In this week’s security podcast, Dr Paul G. Buchanan and host Selwyn Manning discuss:

• three areas that have been relied on to protect New Zealanders from terror-style attacks;
• legal measures designed to protect communities from danger and even protect individuals from themselves;
• and why they failed.

The background to this episode is the tragic, terrifying, attack that were committed against unarmed innocent people at West Auckland’s LynnMall Countdown supermarket, by Ahamed Aathill Mohamed Samsudeen.

• READ MORE: Other reports about NZ’s LynnMall attack

The attack occurred last Friday, 3 September 2021. It ended with the hospitalisation of seven people, and, the death of Samsudeen, who was fatally shot by special tactics police officers during his attempt to kill and injure as many people as he could.

Immediately after, the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told the nation that the dead man was a terrorist and that she herself, the police, and the courts were all aware of how dangerous he was and had been seeking to protect New Zealand from this man.

Within days of the attacks, we learned, that Samsudeen was a troubled man with psychologists describing him as angry, capable of carrying out his threats, and displaying varying degrees of mental illness and disorder.

Refugee who sought asylum
Samsudeen was a refugee who sought asylum in New Zealand after experiencing, through his formative years civil war and ethnic cleansing in Sri Lanka, who, at around 20 years of age, arrived in New Zealand on a student visa and then sought political asylum.

He was eventually granted refugee status, and since then spent years in prison on various charges and convictions – largely involving the possession of terrorist propaganda seeded on the internet by Islamic State (ISIS), and, threats showing intent to commit terrorist acts against New Zealanders.

In this week’s episode, Dr Buchanan and Manning examine questions about whether this tragedy could have been prevented and considered New Zealand’s:

• Security and terror laws
• Deportation laws involving those with refugee status
• The Mental Health Act and whether this was available to the authorities.

Dr Buchanan and Manning also analyse whether it is necessary for the New Zealand government to move to tighten New Zealand’s terrorism security laws. And, if it does, how the intended new laws compare to other Five Eyes member countries.

• More information about the A View From Afar weekly podcasts on EveningReport.nz

Republished in partnership with EveningReport.nz

The Migrant Action Trust has condemned a proposal by a diversity academic calling for a New Zealand nation-building course before people are granted permanent residence or citizenship as “dangerous” and “discriminating”.

“This proposal is dangerous. It is dangerous because it comes at a time when the world — including Aotearoa — has demonised a religion and those associated with that religion,” the trust said.

“We have inculcated in the minds of others that ‘these people’, and by association, all people of colour are a danger.

• READ MORE: Auckland professor says ‘specific nation-building’ course to get citizenship could counter terrorism
• Losing NZ citizenship: What you need to know
• Other reports on the Lynnmall attack

“That is a dangerous, discriminating, and damaging legacy. Just ask Māori.”

The call for a “specific nation-building” course for potential citizens of Aotearoa has been made by Professor Edwina Pio, chair of diversity at Auckland University of Technology.

She made the plea in a paper titled “Diffusing Destructive Devotions: Deploying Counter Terrorism” days after last Friday’s knife attack at Auckland’s Countdown supermarket in LynnMall.

But the Migrant Action Trust chair, Associate Professor Camille Nakhid, described the proposal as “cynical”, saying it raised many questions.

‘Values of our colonisers?’
“Firstly, whose values will inform this nation-building paper? Will they be the values of the colonisers or of our tangata whenua? Will it be the values of those whose labour built this land or those whose dubious transactions stole this land?,” Dr Nakhid asked in a statement.

“Will it be the refugee with the ideologies of terrorist groups or the resident Pākehā with the ideologies of terrorist Pākehā  groups which hold the ideologies of the dominant Pākehā group which hold the ideologies of white supremacists?

“Who will be made to take this nation-building paper? Will it only be potential citizens such as migrants, asylum seekers and those from refugee backgrounds but not those wanting to remain permanent residents?

“What about citizens themselves who mistrust the government, challenge their laws and protest their policies?

“Will they need to go back to school to take this nation-building paper?”

Dr Pio’s research had found lone terrorists to be “dangerous and hard to combat” when compared to group terrorists.

She said “higher impact” policies were needed to combat terrorism and she called for legislation to require people to pass nation-building courses before being granted citizenship or permanent residence.

A Sri Lankan-born refugee, Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen, 32, stabbed seven people in the Countdown supermarket before he was shot dead by police.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described the Islamic State supporter as a “lone wolf terrorist”.

Immigration New Zealand has confirmed that Behrouz Boochani has been given refugee status in New Zealand.

