Kiwis troops arrive in Tonga

A joint New Zealand-Australian task force arrived in riot-torn Tonga this afternoon in a show of force after rioting left eight dead and businesses destroyed.

Commander Joint Forces New Zealand, Rear Admiral Jack Steer said the New Zealand contingent included a 62-strong New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF), a small contingent of New Zealand Police and other Government personnel.

Two C130 Hercules would transport additional cargo and up to four light operational vehicles, he said.

A further 80 Australian Defence and Federal Police personnel would join the NZDF contingent in assisting the Tongan government as part of a New Zealand led Combined Joint Task Force.

The contingent would provide security to the Fau'amotu international airport to enable the resumption of civilian air travel, he said.

New Zealand had taken the lead role in a combined operation with Australia but both countries had deployed jointly to a number of regions within the pacific and had worked very well together, he said.

"This is an opportunity for NZDF to take a leadership role in this type of operation and I have complete faith that they will carry out their role professionally."

Prime Minister Helen Clark said early this morning that NZDF personnel would assist with security at Fua'amotu International Airport.

Eight to ten New Zealand police would be deployed to provide additional security and assistance at the New Zealand High Commission in Nuku'alofa.

"They will work with the Aviation Security section of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Tonga Defence Services, and the Tonga Police Force in securing international flights, aircraft, crews, and passengers."

Ms Clark said the New Zealand police's primary role would be to provide security and assistance to the New Zealand High Commissioner and his staff.

They would also discuss further with the Tonga Police Force what might be needed in terms of ongoing assistance needs in the short and medium term, she said.

"I expect those discussions will identify further areas where New Zealand and Australia can assist. We will look favourably at responding to those needs quickly."

"This is a troubling time for Tonga. It comes at a time when the country and government has entered a process of political reform and New Zealand is supportive of that.

"I hope that the security support to be provided by New Zealand and Australia will provide a basis for an early return to order and normality within Tonga, will help to restore an environment in which Tonga's reform process can continue, and will be seen as a positive contribution from friendly neighbours."

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was also sending two additional consular staff to bolster the High Commission.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon said he condemned the actions of those who have caused the deaths and destruction.

Mr McKinnon said the riots came as Tonga was on a path to leading political reforms which would benefit the country.

"The Commonwealth is prepared to consider any requests for immediate assistance and will also continue over the longer term to support political reform and economic development to the benefit of all in the Kingdom."

In Nuku'alofa yesterday, King George Tupou V announced a state of emergency and imposed martial law. Armed soldiers patrolled the streets - with emergency powers to search anyone - as the full horror of Thursday's riots by pro-democracy protesters became clear. Gangs of drunken youths continued to loot shops as smoke billowed over the city yesterday.

Tongan media reported that six people died in the offices of the royal-owned Shoreline power company, which was torched during the rampage. The dead were believed to be looters or rioters, as power company staff were all safely accounted for.

An Australian man living in Nuku'alofa since last year said he was forced to run for safety when a mob of about 40 men smashed their way into the Pacific Royale Hotel on Thursday.

Rioters had roamed the central city, attacking businesses and setting buildings alight. Overwhelmed police were powerless to intervene, he said.

"It was scary. People had to run out of buildings because they were getting smashed and torched. If it was a big building that had lots of glass, that was a valid target. It was chaos."

The New Zealand high commissioner in Tonga, Michael McBryde, said up to 75 per cent of the buildings had been destroyed by fire. Others were looted.

New Zealand and Australia have condemned the violence and warned their nationals in Tonga to stay away from large gatherings.

Air New Zealand said it had cancelled flights to Tonga until Tuesday and would resume flights once it was assured the country was safe.

Air Pacific will decide on Sunday whether to resume its service between Tonga and Fiji on Tuesday, after cancelling two flights.

The trouble in Tonga follows destructive riots in the Solomon Islands capital Honiara in April, ongoing gang violence in East Timor and the recent coup threats in Fiji - heightening concerns about failed states in the Pacific region.

<< .... heightening concerns about failed states in the Pacific region. >>

How long, I wonder, before Australia and (especially) New Zealand are calling for the assistance of foreign troops to quell their riots?

Given the proceeding apace in both countries and especially in New Zealand, of the insidious institutionalization (to "redress" so-called "disadvantages suffered" and wilfully aggravated by the every-bit-as-evil tyranny the Australasian elitists call "multiculturalism) -- of racism?

Which racism is epitomized in both countries by the granting to so-called "indigenous peoples," whose "histories" have been delusionally fantasized in both countries expressly for that insidious purpose, of so-called "rights" over all other -- indigenous and immigrant -- Australians and New Zealanders.

It is designed to be but a matter of time.

I think it's less likely to happen in Australia than in New Zealand simply because Australia's indigenous population is a much smaller minority than that of New Zealand. But if I was a Kiwi, it is certainly something I'd be looking at.

