Socialist Aotearoa interview with Anu Kaloti

In the wake of the political hand-wringing and media storm over the Migrant Workers Association’s (MWA) mock guillotining of Winston Peters, MWA’s Anu Kaloti brings the focus back where it belongs – on Peters’ long history of racism and xenophobia.

The recent protest – where you cut the head off an effigy of Winston – drew a lot of flak, but it certainly got the media to sit up and take notice. Can you talk us through the background to the protest?

NZ First leader and Foreign Minister Winston Peters, along with Shane Jones, has a long history of racism and xenophobia. What we have seen over the years is that close to every general election the racism from politicians gets worse, more aggressive, more pointed. They target the general public and their peers, MPs of different ethnicities. So it’s not just the one recent incident with the Green Party MP, Lawrence Xu-Nan, who asked a valid question of Mr Peters, whether he was vaccinated. If Mr Peters felt the question was inappropriate he could have refused to answer it. Instead he launched into a long tirade of racist commentary, telling this MP to ‘go back where he came from’. He was also abusive towards Xu-Nan’s country of origin. That was the tipping point for our protest.

Over the years, we have seen the media ignoring such issues. We have held anti-racist protests where we would diligently send press releases to mainstream media and ethnic media too, but they have largely been ignored. There has been no coverage of this important issue that affects people in their day-to-day lives. So we had to do something different to get engagement, to get this topic of racism and xenophobia discussed. So the mock guillotining has in that sense been successful.

What was the protest calling for?

The demand of the protest is that Mr Peters should be sacked from his position as Minister of Foreign Affairs. A foreign affairs minister is meant to represent his country in the best possible way yet here we have someone who has nothing but racism to peddle. The demand was and still is that he must be sacked.

Racism starts at the top and filters down to ordinary people. When people in positions of power – ministers and MPs – are being openly racist, in the House, and not facing consequences, the message that gets sent to the population is that this is normal. That it must be okay because there are no repercussions. That is what we have seen in recent times. You only have to open a social media post and every other comment is racist, telling migrants to go back where they came from. Worse, it’s not just the racist comments. There have been so many incidents of, for example, migrant bus drivers being attacked for no reason. People are being told to go back to their country – in real life not just online. Political parties are saying ‘migrants are taking your jobs and houses’ – that narrative takes hold because parties are doing this instead of taking ownership and saying to the population ‘we have let you down and haven’t invested in our infrastructure and public services’. It’s much easier for them to deflect the blame onto migrants.

What would the MWA like to see happen, not just with Peters, but in general to tackle this kind of racism and protect migrants and others?

There is absolutely no place for racism in this country. It is totally unacceptable. Like the racism towards Māori from the ACT party with their Treaty Principles Bill. We are so relieved it was quashed but it shouldn’t have been put forward in the House in the first place. Then there were the comments from ACT Party MP Dr Parmjeet Parmar asking whether imprisonment be considered for Māori performing the haka in the House. That is racism against Māori and we absolutely condemn that. And then on the other hand the racism towards migrants who come here to work, to call this place home. It doesn’t matter whether it’s from government, MPs, our fellow workers, our communities… there is no place for it. That’s why sacking Mr Peters would send a strong message to everyone that ‘if you are going to be openly racist you will be punished for it.’

Going forward I think it’s important that tangata whenua are consulted on this country’s approach to migration. Rather than having a Eurocentric approach to immigration policy. I can’t speak on behalf of tangata whenua, clearly, but there are principles around manaakitanga for example that I am confident would point towards a better, more humane approach to immigration. It would be a good education for everyone, to learn how to co-exist without putting the blame on each other, and learn to put the blame where it deserves to be, ie on governments previous and present. We need to bring this back to focus on who we should be asking questions of, instead of fighting each other. No race is better than another. We are all workers in this world. We need a better, more inclusive approach.

So, just to recap, what would you say to critics of the protest?

People who think this satirical mock guillotining was over the top, they need to do some soul searching and ask why don’t they find the racism over the top? Why isn’t the racism that comes from Peters, Shane Jones and others, why doesn’t that shock you? If people are going to behave in a racist manner they must know that they will be held to account. If Mr Peters and Shane Jones were employees or managers or CEOs they would have been fired a long time ago. Yet here we have public servants who should be serving the public, and thinking how best they can do that, instead pitting people against one another along race lines.
I see people as workers of the world, we produce the wealth, and I see the bosses as another class. I’ve had calls from migrants saying ‘you don’t represent us’, but these are not working class migrants. They want to present themselves as ‘quality migrants’, highly polished, university educated… they don’t want to associate with people who are raising these issues. They don’t want the boat to be rocked.

The issue of racism and xenophobia needs to be out there in the open and discussed, and solutions need to be implemented immediately to prevent anything serious happening. The Christchurch mosque attacks didn’t happen in a vacuum. In the same way all this xenophobia and racism hasn’t come up overnight. People need to understand that it’s not migrants who are to blame for the shortage of state housing, the cost of living crisis, cuts to health and education – it’s the government that is to be blamed, for not investing in us as a country.

I’m sure some of our detractors would like to make violent threats but because these people have put themselves on a moral pedestal – ‘Oh look at the migrants holding a protest that is inciting violence’ – that is preventing them. Yet to me the violence is in their words – telling someone to go back where they came from. We’ve seen in the UK, how migrants are being hunted down, attacked and killed. In the US too.

Even the media have been asking me, ‘Will you apologise to Mr Peters?’ Apologise for what? Will Mr Peters apologise for all the racism and xenophobia he has peddled over decades and, more to the point, will Luxon sack him over this? Also who am I apologising to? Peters hasn’t asked me to apologise. I haven’t had any contact from him or NZ First or the police. We are used to police contacting us leading up to events, but they haven’t done that this time. That should tell you there was nothing unlawful about our theatrical stunt giving Peters ‘the chop’. So those who are talking about arrests and so on, it just shows how little understanding there is around this – both the satire and the issue that prompted it.

I also see this kind of talk as fearmongering, trying to scare people who are actively raising concerns around racism. But those who condemn the protest need to understand that this issue is so deep-rooted and serious that it’s certainly not over. We will be holding other events. So watch this space.