Boochani has been in New Zealand since November. He had travelled to Christchurch for a writers’ festival on a one-month visa and was supported by Amnesty International.

He was detained in Manus Island and in Port Moresby for six years under the Australian government’s policy to deter asylum seekers arriving by boat.

READ MORE: The journalist who became the victim of Australia’s punitive detention policies

• National Party ‘hate speech’ a problem, says Boochani

He catapulted to worldwide fame in 2019 after his book, No Friend But The Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison, won the Victorian Prize for Literature, Australia’s richest literature prize.

He wrote the book with WhatsApp on his phone.

Boochani’s 374-page book, detailing his experiences in detention, was written in secret and was smuggled out of the detention centre via hundreds of text messages to his translators and editors in Australia.

Boochani discovered he had been granted asylum by New Zealand almost seven years to the day from the moment he was arrested by the Australian Navy, taken to Christmas Island, and subsequently flown to PNG.

Moved to transit centres
Following the closure of the Manus Island centre in 2017, Boochani and his fellow detainees were moved to refugee transit centres near the island’s main town of Lorengau, and later, to the country’s capital Port Moresby.

The executive director of Amnesty, Meg de Ronde, said it is wonderful news that Boochani has been given asylum.

“This means that he’s now a free man. He is free from the persecution as a Kurdish journalist. He’s free from the persecution of Australia’s torturous detention system and he is able to enjoy his life as anyone should be able to under our human rights system.”

She said 400 asylum-seekers like him were still trapped in limbo however, and it was time for Australia to accept New Zealand’s offer to take 150 of those refugees per year.

“Some of them are still on Nauru, some of them are still in Papua New Guinea and some are now in various hotels in Australia in very poor conditions,de Ronde said.

“This issue continues to go on, and Australia needs to act to ensure no more people are put through the torturous regime that Behrooz Boochani was.”

Last month the National Party said it was surprised New Zealand immigration officials did not consult their Australian counterparts before granting a visa to Boochani.

Excluded from Australia
The party’s immigration spokesperson, Stuart Smith, said Boochani appeared to have been excluded from Australia, making him ineligible to come to New Zealand without a special direction.

He said despite that, the response to a parliamentary written question showed no contact was made with Australian officials before he was granted the visa.

“Which was surprising given the high profile nature of Boochani and the fact that the Australian foreign minister said that Boochani would never set foot in Australia.”

Boochani travelled through the Philippines to get to Auckland so that his flight did not touch down in Australia.

Green Party human rights spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman – herself an Iranian refugee – said it was a day of celebration.

“I’m just so excited for us and for him and so grateful for our refugee authorities demonstrating – at least to Australia – that it is possible to actually process and asylum seeker fairly.”

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

An Iranian asylum-seeker detained in Papua New Guinea under Australian asylum laws has won Australia’s most valuable literary prize for a book he reportedly wrote using the online messaging service WhatsApp, reports France 24/AFP.

Behrouz Boochani, a Kurd who has been held on PNG’s Manus Island since 2013, was awarded the Victorian Prize for Literature yesterday, said a statement on a government website for the state of Victoria.

The journalist and filmmaker was awarded the A$100,000 (NZ$106,000) prize for his book No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison.

READ MORE: The book written one text at a time

He will receive an additional A$25,000 after it also won the non-fiction category.

“(Boochani’s) award was accepted by the book’s translator Omid Tofighian, who worked with Boochani over five years to bring the stories to life,” the state website said.

Media reports said Boochani wrote the work on his phone and sent it to Tofighian bit-by-bit in text messages.

This was because he felt unsafe in the guarded camp, which was shut last year after a local court ruling and the asylum-seekers moved elsewhere on the island.

For years Canberra has sent asylum-seekers who try to enter the country by boat to Manus Island or Nauru in the Pacific for processing, with those found to be refugees barred from resettling in Australia.

The harsh policy is meant to deter people embarking on treacherous sea journeys, but the United Nations and other rights groups have criticised the camps’ conditions and long detention periods.

Boochani’s book beat 27 other shortlisted works published last year in Australia to win the overall prize.

• The Guardian’s account of the award
• Other Behrouz Boochani stories

A legal advocacy group has told the UN Human Rights Council that more than 100 asylum seeker and refugee children are living without hope on Nauru.

The Human Rights Law Centre addressed the latest council session in Geneva.

The centre’s Daniel Webb told the council that despite the fact the Australian government was professing its committment to human rights in Geneva, it continued to indefinitely imprison 102 children in its offshore detention centre on Nauru.

