JustPeace #63

News

• 
  Politicians Without Hearts Attack People Without Homes
  
  was Keith’s reaction to the continued barrage of attacks on refugees by some New Zealand politicians.

  “I refuse to believe that New Zealanders have become so cold-hearted that we would refuse a home to even the few hundred refugees a year that we now accept, when some 20 million people around the world have been displaced and are living in misery,” Keith said.

  “How can National and New Zealand First demand we turn our back on people who have suffered torture, lost their families to starvation and massacre and been driven from their homes?

  Read the
  
  full release
  
  .

• 
  NZ Should Join Asian Protests Against Australian Missiles
  
  , says Keith. “South-East Asian nations are justifiably nervous about Australia purchasing long-range cruise missiles and New Zealand should also object to Australia starting an expensive and destabilising arms race in our region.

  “Buying such offensive weapons will also inevitably undermine coordination and relations between our armed forces. For instance, the more that Australia’s Orion fleet is configured to attack its northern neighbours, the less they will be able to work with our Orions in legitimate activities such as fisheries protection.

  Read the
  
  full release
  
  .

Action

• 
  Wellington Sat, 28 August
  
  – ‘
  
  Armed Intervention on Humanitarian Grounds
  
  ‘, we know what we think of war; but what about armed intervention in the territory of a sovereign state to bring an end to or to prevent such atrocities as ethnic cleansing, genocide, etc?

  9-30am – welcome by the APF Chairman, Roger Barker;
  
  9-40am – International Law Perspectives, with Alberto Costi, Senior Lecturer, VUW Law School;
  
  10-45am – Diplomatic Perspectives, with Colin Keating, former NZ Ambassador to the UN and representative on the Security Council;
  
  11.45am – Defence Perspectives, with Kevin Riordan, Director of Legal Services, NZ Defence Force;
  
  12-30pm – Lunch (BYO); 1-30pm to 3-30pm – open discussion, close with afternoon tea; at Connolly Hall, Hill Street; all welcome; no charge but koha invited towards costs. An Open Forum sponsored by the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship of Aotearoa New Zealand.

• 
  2004 Date Palm Film Festival Thurs, 2 To Thurs, 20 September
  
  – (formerly the Middle Eastern Film Festival) focuses entirely on the Middle East and North Africa and includes six feature and three documentary films from Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Palestine, Israel and Iran – comedy, classical, romance, social issue, gay and political themes.

  The majority of these films are recent award winning productions and are unlikely to come back to mainstream cinema, NZ television or your local video shop so make the most of it!”

  Wellington, 2 to 8 September at The Paramount
  
  Christchurch, 9 to 15 September at The Regency on Worcester
  
  Auckland, 16 to 20 September at The Capitol.

  Details available on the
  
  Date Palm web site
  
  .

Analysis

• 
  Youth Parliament
  
  took place in Wellington last week, each MP selecting a youth MP to come to Parliament and take part in debates, select committees and other features of parliament. Nirupa George, Keith Locke’s Youth MP, was born in Jaffna, Sri Lanka and spoke on the effect of a normalisation of war on our youth and future. Her speech follows, it (along with speeches by the other Green Youth MPs) are on our website as MP3’s at
  
  Greens — Youth Parliament
  
  .

  Madam Speaker. E nga mana, e nga reo, e nga hau e wha, tena koutou katoa.

  Youth are no doubt the future of tomorrow, however their ideals are being shaped today; their morals are being shaped today; their views are being shaped today. These ideals, morals and views are shaped by the world and environment around them. And it is these ideals, morals and views that will rule our country in the future.

  With the happenings in the last couple of years one can say without much doubt that the world and environment of today is hardly full of peace. It seems that today there are wars raging all over the world. From invasions to civil wars, at every turn there are causes of death, suffering and inhumanity through war. And these causes of death, suffering and inhumanity are being broadcast to our TV sets every night without fail. By witnessing this it is true that our young people are being educated to such horrors which, thankfully, do not exist in New Zealand. But by witnessing this they are growing up in a world where war is being normalised. Sadly it is coming to the stage where war is no longer an event filled with shock and horror but a daily going on, a norm.

  This is a crime of normalisation. Although true that children in New Zealand are not traumatised in the same manner as those who live in war torn countries who lose parents, relatives, siblings, their homes and their livelihoods, children in New Zealand are affected by seeing these wars as a norm. If this trend of seeing war as a norm continues without fail we are raising a future of a war society, not a future of a peace society as one would hope.

  To stop this trend we can eradicate war and all its horrors. But unfortunately at this moment in time it is not realistic – but we can however continue and better the education we give children regarding war and peace. The education that is going out today is mostly targeted at older children, mostly from high school onwards, however children younger than that are being exposed to war trauma so we need to educate them before they consider war as a norm.

  More programs targeted at intermediate and primary students are necessary, now more than ever. By encouraging events such as peace week and peace related programs children can learn that peace and not war is the norm. Through this I know that the ideals, morals and views which will be used to run our country are those of peace. And this, my fellow Youth Parliamentarians is an idea that I look forward to.

• 
  The Voice of the Tamil Youth Community
  
  . On Sunday 21 August the Tamil community in Auckland launched a book of essays by Tamil youth on their experiences and desires as migrants to New Zealand. In the current climate of political attacks on migrants in general and refugees in particular they make interesting and hopeful reading.

  Nirupa George is also featured in that book, and below is her contribution. If you are interested in getting a copy of the book itself, contact Tim Hannah (
  
  
  tim [dot] hannah
  
  [at]
  
  parliament [dot] govt [dot] nz
  
  
  ).

