Kedgley Sue: Mercenary Activities (Prohibition) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Kedgley Sue: Mercenary Activities (Prohibition) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:14235] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 I speak on behalf of Keith Locke who was speaking when the debate was interrupted. The Green Party supports this bill so that we can help to get rid of the scourge of mercenaries—soldiers of fortune who kill people for personal profit. This bill will enable New Zealand to implement the International Convention against the Recruitment Use Financing and Training of Mercenaries. 
The disastrous situation in the Congo today has its origins not only in Belgian colonialism but also in the use of mercenaries immediately after independence by Western political and business interests. The mercenaries overthrew the radical Lumumba Government and slaughtered thousands of people. Thankfully political developments in Papua New Guinea prevented Sandline International mercenaries from going into Bougainville so instead we were able to have peace negotiations there and a peace settlement. 
Today there is much discussion about whether any of the 20000 foreign contract bodyguards and security officers in Iraq qualify as mercenaries under this bill and whether any of them are New Zealanders who could be prosecuted under it. The bill states that a mercenary is one who for private gain takes part in hostilities and that mercenaries’ remuneration should be substantially in excess of that of locals unless they are involved in a concerted act of violence in which case they need be rewarded only with significant private gain. 
Clearly foreign bodyguards in Iraq earn several times as much as Iraqis—anything up to $3000 a day—so on that count they would be classified as mercenaries under this bill. Some of them take part knowingly in hostilities with what is deemed to be an enemy force. A good example of real mercenaries are the commandos of the US firm who on 4 April were involved in an intense firefight around the US Government headquarters in Najaf against Shiite militia and who used company helicopters to bring in more ammunition and ferry out a wounded marine. At the other end of the scale a Kiwi with a sidearm who was escorting around a BBC cameraperson would not qualify as a mercenary under this bill. 
One of the ruses that Governments use to try to hide mercenaries is to say that soldiers are really just a part of a national army. However the test is not just the amount of money that hired foreigners earn but whether they are independent of the command structure of the local army and not subject to the same discipline and rules of engagement. Real mercenaries have that degree of autonomy. Mike Hoare’s mercenaries in the Congo in the 1960s and mercenaries in Papua New Guinea in the 1990s were never part of the local army in a real sense. In fact a common-sense reason why Governments hire mercenaries—and often they do it covertly—is basically to get them to torture people and to do the dirty fighting that is outside the Geneva conventions. They can then say that it was not their soldiers who committed the terrible atrocities. Another ruse that people have used to try to get around the anti-mercenary convention is to define those taking part in hostilities only as direct combatants with weapons when clearly everyone in the command structure of a mercenary unit can and should be defined as a mercenary. 
There certainly may be New Zealand mercenaries in Iraq. We know that six former members of the police’s Special Tactics Group have gone there as have former SAS people and they should know that when they do they may have trouble with this law if they use arms in military hostilities in Iraq. Their Kiwi recruiters need to be aware of that too. Companies like Red Key Security are advertising in New Zealand papers. 
The Green Party is disturbed about the complicity of the New Zealand Defence Force in that recruitment. For example Brigadier Southwell provided a testimonial for a Defence Force sergeant who resigned last year to operate in Iraq. The brigadier wrote that he had no hesitation in recommending the sergeant as a leader of a close protection team in even the most severe of security situations. If this bill had been passed at that time Brigadier Southwell could arguably have been caught up in its provisions and ended up before the courts if that close protection team had been proved to be a mercenary unit. 
Just because our Defence Force is operating alongside the Americans and the British in Afghanistan and Iraq—unfortunately in the opinion of the Green Party—that does not give New Zealand Defence Force officers the right to recruit mercenaries for the American or British authorities in Iraq. Hopefully this bill will put a stop to that sort of behaviour and for that reason the Green Party strongly supports the bill.