven who were wrongfully charged.
"There's been no compensation offered to those people when it's really clear that the warrants that were relied on to undertake these invasions into the Ruatoki Valley were wrongful, unlawful, unjustifiable, that the people who were detained, described by Annette King at the time as 'collateral damage', were shockingly disrespected then and right up until now," she says.
Ms Sykes says there needs to be compensaiton not just to an iwi authority but to the individuals and whanau whose lives were turned upside down by the raids, similar to the way their ancestors' lives were hurt by crown invasions.
FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH ANNETTE SYKES CLICK ON THE LINK
https://secure.zeald.com/uma/play_podcast?podlink=MjExMTk=
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