Battle for Parliament: the inside story, from among the protesters
Thursday, 3 March 2022
It took less than 24 hours for police to clear the sprawling anti-mandate encampment at Parliament. Reporter George Block and photographers David Unwin and Braden Fastier were among Stuff’s team near the front lines from the start of the raid, as the occupation descended into a riot and pitched battle with police. This is what they saw.
The protesters knew something was up.
Police were never going to be able to sneak hundreds of fresh officers into the Wellington region without giving away they had something in the works.
On Tuesday, the day before the raid, several of the groups at the camp sent out an email saying 300-600 police from around the country were having special training up the road at Porirua.
That night, dozens of rented vans were seen around Wellington delivering police to hotels around the city, and more than a dozen were parked outside the central police station.
The email said protesters feared police would move in overnight to clear the camp with water cannons and tear gas.
**READ MORE:
* Protesters disperse after major police operation ends Parliament occupation
* Baptism of fire: The police operation that ended the occupation of Parliament
* Police spat at during ongoing Parliament protest, couple gets married on site
* Parliament occupation, Day 15: Two arrests after clash with police reportedly injures three officers
**
Encrypted messaging app Telegram was abuzz with elements of the protest saying a raid was coming and calling for more boots on the ground to defend the camp.
“We are very concerned about what they may be planning to do to the peaceful protesters of Parliament tonight,” one message said.
“In order to reduce the chances of anything unfortunate happening, we request that as many New Zealanders as possible come to central Wellington tonight.”
One hotel, on the Terrace, hosted under the same roof a significant contingent of media, out-of-town protesters who preferred not to rough it overnight, and freshly arrived cops.
From 3.30am Wednesday, Stuff saw the rented vans converging on Parliament from motorway exits and the hotel. Officers were massing in the car park behind parliament.
Some were arriving in borrowed tradesmen’s vans after the stock of rental vans ran low.
Police were on a high state of alert.
When a reporter snapped a photo of a van-load preparing to depart a hotel, for use later, an agitated senior sergeant stormed over and would not leave until he had seen the picture deleted.
While many protesters knew something was in the works, it appears Police Commissioner Andrew Coster’s comment that no one leaked specific details of the raid was accurate.
Groups were manning barricades around the tents - some had been up all night waiting for the cops.
They were heard asking officers if there was going to be a “dawn raid” and accusing the media of being tipped off in advance by the prime minister.
The largest number were at the Lambton Quay side.
That was more than 300 metres away from the other side of the camp where police would make their first incursion into the streets occupied for three weeks and one day by protesters.
When one of Stuff’s reporter-photographer teams arrived at the National Library on Molesworth St for a look around, a small group of protesters stopped media walking down the road to the Hill and Aitken St intersection.
One was on guard with a large dog on a chain.
Another said media would be detained and ejected, if they were lucky, if they came beyond the concrete barrier.
For an hour before dawn an uneasy quiet persisted.
Protesters on the barrier were in frequent walkie-talkie contact with one another asking if they had seen any sign of police movement.
At 5.55am, the police Eagle helicopter, usually based in Auckland, emerged from nowhere and began hovering over the camp.
Five minutes later, the noise of the helicopter was joined by shouts, whistles and car horns from protesters trying to warn each other a huge line of police had emerged from behind Parliament and was marching down Bowen St, around the camp perimeter.
We tried to run down Molesworth St towards the intersection, home to a freshly constructed toilet block plumbed into city sewers, but were met with significant opposition from protesters who pushed us away and turned on a blinding strobe on their mobile phones.
Unable to head to Molesworth we cut left on Hill St and down Mulgrave, past the Thistle Inn pub.
“The lowlife scum have arrived,” one protester said.
“It’s the dawn raids!”
Others tried to keep things peaceful and called on people to take their children onto Parliament grounds, in the core of the camp, to keep them safe.
“If we lose control, they gain control,” another said.
Upon reaching Stout St we saw the line of cops marching up the road, behind the law school, chanting “move, move, move” with a police car in the lead.
Protesters were throwing road cones into its path, forcing it to stop for a few beats. Officers rushed out and cleared the cones as the protesters retreated.
