New Zealand to get its first pacifist memorial
Thursday, 8 October 2020
A memorial dedicated to peace will be erected in Dunedin to honour New Zealand’s conscientious objectors.
More than $500,000 has been raised for a national memorial peace garden, which could be completed by March.
Consents had been granted, and contractors were being negotiated, Archibald Baxter Memorial Trust chairman Emeritus Prof Kevin Clements said.
Archibald Baxter, the father of poet James K Baxter, was the country's most prominent conscientious objector. He was physically and mentally abused over his non-fighting stance in World War I.
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The memorial project was not without its own battles. An initial plan to put it in Dunedin’s Anzac Ave ‘’did not go down well with the RSA,’' Clements said.
It was also not welcome at the Otago Museum reserve, but the Dunedin City Council helped secure a more suitable spot, the corner of Albany and George streets, which feature raised garden beds, trees and a pedestrian access way.
'’There are thousands of war memorials up and down the country, but there is not a single national memorial to all those who conscientiously objected to war,” Clements said.
‘’We thought that it was appropriative, especially to commemorate 100 years from the first world war, that there be a national peace garden.”
Those who conscientiously objected '’created a space for dissent and disobedience for authority, when authority was clearly misguided … as it was in the first world war'’, he said.
Baxter was one of 14 men sent to the front lines and they suffered ‘'terrible deprivations’', which today would constitute torture, Clements said.
Baxter, in his book, We Shall Not Cease, recalled being tied to a pole, a position known as Field Punishment No. 1. It involved being tied to a post in the open, with the person’s hands bound tightly behind their backs and their knees and feet bound.
'My hands were taken from round the pole, tied together and pulled well up it, straining and cramping the muscles and forcing them into an unnatural position … I was strained so tightly against the post that I was unable to move body or limbs a fraction of an inch.'
A temporary sculpture of Baxter appeared at Frank Kitts Park, Wellington, in 2016, prompted calls for a permanent place to honour conscientious objectors.
Baxter's family did not want a statue to be clearly identifiable as Baxter, Clements said.
’’They want it to be more symbolic, which is why we have a more abstract figure in the sculpture.’’
The trust planned to not only develop the peace garden, but also continue to host an annual peace lecture, and promote peace education among students.
It also wanted to republish some books, including Baxter's, which provide an ''alternative narrative'', Clements said.
A graphic novel was also planned.
Construction was set to begin in the new year, and the trust was yet to decide who would open the memorial.