Te Kete o Karaitiana Taiuru (Blog)

As i write, I am aware of name suppression and not identifying the arrested.

When the so called Māori terrorists were arrested, a popular Māori web site was shut down by the NZ Police. The site had hundreds of members and regular visitors whom visited to catch up with family, seek IT advice or even a recipe and advice on cooking a hangi.

The reason it was shut down has yet to be explained, well at least in a public forum. Personally i have no idea why.

But for many Māori ICT advocates and workers at the grass roots level, we were all colleagues of the sites owner (whether they admit it now or after all charges are dropped) who was arrested in the barbaric raids.

I for one, wrote a character reference for one of the arrested. I knew him/her as a passionate person for Maoritanga. Never as a terrorist, nor as a violent person. In fact, my colleague was intelligent and well versed in history from both academia and traditional lore as well as passionate about Māori development.

My issue is that as soon as i heard in the media that the accused were not being charged under the terrorist Act, many of our colleagues begun emailing their support and asking for assistance to rebuild the site that was closed down. These same people openly admit that they are “Activists”, something i am not.

This makes me contemplate, do Māori really have any real Cyber activists, except maybe “Paru Kiore” whom made Bionicle listen to Māori, and the many other not so well known and haphazard online attacks in support of Māori.