The line of police snaked up around the bus exchange and up Mulgrave St towards Hill St.
They paused at the intersection and a senior officer in the lead called for reinforcements.
Down Hill St, a protester let down the tyres of a police car.
The man threatened and pushed a Stuff photographer, before heading back to the Aitken, Hill and Molesworth St intersection, where protesters had begun to mass.
Meanwhile, at the Aitken and Hill St intersection, riot police had rushed from the other side, down Hill St, and surrounded the portaloos and the more permanent toilet structure, dubbed the “Peehive” by the protesters.
Police staff with loudspeakers began repeating a message saying the streets were closed, and to leave or face arrest.
At the Anglican cathedral by the Hill and Aitken St intersection, officers went in and began tearing down protesters’ tents.
“This is pillage the village 2022, brought to you by the New Zealand police,” a protester said.
“F*** you pigs,” said another.
Back on Aitken St, a dense line of police had formed.
Protesters had strung up rope and tape across the street, but it did not succeed in slowing the advance of the police line.
Another mass of officers concurrently advanced down Hill St towards the intersection, meeting increased resistance.
Both lines of police converged on the mass of officers surrounding the toilets and the lines then joined, forcing protesters down Molesworth St and seizing the first small bit of ground occupied for the past three weeks.
For the first time, police met determined, organised resistance.
Protesters formed a scrum and succeeded in keeping police from advancing further down Molesworth.
Standing out among the mostly men on the front lines was Raewyne from Ashburton, who spoke to Stuff while retreating amid the chaos from police behind riot shields advancing up the street.
She had been camping at the occupation since the start, and described the police action as “bloody disgusting”.
Seeing the number of police advancing on their camp, Raewyne did not hold out much hope even at that early stage.
“I don’t know, there’s so many of them. It’s like, what do we do?”
As the scrum continued, police began using pepper spray, with protesters responding with blasts from fire extinguishers. But no officers were seen to lose control.
Unlike the tactics in the Springbok tour, officers never swung batons, preferring to gradually push down streets in tight lines behind riot shields, every so often using pepper spray, and steadily pull from the front line to arrest them.
After about 10 minutes behind the lines as the crowd battled to resist the push of police down Molesworth, we were identified as a Stuff reporter and photographer.
A small, agitated small group chased us down the street away from the police line, threatening to “smash” us.
They caught up with photographer David Unwin and grabbed his camera, but were unable to wrench it off him. He got away, with no damage to the camera.
As dawn broke, police secured control of Hill, Aitken and a portion of Molesworth Street above the library.
For several hours, police hardly moved any further.
They started removing vehicles parked in the cathedral’s car park as the bishop looked on.
The first campervans began to leave and protesters began dissembling marquees on Molesworth St and moving them into the camp on parliament grounds, knowing police would soon advance down the hill.
Protesters also closed and locked the main gates of parliament.
Over the morning police eventually used forklifts to remove the Peehive and the portaloos, and some vehicles.
While the situation remained tense and sometimes violent outside the Court of Appeal on Molesworth St, police hardly moved further for several hours.
One officer suffered a cut to her head in the confrontation, went back to a paramedic to get her head bandaged, then returned to the front lines.
Protesters rotated in and out of the lines, which were kept well-fed by regular boxes of food prepared in the kitchens in the camp.
After leaving the line, Wakahuia Porter, from Ōtaki, said he was “just holding the line, peacefully, for humanity”.
“Once you know the truth, you can’t un-know the truth,” he said.
“It feels like we’re brothers and sisters, standing up for humanity.”
Music began to play and the mood relaxed.
Protesters moved more makeshift barriers up to behind their lines, preparing for the next police advance.
The clock passed noon and rain started to fall, as people wondered aloud how police would be able to retake the entire camp that day, given their slow progress so far.
Then, about 2.37pm, a couple of bus loads of officers arrived behind parliament.
Three minutes later, a protester yelled “everybody up to the fort! Hold the line!”.
Police were not pushing further down Molesworth St, but instead charged down from the forecourt of the Parliamentary library right into the heart of the camp on parliament’s lawn.
