Green MP slams effort to bar US whistle-blower Chelsea Manning from NZ - 'She's done her time'

August 29, 2018

The whistleblower spent seven years in prison for leaking US state secrets, but she’s no threat here, the Green Party MP says.

An effort launched yesterday by National Party immigration spokesman Michael Woodhouse to bar American whistle-blower Chelsea Manning from visiting New Zealand is ill advised and not in line with our laws, Green MP and lawyer Golriz Ghahraman argued today.

Ms Manning, an ex-army intelligence analyst formerly known as Bradley Manning, who spent seven years in a US federal prison for leaking state secrets, is scheduled to speak in New Zealand on September 8.

She has gone on speaking tours in the US and abroad since her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama.

"This isn't a matter of free speech, this is a matter of having a standard for allowing the people who come into New Zealand to reach that standard," Mr Woodhouse said yesterday of her felony conviction. "This would be a very low bar if people with these sorts of criminal convictions were allowed in."

But the question when deciding whether to approve Ms Manning's visa isn't her criminal history, Ms Ghahraman told TVNZ1's Breakfast today. It is whether she would pose a threat to New Zealand, she said.

Mr Woodhouse declined an invitation to speak on the show.

They say Manning shouldn’t be allowed to profit from her crimes.

"When you look at what she was convicted of, which was whistle-blowing, what she did was she exposed other people's much, much more serious crimes - war crimes against civilians and journalists that she was privy to and she felt would be in the public interest to expose," Ms Ghahraman said. "We need to actually pay attention to the information that's being exposed rather than to keep focusing on who leaked it.

"What is it about her that would pose a risk to us? She's done her time - do we say that she should be silenced forever?"

But Ms Ghahraman hasn't been an advocate to opening our borders to all speakers.

Recently, she was among the prominent voices calling for far-right Canadian speakers Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux to be denied entry. Those two didn't have felony convictions, Breakfast host Jack Tame pointed out.

"I suppose some people would look at it and say you're happy for the rules to be relaxed for a message that you want to hear, but you want different rules to apply in another circumstance for a message you don't want to hear," Mr Tame said.

But the situations are starkly different when weighing the risk to New Zealand, Ms Ghahraman responded.

"We have a right to protect ourselves against hate speech, which is defined in New Zealand law," she said. "That is something we should look at. We do have really high rates of things like domestic and sexual violence, and that was something they speak about. It was misogynistic, what they talk about, (in addition to) the race stuff."

And in the end, Ms Southern and Mr Molyneux were allowed in New Zealand despite her views on the risks they posed, she said.

"So we've got that tradition of free speech," she said.

Immigration NZ Manager Michael Carley has said a request for a special direction was received. No decision has yet been made.

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