Aotea Square Occupation: Human rights fact stranger than any conspiracy theory.

Aotea Square Occupation: Human rights fact stranger than any conspiracy theory.

Anthony Ravlich
Chairperson
Human Rights Council (New Zealand)
Ph: (09) 940 9658

I visited the occupation in Aotea Square on a number of occasions. Apart from using the bill of rights to protect their right to protest it did not seem to occur to anyone to make their case against the Corporations using human rights – it is the international language of protest after all.

Some say the bill of rights is a weak legal document but when everyone follows it and given the global moral standing of human rights it is actually very powerful.

I have already described in the discussions on conspiracy theories on Auckland Indymedia (http://www.indymedia.org.nz/article/79965/against-conspiracy-theories-wh... ) how the State by human rights omissions uses human rights in elite interests as a weapon to suppress sectors of our society (also see my book and articles, www.hrc2001.org.nz).

Well, it makes sense to expose this. This would be using human rights as a means of defense in everyone’s interests by wanting the inclusion of all the omitted human rights.

For example, at the occupation I noticed how the affirmative action policies of the bill of rights was being used to allow women and Maori play a dominant role – the social controllers.

Such people are really anti-human rights and invariably use covert means to maintain control. So instead of intellectual and human rights discussion there seemed to be far greater concern for housekeeping matters – security and tidiness.

Yet I met some very intelligent, concerned young people (it’s a blessing that goes unappreciated particularly, I think, in New Zealand) on my visits there but they seemed to be marginalized just as the ‘tall poppies’ have been marginalized generally throughout society.

Also, further to the above human rights omissions is the omission of Article 29(1) of the universal declaration of human rights which requires that ‘everyone has duties to the community ’. Now shouldn’t the Corporations have such duties?

Also, what about climate change – when the bill of rights allows small business to be suppressed by red tape – wouldn’t the environment be better off with a more balanced approach to development i.e. involving much more small business development with their new and radical ideas needed to address climate change.

Wouldn’t this also provide far greater opportunities for the young – also why would workers bother going on strike when they have greater opportunities available elsewhere – wouldn’t the Corporations want to retain its workers by better pay and conditions?

I did get the opportunity to speak at the occupation and it was obvious to me that many there wanted answers – they wanted hope and they were very interested in my human rights message. But it is extremely hard for people like myself in this society always having to virtually ‘gate crash’ meetings knowing that the social controllers there don’t want me although the rest can be more than receptive.

The social controllers are only interested in human rights as defined by the State i.e. they want to uphold the status quo upon which their jobs depend – so they do not want the omissions discussed or any ‘unsafe’ intelligent thinking.

All that effort and no one is any the wiser what the occupation stood for – only that it was against 1% of the rich and vaguely anti-capitalist. It was a major wasted opportunity, in my view.

Even if a human rights stand did not achieve the objectives you seek you would have done something really worthwhile by exposing the hegemony of the bureaucratic elite and their relationship with big business and how their control depends on using covert means (e.g. keeping many important truths and the human rights omissions in-house)..

This is not to target this elite – they have already been exposed so I believe their days are numbered – but rather to lessen the people damage because they will not give up power easily. It is important that people understand what is happening to them and why so they do not always think there is something wrong with them. It would help them maintain self-control in increasingly difficult social circumstances.

So what I found at the occupation was an essentially State supported protest run by State supported radicals while those who could have really made things happen were overlooked. And everyone went along with this. All part of the self-destructive course we (and I consider the world also) are on. Isn’t this proof that human rights fact is far stranger fiction or any conspiracy theory.