Anti-Terror Raids Said To Hinder New Zealand Race Relations
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WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand’s Maori Party said anti-terrorism raids targeting alleged weapons training camps this week, in which 17 people were arrested, set race relations in the country back 100 years.
Police stormed properties on October 15 in an operation aimed at shutting down the camps in the North Island. Maori, environmental, and peace activists were among those detained.
“This action has violated the trust that has been developing between Maori and Pakeha,” the party’s co-leader, Pita Sharples, said, using the Maori name for New Zealanders of European descent. The raids were “storm trooper tactics” by a police force that consistently and unfairly targets the indigenous population, he added.
Maori, who make up 14.5% of New Zealand’s 4.1 million people, account for almost half of the nation’s prison population and experience an unemployment rate more than double the national average. Indigenous groups have long campaigned for sovereignty, saying they were dispossessed by European settlers more than 200 years ago.