‘Gestapo in our streets’,

the Aucklanders cry

From MAURICE DICK in Auckland

It may be small consolation to those caught up in it, but New Zealand’s public opinion is heavily against the random checks and harassment of South Pacific Islanders as illegal immigrants.

In an unprecedented swoop, police teams sought out dark-skinned drinkers in pubs, passengers at taxi ranks, and pedestrians in Auckland’s streets, demanding evidence of their citizenship and right to be in New Zealand.

The three-day blitz raised an equal ly unprecedented groundswell of public outrage.

The Auckland Star called them “very bad days for long-time New Zealanders who care about their country and for Pacific Island overstayers”.

In a rare editorial comment, the sports paper 8 O’Clock said: “IT’S SICKENING. And frightening.

And It Must Stop!”.

Two things stuck in the throats of Kiwis of all races. One was the ran dom checks, which were compared with Gestapo methods. Auckland police chief Andy Berriman advised “anyone who speaks in a non-Kiwi ac cent or looks as though he was not born in this country . . .. should carry a passport”.

The second unpalatable fact was the insistence of politicians that ran dom checks had not been done.

Prime Minister Rob Muldoon twice denied it.

At the same time, Assistant Police Commissioner Bill Overton claimed some men “acted contrary to orders in questioning people in the street”.

Auckland Police Association chair man Peri Ngata quoted an official police instruction calling for “positive results” in the hunt for overstayers, in tactics which Mr Ngata himself a Maori found “quite abhorrent”.

The denials were insistent but futile. An Auckland journalist drink ing in a North Shore pub the night the blitz hit Auckland saw a police team move in on eight brown-skinned

drinkers, “invite” them outside to help with inquiries, and only six of them return.

The following morning, New Zealand-born Maori Mrs Hinerangi Burney, a member of the Tuhoe tribe, was stopped in broad daylight as she walked to work, and asked what island she came from.

Said Mrs Burney: “They didn’t ask me anything else”.

Yet in another of his dogmatic statements, Prime Minister Muldoon insisted three days later that “it would be contrary to government policy if anyone was accosted on the street because a policeman, on seeing the person, thought he might be an overstayer”.

While they watched it happening and seemed powerless to sway the politicians, New Zealanders’ faith in fair play was given a lift when no less a person than the Chief Ombudsman, Sir Guy Powles, stepped into the ring.

He called for a total amnesty and

blamed successive governments for “carelessly and probably negligently” allowing the situation to develop.

Said Sir Guy: “In the interests of ourselves and our grandchildren, we cannot allow this running sore to con tinue”.

It’s open knowledge that the Oc tober 21 blitz is the start of a three month campaign to gather in 4000 il legal immigrants in New Zealand.

All that might happen is that the random check technique will make “dawn raids” on Polynesians’ homes with police teams and trained dogs even as acceptable socially as a Sunday school picnic. By comparison, they may be seen as “normal police practice where there is reason to believe the law has been broken”.

But the tactics might also be more acceptable if those rounded up includ ed an equitable proportion of white skinned overstayers, from the British Isles, Canada, the United States and even Europe.