Historically, walls were built to keep enemies out and provide security and protection to inhabitants. Hadrian constructed "his" wall to keep out the marauding barbarians. Likewise the Great Wall of China served to protect citizens from northern barbarians. [What is it about the "north" you may well ask?] There is not a single instance in recorded history of walls being constructed to keep citizens imprisoned inside a nation.
Until the Berlin Wall. That is the first instance known when a nation constructed a fortified wall, not to protect from hordes of Berliners trying to gain entrance to the socialist workers' paradise of East Germany, but to keep their own citizens from leaving. They, under the tender embrace of a socialist paradise, were prisoners in the own country. Berlin Walls can only exist when states have assumed dictatorial, totalitarian powers.
New Zealand has plenty of walls. Normally, they function well via immigration controls, passports, and border security. Generally the barbarians from the north are kept at bay. All this is perfectly normal and consistent with human practice since Cain began rampaging on the earth. Defence is a divinely lawful state function. Only those who represent no clear and present threat to the nation and its citizens are permitted to enter the country, regardless of the visa type. But over the past year circumstances have emerged which have the country coming dangerously close to erecting its own version of the Berlin Wall. We are dangerously close to removing the long established liberties of the renunciation of citizenship and self-exile.
It's all the fault of ISIS and their international recruitment efforts. ISIS, of course, is seriously Islamic. It believes in a world-wide Islamic totalitarian rule and, therefore, is actively recruiting Islamists everywhere around the world to do one of two things: either to travel to join the jihad effort to establish the initial "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq, or engage in jihad against non-Muslims in their home country. We have not seen anything like it in the West since the Spanish Civil War in the 1930's, when communist powers actively recruited fighters in Europe to travel to Spain to fight for the communist Republicans against the anti-Marxist monarchists, as well as engage in a bit of domestic destabilization.
New Zealand's Prime Minister, John Key says that we face a clear and present danger from malcontented citizens leaving the country to travel to the Middle East to get jihadi training and experience, then returning home to carry out bombings and killings here. Therefore, he is seeking enhanced powers to detect, interdict, and cancel the passports of these zealots before they leave the country. In other words, the Prime Minister wants to erect a Berlin Wall, and is seeking the legal authorisation and powers to do so.
The changes were a response to the growing risk of radicalised fighters returning to New Zealand to carry out domestic attacks.
Mr Key said in a statement: "As I said earlier this month, New Zealand's risk and threat profile is changing and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has been successful in recruiting New Zealanders to its cause." [NZ Herald]
This, we believe is a wall too far. Since when has our country cancelled passports on the pretext of nefarious activities those citizens may or may not get up to when ex-border and which they may or may not continue when they return to New Zealand? Since when do citizens get tried and become criminals because of the possibility of what they might do? Sure, conspiracy to commit a crime is itself a crime, but the bow gets rather long in this case: a person suspected of leaving the country with the intent to join a jihadi group and be trained in bomb making etc. and, further, it is suspected they will eventually return to New Zealand to kill and maim innocent people. To prevent the State's suspicions becoming reality, it is seeking Stazi-like powers to spy and cancel passports well in advance of any criminal activity whatsoever. We, however, are compelled to proclaim, "Prime Minister Key--tear the wall down!" before you even attempt to build it.
It is well within our historical liberties to cancel passports once a person has actually gone overseas and engaged in crimes. We are under no-obligation to maintain the citizenship of a self-exiling criminal. But it is well beyond the boundaries--in fact, right off the reservation--to cancel passports before they leave on the grounds that they may possibly one day return and commit similar crimes here in New Zealand--thereby imprisoning citizens in this country. It has "Stazi" written all over it. We say once again, we have no principial objection against the state cancelling a passport and citizenship for Kiwis who have travelled and committed crimes overseas. Take, for example pederast sex tourists committing crimes in countries like Thailand, being apprehended by Thai authorities, and their guilt proven. Cancelling a passport and erecting a Hadrianesque Wall to prevent them coming back into the country is well within historical legal practice. But preventing them leaving in the first place on the grounds they may return to New Zealand to engage in pederasty here is another matter entirely.
Moreover, it is inevitable, that in order for such Berlin Wall type restrictions to function, policing and espionage upon citizens must needs increase--which is precisely what our present government is now seeking. The bottom line is this: the risk of zealots leaving to join in murderous mayhem overseas does not constitute a clear and present danger to this country. If they do leave, and if they do engage in such activity whilst overseas, passports and citizenship can be revoked to prevent their coming back into the country. The nations that let them in will have to deal with the problem they permitted in the first place.
Walls like Hadrian's and China's Great Wall protected citizens. Walls like Berlin's egregiously oppressed citizens. Let's have nothing to do with the latter.
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