March for a Multicultural Aotearoa

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March for a Multicultural Aotearoa

© Tze Ming Mok 2004 | Speech notes from March for a Multicultural Aotearoa, Wellington, Saturday 23 October, 2004

Speakers at Te Papa:

- (Teanau Tuiono MC & whakatau)

- Helen Kelly, Vice-President, NZCTU

- Hock Lee, Christchurch anti-racism march organiser (May 2004)

- Mohammed Osman, Newtown Projects

Speakers at Parliament:

- (Teanau Tuiono MC)

- Dean Hapeta/Te Kupu, Upper Hutt Posse

- Pancha Narayanan, President, New Zealand Federation of Ethnic Councils

- Tze Ming Mok, spokesperson, Multicultural Aotearoa (speech notes below)

Tena tatou katoa, huanyin dajia, welcome everyone.

A few months ago, after the Jewish cemetery attacks and bashing of the Somali kids by skinheads, hundreds of people came to a public meeting in Newtown and voted unanimously to hold this march. We knew the National Front’s violent racism was only part of the issue. Because it is institutional, political and social racism that allows freakish groups like the National Front to exist. The community threw forth three principles for the march to uphold. Our first goal was to stop the National Front from staking any claim on this country. And we’ve already won that victory here today. The National Front have run off before we arrived – they couldn’t even face us. I think we’ve shown that if you hate everybody, you don’t end up with many friends, do you.

Our other two key principles are to oppose the scapegoating of migrant minorities, and to oppose the scapegoating of Tangata Whenua. These days Migrants, refugees, and even tourists from undesirable countries are being targeted by scaremongering stereotypes, and xenophobic knee-jerk policies that make no sense. And Maori who dare to speak up for their people, history and identity are branded as haters, wreckers and criminals. Is it any surprise that minorities are being attacked and abused horrendously?

Even if they carry out those attacks, skinhead white supremacists are not the real problem. They don’t have any real influence over the way people think and behave. They are just the ugly boil atop a much deeper infection. The symptom, but not the cause.

Let me give you an example. Do you know why some of us dread election year? Maori, Pacific and Asian people, refugees, people of the middle East and Africa, we’ll all undergo a miraculous transformation – from human beings, into political footballs. One minute we’ll be walking around minding our own business, the next we’ll be the biggest threat to the nation since World War II - trumped up as aggressors, foreign invaders, nuisances, drains on the state. Election year means that me and my family, and people from so many minority communities, are going to be abused and harassed on the streets of our cities, for nothing more than our accents and the colour of our skin. Ignorance and hostility will be given free reign. And the people dishing out most of this hatred won’t be the National Front. No, they will be ordinary New Zealanders, of all ethnicities, who have been told, encouraged, to give in to their most uninformed fears, ordinary New Zealanders issued a licence to be racist, issued by the people who have the most influence over our political culture. The National Front don’t have any real power over us. There’s a much more powerful source of racism here with us today. It’s the building right behind me.

It’s time now to tell politicians and the media, that although they play race cards all the time, it’s NOT a game they’re playing with, it’s our lives. That when they kick us around for fun and profit, that it hurts, because we are real people, and we belong to this country. It has to be time, surely, for these people who hold such immense cultural power, to grow up, and take some responsibility – and if they don’t, they must admit that they ARE culpable for a society that plays host to violence and bigotry.

Whether or not they are listening, we, all of us, have a responsibility to turn that bigotry around. And we here, Pakeha, Maori, Asian, Pacific, African, Middle-Eastern, are doing it already in the stand we’ve made today for the inclusive society we all deserve. It’s not too late for Aotearoa. We have the best chance of any country in the world to make this happen, and that’s why my family chose to come here. Today that we’ve made a positive statement, a positive difference. And I’m tired of saying and hearing the word no today. I want to hear the word yes.

Can you answer me now, are we all in this together? Are we ready for a multicultural Aotearoa?

And did my parents come to the right country?

Did they?

Thank you.