“Imprisoned for fleeing the same atrocities our government comes here and condemns. And after five years of detention, these children have now lost hope.

“Some have stopped speaking. Some have stopped eating. A 10-year-old boy recently tried to kill himself.”

Webb said if the detention was not stopped there would be deaths.

He said even the government’s own medical advisers were warning that the situation was untenable.

“Yet the Australian government still refuses to free these kids, and is fighting case after case in our Federal Court to deny them access to urgent medical care. Mr President, we are talking about 102 children.”

Australia presented their concerns regarding human rights around the world at the same session but did not mention their detention camps on Nauru or Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island.

This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

The decision to terminate a long-standing arrangement that saw the Australian High Court act as a partial appellate court for Nauru, as reported last week, has heightened concerns about Nauru’s appropriateness as a venue for an Australian immigration detention centre.

The timing of the decision – 90 days’ notice of the termination was quietly given to the Australian Government on 13 December – appears to have been designed to block the avenue of appeal for 19 citizens (several former Nauruan MPs among them) charged over a 2015 protest outside the Parliament of Nauru.

However, it has also served to further erode the rights of hundreds of asylum seekers, including dozens of children, currently in Nauru.

The cancelled court arrangement had been in place since 1976, yet determined only 16 cases in total. Thirteen of those cases were heard in 2017, with 11 brought by asylum seekers disputing the refusal of refugee status.

Of those 11 cases, only one was dismissed. Eight were successful, and two were dropped due to refugee status being granted in the interim.

Nauru has declared it will set up its own court of appeal, but in the meantime asylum seekers are denied the basic legal right of appeal.

In response to the termination becoming public, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop declared:

Australia supports Nauru’s sovereignty and its December 2017 decision to terminate the treaty in advance of the nation’s 50th anniversary of independence.

Secretive nature
Australia is right to support Nauru’s assertion of sovereignty, and the removal of this somewhat awkward arrangement – an oddity the Australian Law Reform Commission recommended terminating in 2001.

But Australia also needs to question the secretive nature of the announcement, its politically motivated timing, and the fact that the termination took effect before an alternative appeals court could be established.

Several legal rulings and a Senate inquiry have determined that Australia has a duty of care in relation to the asylum seekers in our facilities, regardless of their location, and this development indicates a further blow to the rights of an already vulnerable population.

This shutdown of a legal avenue of appeal is not the only reason to question the ongoing appropriateness of Nauru as a site for Australia’s immigration detention centre.

In the past few months, a steady stream of cases have demonstrated Nauru’s lack of capacity to deal with the mounting number of health issues among asylum seekers held on the island.

Despite Australia’s claim that “healthcare in Nauru is the responsibility of the government of Nauru”, in reality, Nauru is unable to meet asylum seekers’ needs.

The Australian government’s own health contractor on the island has declared the hospital in Nauru to be unsafe for surgery, and Nauru has no permanent specialist child psychiatrists.

Suicide risk
In 2018 alone, there have been two cases (here and here) of juveniles at acute risk of suicide on Nauru being ordered by Australian courts to be transferred to Australia for treatment.

Taiwan has also been used as an alternative venue for surgical treatment not available in Nauru. Because Taiwan is not a UN member state, and therefore not party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, refugees transferred there cannot claim protection on their arrival.

A consideration of Australia’s duty of care in relation to the asylum seekers housed on Nauru begs the question of why Australia continues to doggedly prioritise the US resettlement deal to the exclusion of all other options?

This is particularly pertinent in light of President Donald Trump’s recent escalation of negativity towards immigrants and refugees, and the slow pace at which the US deal is unfolding.

UNHCR Director of the Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific in Geneva, Indrika Ratwatte, recently urged the Australian government to reconsider the offer by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made in November, and reaffirmed this week.

By doing so, Australia could quickly bring an end to the suffering of many of the detainees who remain on Nauru.

Ultimately, Australia needs to recognise that the asylum seekers on Nauru are its responsibility, and that Nauru’s declining ability to provide them with adequate care and basic rights is a problem that must be solved.

Erin Harris is a research associate at the Lowy Institute, where she works with both the Diplomacy and Public Opinion Programme and the Digital Program. Her research interests include gender, development and the Pacific. This article originally appeared on The Interpreter, published by the Lowy Institute and is republished with the permission of the author.

Most of Golriz Ghahraman’s childhood memories are of war.

She remembers howling sirens, sending families scurrying into basements. She remembers people being trapped. She remembers families trying to escape the country, fearful of being targeted for their beliefs.

Others simply disappeared.

