Monday, July 28, 2008

Dominion Post sanitizes the news


Immigration overhaul clears two hurdles
The Labour Department has admitted New Zealand has fallen behind other countries in border security as it moves towards a major revamp of the Immigration Service's computer system. The department issued a request for information from vendors on a new system at the same time the Immigration Bill - which would give Immigration the right to collect and use biometric data to identify non-citizens - cleared another hurdle in Parliament. The bill has been reviewed by the transport and industrial relations select committee, which made several changes to the proposed legislation. These include giving people denied residency, refugee status or facing deportation the right to see a summary of allegations against them.

The Dominion Post has sanitized this story, no where is it mentioned that secret evidence is going to be used by up to 14 departments to deport people back to regimes that allow torture – instead it’s some bullshit suck up to a press release about the technical needs to keep up with the worlds paranoia on security. Un-fucking-believable, the Dominion Post you have done yourself a disservice and it is outrageous that such a mammoth distortion of our civil liberties is being sneaked through under the guise of immigration reform. The people on the fringes are always the first to feel the heavy hand of repression, the Urewera ‘terrorists’, gangs are being sold as ‘domestic terrorists’ with new laws targeting ‘them’ and immigrants face immediate deportation based on secret evidence back to regimes that torture.

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