Appealed

Tame Iti is appealing both his conviction and sentence from the Urewera 4 trial.

That's not surprising. Justice Hansen's sentencing comments [PDF] made it clear that the judge was substituting his own opinion for that of the jury, and sentencing Iti for a crime he had not been convicted of - in the process turning him into a martyr like Rua Kenana. The conviction will be harder to overturn - but being able to test it is part and parcel of having a robust justice system.

So, this is going to go on for a while longer, it seems.

Dropped

According to the Manawatu SubStandard, the Police have dropped charges of "dishonouring the flag" against Tame Iti. Given last year's judgement on flag-burning, they were almost guaranteed to lose, and its good to see them acknowledge the fact. Charges of recklessly discharging a firearm have also been dropped, presumably on the basis that an outcry from right-wing politicians is insufficient for a conviction. Instead, the Police are focusing on the charges where they may actually have a case: unlawful possession of a firearm, and possession without a license. Which again, is fair enough. In this country, we demand that people who want to own guns jump through a few hoops first (primarily to do with not being a dick and not wanting to use them on other people); if Iti hasn't bothered, then he deserves to be charged and convicted.

The Police haven't learned

According to Three News tonight, Tame Iti has in fact been charged with desecrating the New Zealand flag.

Given what happened last time the Police laid such charges, I'd have expected them to be a lot more cautious about laying such charges. While the High Court didn't overturn the law (courts in New Zealand can't), it did "read it down" so as to be compatible with the affirmation of freedom of expression in the Bill of Rights Act; now instead of simply destroying the flag in public, it must be done with the intention to "vilify" it. Exactly what that means is as-yet undefined, but I suspect that if burning the flag is protected, then shooting one full of holes almost certainly is.

But while the police are almost certainly wasting public money bringing this charge, they are doing us one favour: reminding us that this outdated law still exists, and that our supposedly liberal Labour government has done nothing to change it. Like the law against sedition, the law against burning the flag is outdated, a throwback to eighteenth-century concepts of lese majeste. And as I've argued previously, such laws grossly violate the freedom of expression and have no place in a modern, liberal democracy like New Zealand.

"Nation-building" is a significant pillar of the current government - recognising (and thereby helping to define) who we are as modern kiwis. Recognising our longstanding commitment to freedom should be a part of this. Laws banning flag-burning, sedition, and blasphemous libel aren't really who we are as a nation. The government should acknowledge this, and repeal them.