Protesters’ positions were weak at the library and police made short work of reclaiming a decent chunk of the grounds.
Violence immediately erupted as protesters leapt over the hedge to join the fray on the lawn.
It was all on.
Police extensively used pepper spray to push back protesters before the line of officers began the first of several successful charges down Molesworth St, quickly reaching the Backbencher pub.
The level of violence escalated.
Protesters began throwing bottles and other projectiles at police, and carrying lines of pipe and timber up to the lines to use as weapons.
By 3.30pm police had control of half of the core camp on the lawn.
Protesters threw constant volleys of projectiles at police and some lit tents on fire as they retreated.
Others threw whatever they could find, including gas bottles, on the fires, one of which engulfed the playground and badly damaged a slide.
“If we can’t have it, they can’t have it,” a protester said.
A line of police advanced onto the forecourt of Parliament near a wall covered with chalk murals written by protesters, including some messages of police, love and non-violence.
Several officers were injured as they became isolated and were charged at by protesters throwing projectiles, and police were forced to beat a retreat.
But within 10 minutes police had regrouped and forced protesters down the steps.
By about 4.30pm police had cleared officers from the last part of the camp still under their control, but the worst of the chaos was still to come.
A crowd of a few hundred of the most hardened and violent in the crowd were now surrounded by police on the section of Lambton Quay between the law school and parliament.
They began tearing pavers from the street, smashing them into smaller projectiles and throwing them at riot police, causing further injuries to officers. Forty police officers were eventually injured, with eight requiring hospital treatment.
Police tried a new tactic of turning fire hoses on the crowd, to some success, but the crowd retaliated by throwing more and more projectiles, including some firecrackers.
Some protesters claimed a few of the firecrackers were in fact improvised explosive devices made from Lithium-ion batteries, but this has not been confirmed.
They also lit a bonfire under a tree near the cenotaph.
After about an hour of mayhem, protesters turned their attention to the line of police behind the concrete blocks at the intersection of Lambton Quay and Bowen St.
At this point the violence became a riot.
Around the same time Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told media that 270 people remained facing off with police.
“There has been foreign influence in what we've seen,” Arden said.
Shortly before 6pm, I became sandwiched between the line of protesters throwing pavers and bottles and police trying to push them back with a water cannon.
Behind the police lines on Lambton Quay a crowd of commuters watching the fray gasped as protesters ran right up to the barricades and some jumped over.
Protesters seemed on the brink of breaking out of the police line and running rampant through the city, but they were pushed back by officers.
In the meantime, members of the police’s special tactics group (STG), an elite counterterrorist unit, arrived at the scene in black Toyota four-wheel drives.
They started firing projectiles from 40mm launchers.
There were conflicting reports whether they were bean bag rounds or rubber bullets, but a shell recovered at the scene by Stuff suggests they were the former, specifically sponge rounds.
Whatever they were, they worked.
By 6.10pm, police had advanced towards the thinning ranks of the remaining protesters at the bus interchange.
Another few small fires were lit, but police continued to gain ground, pushing protesters to the end of Bunny St past the railway station.
By 9pm only 100 remained, and an hour later they had dispersed.
Before midnight, council contractors and the Defence Force were on site clearing the large amount of rubbish from the streets surrounding parliament.
Alex Awatere, night shift supervisor for council contractors Eco Maintenance, said he hoped to have the removal of rubbish from Lambton Quay and surrounding streets finished by morning.
When he got the call earlier today he “thought it was a bit daunting”.
“I had to call in reinforcements.”
True to his word, the rubbish was virtually all gone from Lambton Quay and Molesworth when Stuff visited on Thursday morning, but piles of tents and other debris remained on Parliament’s lawns.
Two ex-protesters approached police at their tightly controlled cordon on Kate Sheppard Place on Thursday morning, ranting about the events of the previous day.
After three weeks of protesters barring police access to the site, the roles had reversed.
They were threatened with arrest as they became increasingly agitated and began calling media and police communists and Nazis.
“You have no idea what you’ve done to us,” one woman said, before the pair walked off.