New Zealand: Jacinda Ardern apologizes to Pacific Islanders
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (C) is covered in white cloth during a ceremony in Auckland on Sunday August 1, 2021 to formally apologize for a part of the country's known racially charged history under the name of Dawn Raids.
AP - Brett Phibbs
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardner on Sunday issued a formal apology to Pacific Islanders who suffered arrests and deportations in police operations in the 1970s.
Publicity
Read more
The mystical ceremony takes place in total silence.
Jacinda Ardern lends herself to ifoga, an ancestral rite of submission practiced in the archipelago of the Samoan Islands in cases of serious offense and to ask for forgiveness.
Sitting on a chair, surrounded by leaders of the Pacific communities, the Prime Minister is covered in a white veil.
The veil is then removed and the rite ends with a long embrace with one of the leaders of the indigenous people.
Jacinda Ardern then asks for forgiveness in front of a very moved audience.
"
Today, on behalf of the New Zealand government, I offer a formal and unqualified apology to the communities in the Pacific who suffered discrimination in the way immigration laws were enforced in the 1970s
,
" she said to applause.
The Government expresses its sorrow and regrets that these police operations existed and that they were considered appropriate. We offer you our deepest and most sincere apologies.
"
During the 1970s and for a decade, the people of the Pacific faced racist violence, arrests and deportations in the name of an immigration law that targeted residents whose work visas had expired.
86% of the prosecutions targeted indigenous populations against only 5% for the British and Americans who nevertheless represented a third of those in an illegal situation.
More than 50 years after the fact,
Jacinda Ardner
hopes this apology will appease the communities of the Pacific Islands.
►
See also: New Zealand: for her new government, Jacinda Ardern chooses diversity
Newsletter
Receive all international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
New Zealand
Human rights
Jacinda Ardern
Racism