Regardless of any threat though, it is ridiculous that some people don't just want equality - but want more than equality.

I've worked for indigenous rights in Australia ever since I was a young boy - because back then, in the 1960s, Australia's aboriginal population were legally inferior. That changed though in 1967 and it should have been the beginning of the end of an indigenous rights movement. Instead it became the impetus for a new one.

With specific regards to Tonga, it's very nice to see New Zealand not only committing troops to an overseas operation, but actually taking the leadership role in this case, rather than merely supporting Australia. Obviously our differing sizes means Australia will take the lead in joint operations more often than New Zealand, but I have been concerned that the New Zealand defence forces may have been starting to see themselves almost perpetually in a supporting role and that is not warranted. Though small (too small in my view - that is a political issue and not a reflection on New Zealand's soldiers, sailors, and airmen) what exists of the New Zealand forces remain highly competent and capable and should be performing roles that show that competence and capability as often and as fully as possible.

<< .... if I was a Kiwi, it is certainly something I'd be looking at. >>

My post was intended to encourage any takers to do just that.

<< .... people don't just want equality .... >>

The Peoples involved are just the pawns and/or the catalysts.

The Socialist-International-supporting and advancing motivation of the socialist Whitlam/Hawke/Keating Gang behind their employment is much more insidious than meets the casual eye.

<< .... I've worked for "indigenous 'rights'" .... >>

Every native born Australian and every similar New Zealander is a indigenous Australian or is indigenous to New Zealand. And every one of them, without exception, is a descendant of migrants and/or of immigrants. Like New Zealand, Australia has no aboriginal peoples.

<< That changed though in 1967 .... >>

It did. And for the Martin-Luther-King-esque colorblind better.

But then neither you nor any other Australasian could have anticipated and/or was prepared for the evil, manifest in the form of the successive post-Christian "governments" of the execrable Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, that was about to overwhelm Australia.

And that released the latent evil lying in wait until "IT'S TIME" was manipulated and was then and is still inherent in Canberra's parasitical legions of self-anointing, self-appointing and self-perpetuating (Through their control of the Public Service Board) fourth and fifth-generation, post-Frankfurt-School, elitist, permanent "public servants," who to this day provide astute observers Planet Earth's best living example of a totally-fascistic bureaucracy since Mussolini's Italy!

Whitlam created so efficaciously created today's race and "ethnic" (and scores of other) problems as to surely leave no any doubt in the mind of any man capable of objectively examining the man, his life-long activities and actions -- and the detritus left in his wake that his every evil action was coldly calculated and as coldly executed. Dittos with the tongue-chewin' babblin' idiotic, drunkard, Hawke, < sarcasm > whose Ten Million Dollar house reflects the industry and savings habits of your average salaried union worker < / sarcasm > and with the splendidly Giorgio Armani suited, Eastern Suburbs' brown-bag gangster, Keating.

<< .... too small in my view - that is a political issue .... >>

Agreed. But is symptomatic of the same underlying malaise.

That New Zealand's slavishly Socialist International supporting and advancing Labour politicians, particularly as manifest in the likes of the late David Lange and more so in the simply bloody awful Helen "Peking" Clarke, are a danger to all New Zealanders, indigenous and immigrant, to their neighbors -- and to the world at large -- is a lay down misère!

Best ones, Mate -- B A

<< (Australia's earliest migrant settlers) are certainly treated with far less equality than Maoris in NZ .... >>

Rubbish.

Neither earliest migrant population group is "treated with" anything even approaching "equality."

Both ethnic groups are hugely favored by the insane legislation of both countries that, by the fabrication of "histories" for them both and by the consequential and entirely cynical vote-buying granting of rear-view-mirror "redress," sets both groups above all others and conveys favor on both that defies history, logic and orderly Rule of Law.

That Australia is a far better country for migrating Polynesians and its own earliest arrivals is best measured by the ongoing voting with feet. Hundreds of thousands of Maoris and other Pacific migrants live happily and productively in Australia and although it's been a while since I checked I believe Sydney to be Maori-dom's second biggest city. On the other hand, the last time I checked the other side of the Tasman, New Zeaand's Australian-early-settler-descendant population was one.

Evonne Goolagong was playing tennis over there that week.

Meanwhile an intolerable percentage of Australia's earliest settlers -- and many of New Zealand's -- continue to be destroyed by the very granting of favor that while setting them apart from and above the rest of their migrant ancestors' adapted countries populations also, by institutionalizing the white-guilt bigotry of low expectations, stripped them as peoples of their dignity and, especially in Australia, put the brakes on the assimilation that provides their own and their respective countries only long-term hope of survival.

Of the dignity, that is, that their actual, as different from their insidiously delusionally fantasized histories as Peoples had, before white socialists began their cynical exploitation, earned them both.

BUMPping

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