  
  Faces
  

  Acceptance. In a word, the aim of our lives can be summed up to acceptance. Whether it be in work or play, we always yearn for the approval of our family, peers and others around us. No one ever wants to be singled out in a crowd, but rather be looked up to and accepted.

  Acceptance, however difficult it may be for the older generations, it is twice as hard for the younger generations. We not only have to find acceptance in the larger society of grown ups, but we also have to maintain our acceptance in our, and probably, more judgmental peers.

  Now if you take the acceptance problem of youngsters and multiply it by 3, you have the acceptance problems of a migrant youth. Although knowing full well that is probably not the case for all migrant youths, this is the probably the case for most of them. As a migrant youth myself, I find that I have to battle this issue in 3 different fronts – my peers, my parents and my society. As different as all three sectors maybe, they all inter-link in one-way or another. And I for one can tell you, that trying to maintain a balance between the three is by no means an easy task.

  When I first came to NZ, I found that finding acceptance among my peers as one of the most challenging things. Having come to a whole new culture altogether, I had to basically start from scratch. Everything from what was cool to wear to what wear to figuring out what each slang word meant, was a task that had to be accomplished within a short period of time, before you were branded as some sort of loser. Then of course there is the whole behavior aspect of things. That included going to the movies with your friends to getting a hotmail account ASAP.

  In my personal opinion, parents are the easiest to find acceptance with. They tend to sympathetic towards your need to fit in with your peers, so they will often allow for a leeway. However I have been told by many of my fellow migrant youths that in fact it is their parents who are the worst perpetuators of all. In fear that they children might go astray they tend to enforce their culture and stricter rules in a hard and fast manner. In either case, peer pressure or not, it is often the case that nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing can get in the way of your studies and your supposed goal to becoming a doctor or engineer.

  Although some people don’t even consider a third front, I feel that acceptance among our ethnic society, in my case my Tamil, to be the hardest one of all. Although your peers tend to be judgmental at first, once they accept you, they are not critical. However, I find that any society, in general, tends to be extremely critical through and through. Slip up once and society could quite well crucify you. The hardest thing with society is that while you try and fit in with your peers you have to convince your society that you are still Tamil and follow traditions. This balance is easy enough to maintain when you separate it into school and home, but when it comes to the socializing outside the physical bounds of school, this is a different matter altogether. You run the risk of being branded as a wild cannon who no longer holds on to tradition.

  The hardest aspect to maintain in this delicate balance is, in my opinion, the social aspect of life. While in school, with our peers, we all socialize and interact with both males and females. But it is often the case that the guys we socialize with are of different ethnic background not our own ethnicity. Even when we meet the opposite sex of our ethnicity on the street or even in such a program like this, one is hesitant to stop and share a few words. And there is a perfectly good reason to this; we don’t wish to be tomorrow’s hottest gossip.

  Even though many of peers might find this absurd, just the simple act of talking to a guy could result in you having supposedly run away with him. All though the very notion of it is absolutely ridiculous, it is reality.

  In order to satisfy all those different people, I find that we are forced to wear faces. To each front you hide the so-called undesirable parts and hope that they don’t see through you. To you peers you are a fun loving, give any-thing-a-go type of person who occasionally indulges in blaspheme. To your parents you are a hard working, school loving kid, who also likes to have fun with your friends. To your society, you an academically excelling student, you respect your parents, strictly follow culture and by no by no means curse at all. And of course to your parents and society you have pretty much nailed a spot in med college.

  Although these are probably not the faces every migrant wears, this could very well be an outline. In wearing all these different faces, we tend to forget whom we really are and what it is that we really want.

  And in order for us to be happy and feel self satisfied, it is important that, we are what we want to be. But unfortunately it is not always possible. Although some shrug it off as a phase in growing up, it should not have to be so hard. After all, we did leave Sri Lanka to get away form the oppression and genocide that we faced in every corner, and to live as free people. Even though it is not the same the kind of lifestyle we are living here could be seen as a form of oppression.

  In order to change this oppression, one should fruitlessly beg society to change. That would literally mean asking over 2000 Tamils to change their way of thinking that has been around for generations. And that is only 2000 in Auckland. What about the other parts of New Zealand or other overseas countries? No, change in society will come over time, but it will be when my generation is behind the wheel not when we are learning to get behind the wheel.

  What I ask from the New Zealand government is to help me and migrant youth like myself make the transition into this culture easier. I firmly believe if my peers were more educated on the difficulties that migrants face and the cultural boundaries that we have, then they will understand us for who we are. And we as migrant youths won’t have to wear faces.

  When I first arrived in New Zealand, I was in year 6. I had classmates who didn’t even know that there was such a country as Sri Lanka. Many of then believed that Asia only compromised of China and India. This first registered as a huge shock for me. As I finally progressed on to Intermediate and Grammar, I found that most of my fellow classmates thought that all Asia was about was curry, exotic spices and very decorative clothes. They didn’t have a clue of the traditions, not even a slight hint, or of the poverty that many of those countries experience. They didn’t even understand that we had to sneak out of our houses in the dead of night just to save ourselves from advancing army. They didn’t understand war for what it was and the horrors we faced back home.

  Going from oppression of minority to oppression of identity is something no youth should have to go through. By education the New Zealanders of tomorrow on different cultures, they are not missing out on anything, they gain so much more. So if you look at it, it is a win-win situation.

  With this, I do see a future with no faces.

JustPeace was produced by Christine Dann, Tim Hannah and Keith Locke, MP

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