“We knew one guy… a 16-year-old, a friend’s cousin. He was writing graffiti on a wall and then he was gone,” she says. “In the 1980s people would just disappear. There’s unmarked mass graves of people who had registered as communists. The regime was particularly harsh on political dissidents.”

READ MORE: Election 2017: Labour-Green bloc picks up two seats

Ghahraman, the Green Party’s newest Member of Parliament following the special vote count, was born in Iran in 1981 amid the post-revolution conflict with Iraq.

She was confirmed on Saturday as a new MP after the counting of almost 390,000 special votes.

The fighting stopped when she was eight. A year later the borders opened and her parents found a way to leave, booking a government-sanctioned “holiday” to Malaysia.

“I think people knew what was happening because they were crying at the airport, but we had to be like, ‘Bye, we’re going to have a great time.’ We couldn’t sell the house or anything.”

Seeking asylum
From Malaysia they booked flights to Fiji that had a stopover in Auckland, where they hoped they could seek asylum as political refugees.

After slipping out of transit and declaring themselves to an airport official, the family found staff more worried about potential biosecurity hazards than their visa status.

“There was a leaf in one of my shoes,” Ghahraman says. “They were intensely interested in that, like almost sending it away for analysis.”

Ghahraman liked her new country. It was okay to be a refugee in West Auckland; it was okay to be poor. Auckland Girls’ Grammar was similarly diverse. She didn’t feel special, or different to the other girls.

It wasn’t until university – where she studied law to keep her parents happy and history to please herself – Ghahraman began to think more about her heritage.

“We aren’t the proponents of terror”

“Nine-eleven shifted things for me,” she says. “I’d forgotten that we were Iranian or Middle Eastern. I was just doing my thing and then I realised the way other people see you can be defining.

“So I started to own that identity.”

‘Rescued’ from her culture
Because she wore Western clothes – Ghahraman isn’t Muslim – and went to university, people liked to think she had been “rescued” from her own culture.

“But it’s not like that. Yes we are from the Middle Eastern world but we aren’t the proponents of terror. We’ve had to escape the terror but that doesn’t make us not Middle Eastern.

“Our culture has diversity too, it has feminism and democracy movements.”

The interest in her country’s war and a broader interest in human rights led her to Amnesty International, where she set her sights on working as a prosecutor at international war crimes tribunals.

“I’m one of those freak shows that had a 10-year plan,” she says. “I knew I had to get criminal law experience and a masters degree. So I did the bar, I did criminal law and I had an Oxford course bookmarked on my computer.”

Her CV, which includes prosecuting leaders of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, sounds intimidatingly impressive. In person, however, Ghahraman is comfortingly human, answering the door for our interview pre-election in stockinged feet, having rushed to finish her make-up.

Prosecuting for the United Nations
She says the international tribunals weren’t so different to her early work as a defence lawyer in Manukau.

“It’s just like any criminal trial – although the politicians are so charismatic. You have to simply focus back on the evidence and just be a lawyer.”

Ghahraman left her job in Cambodia in 2012, arriving back at the end of National’s second term. She felt like everything had changed.

“We used to pride ourselves on being a country where our values were about everyone having a certain basic level of life,” she says. “We were so big here on taking care of everyone and suddenly that was gone.”

She cites the plans to prospect for coal in national reserves, child poverty and democracy issues – like dissolving the Canterbury regional council – as incidents that jolted her into joining politics.

The other was the family carers bill, passed into legislation under urgency, which explicitly removed families’ rights to challenge funding decisions in court. Ghahraman later worked on the case.

“We had never seen that in New Zealand before, never had this willingness politically to interfere with the other institutions – the courts, the free press, the human rights agencies – and that’s concerning.”

Forging a political career
Those are the kinds of issues she says she wants to focus on in Parliament.

During the campaign, however, she faced abuse over a number of other unrelated issues – mainly from Twitter – such as comments about her ethnicity, her intelligence and her looks.

“It didn’t bother me at all at first, but some days you open it and it’s like, really?” she says. “And to think that some people are being silenced by this. At least I can respond.”

In her increasingly rare spare time, Ghahraman likes to travel with her partner, comedian Guy Williams. She also likes to host dinner parties, despite confessing to being a bad cook.

She remains a member of the executive of the NZ Criminal Bar Association, and says her criminal law experience – where she spent a lot of time trying to help people into rehab or other support – is central to the way she wants to approach her political career.

“How we treat everyone, including the delinquents, that’s the making of us,” she says.

Kirsty Johnston is an investigative reporter at The New Zealand Herald. This article has been republished with permission.

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