page_title: Māori protest movement
section_title: Anti-terror raids
hierarchical_section_title: Māori protest movement / Te Mana Motuhake o Tuhoe / Anti-terror raids
caption_attribution_description: English: Ngāi Tūhoe tribe, New Zealand
context_page_description: The Māori protest movement is a broad indigenous-rights movement in New Zealand. While this movement has existed since Europeans first colonised New Zealand, its modern form emerged in the early 1970s and has focused on issues such as the Treaty of Waitangi, Māori land rights, the Māori language and culture, and racism. It has generally been allied with the left wing although it differs from the mainstream left in a number of ways. Most members of the movement have been Māori but it has attracted some support from pākehā New Zealanders and internationally, particularly from other indigenous peoples. Notable successes of the movement include establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal, the return of some Māori land, and the Māori language being made an official language of New Zealand. The movement is part of a broader Māori Renaissance.
context_section_description: On Monday, 15 October 2007, several police raids were conducted across New Zealand in relation to the discovery of an alleged paramilitary training camp deep in the Urewera mountain range near the town of Ruatoki in the eastern Bay of Plenty.
  About 300 police, including members of the Armed Offenders and anti-terror squads, were involved in the raids in which four guns and 230 rounds of ammunition were seized and 17 people arrested, all but one of them charged with firearms offences. According to police, the raids were a culmination of more than a year of surveillance that uncovered and monitored the training camps. Search warrants were executed under the Summary Proceedings Act to search for evidence relating to potential breaches of the Terrorism Suppression Act and the Arms Act.
  On 29 October, police referred evidence gathered during the raids to the Solicitor-General to consider whether charges should be laid under the Terrorism Suppression Act. Authorisation for prosecutions under the Act is given by the Attorney-General though he has delegated this responsibility to Solicitor-General David Collins. On 8 November the Solicitor-General declined to press charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act, because of inadequacies of the legislation. According to Prime Minister Helen Clark, one of the reasons police tried to lay charges under anti-terror legislation was because they could not use telephone interception evidence in prosecutions under the Arms Act.
  Activists that were arrested and raided are known supporters of Te Mana Motuhake o Tuhoe and came from diverse networks of environmental, anarchist and Māori activism.
caption: Approximate area of the Urewera mountain range.
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