Tears, call for 'tangible actions' after Government announces it will formally apologise for dawn raids

Monday, 14 June 2021

Pacific Peoples Minister Aupito William Sio talks about his family's experience of the dawn raids.

Luamanuvao Dame Winnie Laban says she doesn’t know one Pacific Islander that was not traumatised by the race-based dawn raids of the 1970s.

“It’s deep-seated in people’s memories,' Laban said. “As a young Kiwi-born Samoan, I wondered why we were being treated like this. It instilled fear.”

The infamous policy saw police racially target suspected overstayers from the Pacific, but not from Britain or America, often ending in their prosecution and deportation. The Government announced on Monday, it would be formally apologising to the country’s Pacific communities for the dawn raids.

And while Laban said an apology was good, it was important to see tangible actions being taken by New Zealand.

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Luamanuvao Dame Winnie Laban says while an apology is good, tangible actions need to be taken by New Zealand.

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Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says “an apology can never reverse what happened or undo the damage caused, but we can acknowledge it, and we can seek to right a wrong'.

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Filmmaker Jade Jackson says she cried when she heard about the formal apology.

“What we have to remind New Zealand is that we are part of the Pacific.

“We have a moral responsibility to go beyond an apology,” Laban said, suggesting the Government should help the Pacific who had taken a hit economically during the Covid-19 pandemic.

It was about the country showing a human heart, she said.

Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio says the raids traumatised his family.

When Jade Jackson first found out about the Government's plan to make a formal apology for the race-based dawn raids of the 1970s, she cried.

'I feel it is really long overdue but it's really exciting and a step forward,' the Samoan filmmaker said.

'I'm conflicted because it's a step in the right direction, but it'll never take away the pain that has been caused.'

“I do not want my children or any of my nieces and nephews to be shackled by the pain and to be angry about it. I need them to move forward and look to the future, as people of Aotearoa,” Aupito William Sio said on Monday.

The timing of the apology was serendipitous - Jackson had recently returned to her hometown Porirua, to make a short film called Raids, about the dawn raids.

'We were silenced everywhere, and it silenced Pacific people for so long. This apology feels like the next step to empower ourselves.'

Events like the dawn raids had created intergenerational trauma – Jackson used her own family as an example.

Minister Aupito William Sio gets emotional during the press conference as he talked about his dawn raid experiences.

Her mother and grandmother did not speak about the dawn raids and Jackson said it had silenced nearly three generations of her family.

'I'm talking about it and healing, and this acknowledgement is part of the healing, but there's still a long road ahead of us.”

On Monday, Prime Minister Ardern✓ said police “racially exploited” a power they had to demand passports or visas from people at random and told people who “did not look like they came from New Zealand” to carry a passport at all times – which was unacceptable.

Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio said the raids personally traumatised his family when he was a teen. His father, who had recently bought his house, was helpless as police raided the home.

“To have somebody knocking at the door in the early hours of the morning with a flashlight in your face, disrespecting the owner of the home, with an Alsatian dog frothing at the mouth at your door, wanting to come in without any respect for the people living in there is quite traumatising,” Sio said.

“That is just my family – that is replicated across the Pacific community.”

He said the apology was important so that the next generation of Pasifika people in New Zealand could build trust and confidence in the system.

“I do not want my children or any of my nieces and nephews to be shackled by the pain and to be angry about it. I need them to move forward and look to the future, as people of Aotearoa.”

In the 1970s, the Labour and National governments authorised raids on homes, workplaces and even churches to check for people who had overstayed their visas.

The practice had followed a boom period where migration from the Pacific Islands was encouraged to fill labour shortages. But when the economy declined, the Pasifika community was demonised by politicians and media as the reason for the country's social problems.

“An apology can never reverse what happened or undo the damage caused, but we can acknowledge it, and we can seek to right a wrong,” Ardern said.

The apology will be made at a commemoration event on June 26 at the Auckland Town Hall.