[asia-apec 423] Re: apec-L: SIS Booklet A Week Late For April Fool's Day - Break-in V

[Gatt Watchdog]

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Subject: apec-L: SIS Booklet A Week Late For April Fool's Day - Break-in Victim
From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog)
Comments: Gatt Watchdog
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Date: Wed, 08 Apr 98 10:46:41 +1200
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GATT Watchdog
PO Box 1905
Christchurch
Aotearoa (New Zealand)


MEDIA RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE USE

8 April 1998

SIS Booklet A Week Late For April Fool's Day - Break-in Victim

"Today's release of the booklet "Security in New Zealand Today" by the New
Zealand Security Intelligence Service is a defensive public relations
exercise by an unaccountable government agency with a disreputable past
desperately trying to justify its own existence", says Aziz Choudry, of
fair trade coalition GATT Watchdog. "The Government is a week late in
releasing this booklet - it has all the hallmarks of a weak and tasteless
April Fool's Day joke."

Mr Choudry launched civil proceedings against the SIS in the Christchurch
High Court on February 13 after their bungled break-in at his Christchurch
home in July 1996, just prior to the APEC Trade Ministers Meeting.  He says
"Security In New Zealand Today" is a cynical exercise to deflect criticism
of the SIS as an anti-democratic, unaccountable spy agency.  He does not
believe that anyone with the capacity to think is likely to be taken in by
the booklet's attempt to dispel the "myths" about the SIS.

" "Security In New Zealand Today" is a glossy reiteration of the glib
assurances made by politicians to critics who warned that the widened role
of the SIS as defined in the 1996 Security Intelligence Service Amendment
Act legitimised their work in spying on individuals and organisations within
New Zealand involved in lawful political dissent."

"At a time of cutbacks to health, education, welfare and other sectors, and
with the end of the Cold War, the SIS are clearly struggling to justify
their existence and their budgetary demands to both the government and the
New Zealand public.  It must be very stressful in the nervous nineties, now
that the supposed "commie threat" has receded as fast as the hairlines of
some SIS operatives to conjure up new wacko conspiracy theories in order to
justify snooping on people like me engaged in social justice and
development education work, and to explain expenses such as pork pies and
Penthouse magazines".

"In reality the public purse is paying for the SIS to potentially surveill
or monitor anyone critical of government policy.  This could include unions,
academics who are critics of the free market, Maori working for tino
rangatiratanga, and other organisations and individuals that the SIS can
argue pose a threat to New Zealand's international or economic wellbeing or
are somehow "subversive".

"The existence of the SIS is one symptom of an unhealthy climate of
intolerance of dissent which has grown in New Zealand" 

"It is unsurprising that the SIS releases this booklet. CSIS (Canadian
Security Intelligence Service) have a publicly accessible website for similar
PR purposes no doubt.  So does the CIA in the US. The SIS are just catching
up with their counterparts overseas."

"The SIS will no doubt be jockeying to play a big role around next year's
APEC meetings, slated to be the biggest security operation in New Zealand
history.  The public should remember it was the SIS, with police complicity,
who furtively broke into a GATT Watchdog member's house and played cloak and
dagger games with a getaway vehicle registered to a fictitious company in
Wellington, not so called "activists" or "protesters".  GATT Watchdog was too
busy working responsibly to educate and inform people about the human cost
of free trade in a public forum to be interested in playing such clandestine
games.  The thinking person has far more to fear from the SIS than from
so-called radicals and subversives - which often seem to be catch-all labels
for anyone with the courage of their convictions to take a stand against the
status quo."

"As long as the SIS exists, anyone who clings to the notion that New Zealand
is a democratic society in which all are free to express their views and
opinions should think again."

For further comment, contact Aziz Choudry, ph (03) 3662803 (w)