Heather Roy's Diary - Boris Yeltsin
act-new-zealand
Fri Apr 27 2007 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Heather Roy's Diary - Boris Yeltsin
Friday, 27 April 2007, 2:51 pm
Column: ACT New Zealand
Heather Roy's Diary - Boris Yeltsin (1 February 1931 - 23 April 2007)
There is a saying that success has a thousand fathers and failure is an orphan. During my lifetime there have been few successes like the victory of the liberal democracies over Communism. It was a victory with little bloodshed, so it is easy to forget that for the greater part of my lifetime the world stood at the edge of nuclear annihilation. This unhappy state of affairs ended in 1991 and Boris Yeltsin can take much of the credit.
In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev had become Secretary General of the Communist Party and began a series of reforms to increase efficiency and to liberalise the Soviet Union. But the reforms threatened the privileges of the communist elite and in August 1991 a group of hardline communist and army commanders staged a coup arresting Gorbachev and ordering troops to take control of all major cities. It was generally assumed that Gorbachev and liberal reform were done for.
However, Boris Yeltsin, President of Russia (at that time a state within the Soviet Union), held out in the presidential palace. With a handful of supporters he seemed to have a pathetic force to face the might of the Red Army, millions strong. Russian soldiers might be reluctant to fire on their own people but the Communists were known for their ruthlessness.
However, Yeltsin knew the power of symbolism. A small force of soldiers went over to his side and Yeltsin stood on top of a "loyal" tank with a megaphone denouncing the rebels as criminals and asking British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to form an International Committee to ensure that no harm came to Mr Gorbachev. Foreign camera crews were on hand to photograph Boris calling for volunteers to defend democracy. Yeltsin knew that the Russian people would turn to foreign TV and radio stations to find out what was going on. They saw a defiant Yeltsin being joined by a growing band of volunteers. People spilled on to the streets to demonstrate against the rebels. Tanks were ordered to drive over them but the drivers refused. The coup was over and so was the Cold War. Boris Yeltsin had no shortage of faults but the world owes him a huge debt of gratitude.
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ANZAC Day
Russian Communism imploded upon itself but victories against tyranny were not always bought so cheap and ANZAC Day is always a stark reminder of this. Just about every small town around New Zealand has a stone monument to the war dead with lists of names that are staggeringly long. It was encouraging to see that bigger crowds than ever before congregated at these monuments this year to remember those who fought and gave their lives for our freedom.
My ANZAC day began with the dawn service at the Wellington Cenotaph. The early start serves as a token reminder of the exertion and suffering of thousands of our servicemen. Former Secretary of Defence Graham Fortune was the guest speaker at this service and he commented, just as dawn was breaking, that for soldiers night becoming day is a special time. I was there in my capacity as an MP representing ACT New Zealand. But as he spoke I, like others who have 'stood to' in uniform at dawn and contemplated the task at hand for the coming day can only imagine what it must have been like for those who have served in places of conflict.
I then shed my MP's role to don the uniform of a humble sapper (the combat engineer equivalent of private) in a 5 Battalion firing party at the ANZAC service at the Johnsonville RSA. I am pleased to say that we fired in complete unison at the end of the service.
The rest of the day was spent visiting RSAs. As I was in uniform the old soldiers were uncharacteristically chatty. The affinity they still clearly feel for the serving troops is very apparent. Although growing numbers of kiwis are participating in commemorations at home and around the world ANZAC day is very much their day.
MMP working as it should
With the fight for freedom very much to the fore this week it was fitting that four of the minor political parties joined forces to champion freedom of speech. ACT, the Maori Party, United Future and the Greens held a joint press conference to call for the repeal of sedition law in New Zealand.
The four parties are in support of the Law Commission's recently released report recommending repeal of this legislation. Aspects of sedition - directly inciting a criminal act - are already offenses, defined and covered in the Crimes Act and retaining this law is both unnecessary and impractical.
Sedition law has been used by the state to commit terrible acts of political oppression in New Zealand's past - Walter Nash, Peter Fraser, Harry Holland, Bishop Liston and Te Whiti were all victims. However since the 1920s the crime, while still law, was thought to have been an historic anomaly, belonging in our history books along side hanging and wives being the property of their husband.
But far from being an historic anomaly, there have been several recent cases where we believe that the sedition law has been used inappropriately.
One is the widely publicised case of Tim Selwyn putting an axe through Helen Clark's electorate office window - an act of criminal damage that he admitted and plead guilty to. However, he was also charged with sedition for writing a pamphlet explaining his actions and calling on others to do the same. He was convicted and sentenced to two months in prison for the act of sedition.
Earlier this year the owner of a popular student bar in Dunedin, Paul Deason, launched an orientation week promotion in which he offered students the chance to win a petrol-soaked couch, and swap petrol for beer. Obviously a highly irresponsible and stupid act, but hardly one of sedition which is what Deason was charged with.
Then there was the case of Christopher Russell - a troubled teenager from Rotorua, who wrote a Columbine style essay threatening to kill his classmates. Initially charged with sedition, the charge was later dropped in favour of the more appropriate charge of threatening to kill.
Far from being a dead law lying forgotten on the statute books, precedent has been set and we are now seeing the charge of sedition revived apparently as a catchall offence. The problem we have with this is that while the sedition law exists in this country true freedom of expression is compromised.
ENDS
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