- Jared Phillips
from The Spark July 2007
Five Iranian men are being detained indefinitely at the Mt. Eden Remand Centre in Auckland. All progressive forces must unite to get them out.
The detainees recently decided to make their cases known after a public campaign led to the release of another Iranian immigrant, Thomas Yadegary . His temporary work visa expired in 1997, he feared going back to Iran after his conversion to Christianity, and he was imprisoned at Mt. Eden Remand Centre for two years and five months before being released in April 2007. Amongst the five detainees who have come forward as a result of Yadegary’s release are Fardien Nouriyan who has been imprisoned for at least 15 months, Ali Riza Panah who has been detained for 18 months, and Amir Mohebbe who has been detained for three and a half years.
Homiera Madani, a spokesperson for the group International Hope and Peace, which was prominent in the campaign to release Thomas Yadegary, told *The Spark* that all of the five prisoners were either asylum seekers or refugees, `They fear being deported to Iran because they will be persecuted, like two others who were deported in the last two years. One was executed and one is missing. The New Zealand government’s intention is to send them back to Iran. The government wants to make them sign papers that approve of their own deportations. If they sign the deportation papers, then the government can claim it has no responsibility for what happens to them in Iran. That is why the prisoners will not sign the papers’.
There are several injustices that have put these men in jail. Limited possibilities for gaining permanent residence in New Zealand, religious fundamentalism and authoritarianism in Iran, the depression induced by incarceration, little or no opportunity to see family or friends. There are two structural features of capitalism that allow these injustices to happen – national chauvinism and class-based discrimination.
National chauvinism weakens the collective power of the working class by maintaining divisions amongst working people in each country and between the workers of different countries. For exmaple, it is used to gain compliance with New Zealand’s economic and military involvements in the South Pacific, and it is used to promote divisions within the local labour movement which are useful for employers during economic downturns. National chauvinism does not necessarily come in the form of New Zealand First-styled bigotry. Up-to-date national chauvinism takes the form of maintaining a `balance’, and in New Zealand that balance takes the form of a bi-culturalism that excludes people from coming in from Third World countries.
While this new national chauvinism provides benefits for the ruling class, it is not pursued absolutely. National chauvinism is put aside for rich migrants when they introduce economic benefits for local capitalists, as demonstrated, grotesquely, by Labour’s introduction of new immigration exemptions for the rich. Preferential entry will be given to those with NZ $20 million, and $5 million to invest in businesses. “If you’ve got $20 million to invest in a real business in New Zealand, I dare say you can afford a translator – that’s good enough”, said Immigration Minister David Cunliffe. This shows how welcoming the Labour Party is to rich capitalists and criminals, and how disdainful they are to average non-English speakers.
Because the Labour Party runs a public relations campaign to maintain the ideological construct of it being some kind of left- wing party, it will come as a surprise to some that National Party MP, Maurice Williamson, has been consistently more liberal than any Labour MPs and gave political support to Thomas Yadegary. The last seven years of Labour-led governments have been marked with repression against foreign workers and asylum seekers. They continue to deny residency for Thomas Yadegary and are contesting his release, and Ahmed Zaoui is facing a hearing to establish whether he will gain a security certificate. And the public hears nothing more of Thakshila, who, in disgusting circumstances, was deported to Sri Lanka in 2004.
Over the coming months progressive organisations will build on the success of Thomas Yadegary’s release and escalate the campaign for the release and residency of the Iranian detainees. This will be done against the Labour government.
