Locke Keith: Visiting Forces Bill — Third Reading 
Locke Keith: Visiting Forces Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:618;Page:14097] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of the Greens to support the third reading of the bill as we have supported it through its previous stages. I think support for the bill is really a practical matter. We have to allow visiting forces some autonomy in their affairs in this country. That is the nature of armed services; they have their own codes of discipline and ways of operating and it would be very difficult in a practical sense to have visiting forces here without that provision. But we should have two cautions in relation to that. Firstly we do not wish the individuals who are part of the visiting force to suffer some injustices in the way they are treated by the command of the visiting force. Secondly we do not want visiting forces to affect New Zealanders or their property without obtaining some sanction. I think the bill has been worked out with this in mind. 
The bill proposes updating the base document for visiting forces which has been longstanding to make it more appropriate today. On top of this for each visiting force a status of forces agreement would be discussed negotiated and signed. In one sense this base document grants sovereign immunity to the members of the visiting force but this does not mean that New Zealand should wash its hands of what happens to its members or the consequences for New Zealand. There is a bit of a problem if somehow in the process of justice within the visiting forces injustices do occur. We can illustrate this by clause 9 which has two parts. Firstly the “visiting force must not impose or carry out a sentence of death in New Zealand”. That covers the situation where the visiting force imposes or carries out the death sentence here but it does not necessarily cover the situation where the alleged offending member of the visiting force is dragged back to his or her home country and then has the death sentence imposed and carried out. Surely we want to guard against that. This does apply here because there is the death penalty in Singapore and China and we can have visiting forces from those countries. Singaporean troops come here fairly frequently. How would that issue be dealt with? It came out in the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee that it would be handled primarily by negotiation between New Zealand and the Government concerned—say the Singaporean Government—to make sure that it never eventuates and that an offence committed in New Zealand by the visiting force cannot result in the offender being sent back to his or her home country being condemned to death and that sentence being carried out. We would have to be very conscious of pursuing that in the spirit of the bill. 
The second question is due process and again the justice systems in countries like China and Singapore are not terribly good on due process. We all know about China I think and it is much the same in Singapore. In this so-called war on terrorism one often reads in the newspapers about people being arrested in Singapore as alleged terrorists and put in jail. Then one reads the fine print and finds that not a single one of them has ever been brought to trial. They are all sitting there in jail on renewable sentences under the Internal Security Act without any due process whatsoever. We have to guard that members of visiting forces who allegedly commit infractions are treated in a just way. Again it would be a process of negotiation between the New Zealand Government and the Government of the visiting force to make sure that did happen. 
 The other part clause 9(1)(b) states: “The service authorities of a visiting force must not—(b) do any act in New Zealand that would if done by a member of the Armed Forces of New Zealand constitute an offence under the Crimes of Torture Act 1989.” That provision has gained more relevance in recent times with all the pictures shown around the world of what has been happening under the jurisdiction of the American forces in Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay etc. and it has relevance here because we have a US visiting force in this country. I do not think it is terribly likely that the current commander of the visiting force at Harewood is torturing American soldiers—I do not think that is terribly likely at all—but I think it alerts us to the situation that we have to look at how the visiting force treats its prisoners or even members of its own armed force. It is clear from what has been said in all the Amnesty International reports and even in American Government reports that the Americans have treated prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and in other places in Iraq in ways that are contrary to the Crimes of Torture Act in terms of putting hoods on people putting them in painful positions threatening them and doing what amounts to a form of water torture etc. There is quite a big list of ways in which American forces recently have clearly acted contrary to the Crimes of Torture Act and to the international convention on torture. We would have to keep an eye on that. 
This relates to another point that occurred to me when thinking about this problem. It is not specifically in the bill but perhaps it should go in the status of forces agreement that would be set up on top of the legislation. This point is about having more transparency in the justice operations of visiting forces when they are in New Zealand. Even if we allow them jurisdiction over how they deal with their own soldiers there could be some system whereby the nature of the application of that justice and any questions about the nature of the application of that justice are made available to the host country—in this case New Zealand—so that if there are any concerns about torture or anything else they can be negotiated between the Governments of the two countries. I think that that would be a fit with this bill. 
The other question is about the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act which Peter Dunne referred to. I think it is important that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act applies to any New Zealander who may be working in one way or another with the visiting force. I think that in that respect we should never put New Zealanders outside the ambit of New Zealand legislation and of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. 
The other question I want to raise relates to civil jurisdiction beyond criminal jurisdiction. We have a problem here in a sense and it can even apply to the history of the US visiting force at Harewood. Various children have been fathered by members of the American visiting force there and there have been various civil suits relating to paternity responsibilities and things like that. I think it is important for the New Zealand Government—although this is not strictly a part of this bill—to be engaged with those issues and not to say that just because the soldiers have gone back to Milwaukee or somewhere the effect of the members of that visiting force on New Zealand citizens such as women who bear children by those soldiers is of no concern. 
I think it is important that in negotiating the status of forces agreements we take a tough line on some Governments—such as the American Government—that may not want to have this transparency and have any interference at all in their activities. The American Government is a bit more open to negotiations now. The other day it had to accommodate a vote at the United Nations Security Council about the application of the International Criminal Court to its soldiers in Iraq. The American Government has not fully accommodated the International Criminal Court but it has had to start giving ground under pressure from the international community. I think we should approach negotiations with the United States in the confidence that we do have the people of the world behind us in making sure that visiting forces operate correctly. We do not want a situation as for instance has occurred in Okinawa. I heard on the radio the other day a woman saying that there have been hundreds of cases of US Army infractions against women in Okinawa which has caused great hostility amongst the people of Okinawa. We want our relations with visiting forces to take account of the human consequences.