Locke Keith: General Debates 
Locke Keith: General Debates 
[Volume:615;Page:11308] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 On behalf of the Green Party I congratulate Paul Swain on his appointment as Minister of Immigration and wish him well. A couple of important cases—that of a Sri Lankan girl and of Ahmed Zaoui—were mishandled under his predecessor and we would like the new Minister to look at them with fresh eyes. Both cases should have been approached with more compassion recognising that two people were really hurting and that with a little effort New Zealand could have ended their suffering. 
The first case is that of the 16-year-old Sri Lankan girl so heartlessly deported along with her grandmother on 12 February. Unfortunately the Refugee Status Appeals Authority got it wrong. The Associate Minister of Immigration Damien O’Connor did not correct the mistake and deported the girl on the basis that a care plan was in place for her in Colombo. 
Let us look at where the Refugee Status Appeals Authority got it wrong. It correctly judged that the girl had been subject to sexual abuse by members of her family and that she would qualify as a refugee on these grounds if she had a legitimate fear that she would be harmed if she were returned to Sri Lanka. However the authority was convinced that her family could help her in Colombo her uncle being a policeman etc. etc. It is clear from TVNZ’s  
Sunday 
 programme that family members other than her grandmother were not willing to help the girl and would not be available to protect her from what the authority admitted was possible revenge by one of her abusers. 
Associate Minister Damien O’Connor in justifying the deportation said that a care plan was in place and indicated that family members were involved. It transpired that no family member was contacted about such a plan and that the only plan—arranged just before the girl’s departure—was temporary accommodation in a Catholic convent. It was obvious to all New Zealanders that the girl was not fit to travel to Sri Lanka being so highly distressed and having not eaten for some time. To make matters worse she was illegally drugged en route. She is still very upset. The least the new Minister could do in recompense for this disgraceful episode is offer the girl and her grandmother a place in New Zealand if they wish to take it up. 
The second case grossly mishandled by the new Minister’s predecessor was that of former Algerian MP Ahmed Zaoui who has been imprisoned in New Zealand for over 14 months. The security risk certificate imposed on Mr Zaoui by Ms Dalziel nearly a year ago is clearly without foundation judging by the Security Intelligence Service’s summary of allegations which were finally made public last Friday. The summary refers to a video made by Mr Zaoui laughably called a “casing” video. As Mr Zaoui told me from prison last Sunday he would hardly have put his own face in a casing video or included it in his luggage when he flew to New Zealand to claim asylum under his own name. We will all now have to be careful about what we film on our holidays. The SIS absurdly stated that the videoing of a tourist bus and an Internet cafe is evidence of Mr Zaoui’s terrorist aims. The fact that Mr Zaoui a devout Muslim visited one of the two mosques in Hanoi was deemed by the SIS to be very suspicious. 
The SIS summary then repeats the accusations made against Mr Zaoui during court trials in Belgium and France and on his expulsion from Switzerland. Every last one of these accusations was thoroughly discredited and disproved in the Refugee Status Appeals Authority’s determination which came out after the security risk certificate had been imposed on Mr Zaoui. After the authority’s decision came out the then Minister of Immigration should have lifted the security risk certificate. 
 It should be noted that the Refugee Status Appeals Authority which met concerning the Zaoui case went to huge trouble to get all the relevant documentation from overseas—from Europe in this case—unlike the differently constituted Refugee Status Appeals Authority in the Sri Lankan girl’s case which obtained very little information from Sri Lanka. 
The fact is that the Refugee Status Appeals Authority in the Zaoui case has embarrassed intelligence services in Europe which retailed slanders from the Algerian regime against Mr Zaoui. But this does not justify us keeping Mr Zaoui in jail here. The security risk certificate against him should be lifted and Mr Zaoui should be allowed to take his place among us.