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Why Are Military Exercises Being Held in Local Communities?

Why Are Military Exercises Being Held in Local Communities?

Tuesday 10 October 2017 — Opinion piece Barbara Creswell

Residents in Tasman-Buller question the New Zealand Defence Force’s judgement in staging more huge ‘war games’ in their townships.
This year’s exercise began last week and will continue until mid-November.
The military exercise continues Southern Katipo, held in Nelson-Tasman-Buller-Marlborough in 2015. This year, West Coast and Kaikoura districts are included.
More than two thousand troops from New Zealand, the US, UK, Canada, Australia, the Pacific and elsewhere are involved. Some military personnel are ‘embedded’ in local communities before the exercise begins.
During the 2015 exercise, Murchison (population 500), was ‘occupied’ by international military forces for one month. While some Murchison residents were comfortable with that, others say it was a stressful ordeal.

Parks and sports areas were requisitioned by the military and declared off-limits to locals, while troops conducted armed exercises around the shopping area, on domestic streets, in rural areas and within Kahurangi National Park.

One woman said that ‘Helicopters buzzed overhead for most of the day, huge military aircraft flew low over our homes, and it was scary waking up to find armed troops running up your street.’

During one exercise, NZDF invited Murchison residents to volunteer to stage a mock protest against the military. Civilians, including a large number of school students, willingly took part, waving placards and throwing water bombs at troops. They were encouraged to act aggressively

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However, the ‘protest’ turned ugly, with several civilians being thrown to the ground, handcuffed and dragged away. Several sustained injuries. One young woman reported on Facebook that she had been pulled into a tank and assaulted, but after a visit from Defence personnel the post was removed.

New Zealand Defence Force director of joint exercise planning Lieutenant Colonel Martin Dransfield later described the fracas as ‘unfortunate’ and said all attempts would be made to avoid a similar outcome during this year’s operation.

Others say that is not good enough and that urban ‘war game’ exercises should be urgently reviewed, with a public enquiry conducted into the Murchison event.

The use of civilian volunteers in ‘war-game’ activities shows a regrettable lack of judgement on the part of NZDF. Encouraging school students to take part in the exercises is irresponsible. One can only hope that new Health and Safety regulations will now preclude civilian involvement.

The 2015 war games left an unpleasant taste in some people’s mouths. One woman who took part in an actual protest, peacefully standing with other Murchison women opposed to the military’s entrance into their town, said the women were manhandled with unnecessary aggression by troops. She says the ‘war-games’ experience has left her with a lingering fear of the military, and a mistrust of the police who worked in tandem with them for the duration of the exercise.

If the exercises had been designed solely for humanitarian purposes – support after a natural disaster, such as an earthquake or severe weather event – they would, of course, be welcome, but the exercises are fundamentally designed to quell civil unrest.

The ‘war games’ are based on a fictitious scenario set in a Pacific region called Becara, which is suffering high unemployment due to a decline in forestry, coal and gold mining and ‘low investor confidence’. When the Becaran government proposes a new economic vision for the region, some Becarans object and form a resistance movement to oppose it.

What worries some locals is that NZDF also say that the exercises could potentially be used ‘either in New Zealand or one of our Pacific neighbours’ and it’s the admission they could be enacted in New Zealand that gives cause for concern.

For one thing, the description of Becara bears an uncanny resemblance to the southern West Coast of New Zealand, where the former government remains eager to implement ‘special economic zones’ which would allow them to bypass existing regulations in order to speed up the issuance of mining and oil exploration permits.

Forest and Bird chief executive Kevin Hague said in July that documents released under the Official Information Act indicated that ‘the scope of law and regulation that the government is proposing to suspend, to facilitate these developments, is breath-taking’.

And with off-shore oil drilling also a contentious issue in the region, is it too much of a coincidence that this year’s exercise includes a military response to ‘a dispute over offshore oil reserves’?

New Zealanders are entitled to ask why NZDF specifically pitted protesters against the army during the mock protest. Denigrating protesters by inference sets a dangerous precedence in a country like New Zealand, where the right to free speech and peaceful protest is still considered a civil right and a democratic privilege.

And finally, if five military helicopters, six airlift aircraft, two Globemasters and an Orion surveillance aircraft were not enough to worry a small town, many New Zealanders would be concerned to learn that a highly sophisticated RQ4 Global Hawk drone, remotely operated from the US Air Base in Guam, also took part in the exercise. It’s role? To capture ‘images of simulated adversary areas of interest’.

NZ Defence say the drone’s visit was in accordance with the New Zealand Search and Surveillance Act of 2012, and that owners of land in the area gave permission for imagery to be taken. This would hardly allay the fears of many New Zealanders likely to be alarmed at the surveillance role the US played in the exercise. Having a US drone this sophisticated, more commonly deployed in US war zones, tracking ‘adversaries’ - simulated or otherwise – over New Zealand land is a matter of public concern.

The decision to hold war games in residential settings are a legacy of PM John Key’s tenure, and well overdue for review. New Zealanders don’t need armed troops running up suburban streets, military helicopters buzzing overhead or school students role-playing for the army. Nor do they need foreign drones in the air or military ‘actors’ secretly embedded in their communities. It’s high time to return military exercises to military bases and to allow local New Zealand communities to get on with their peaceful lives.


References, Local interviews, plus:
Actors’ will be embedded:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/news/67832988/top-of-the-south-defence-force-exercise-to-test-troops-response-to-crisis
Description of Murchison protest/s:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/news/73957280/war-games-protest-turns-heated-in-murchison
Forestry, coal and gold mining:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/news/67832988/top-of-the-south-defence-force-exercise-to-test-troops-response-to-crisis
Becara
http://www.nzdf.mil.nz/downloads/pdf/sk15/fact-sheet.pdf
‘low investor confidence’ http://www.nzdf.mil.nz/downloads/pdf/sk15/fact-sheet.pdf
Lieutenant Colonel Martin Dransfield’s quote:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/news/92115922/Top-of-the-south-military-exercise-to-involve-2000-soldiers
“a crisis at home or overseas at any given moment”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/news/67832988/top-of-the-south-defence-force-exercise-to-test-troops-response-to-crisis
http://nelsonweekly.co.nz/2017/05/army-coming-to-practice-here/
Kevin Hague quote:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/334999/special-economic-zones-still-on-the-table
a dispute over offshore oil reserves
http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/news/92115922/Top-of-the-south-military-exercise-to-involve-2000-soldiers
deep-sea oil drilling protest, Nelson:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/news/68606657/nelson-residents-join-hands-across-the-sand-to-protest-deep-sea-oil
RQ4 Global Hawk drone
http://www.airforce-technology.com/news/newsusaf-global-hawk-to-participate-in-new-zealands-exercise-southern-katipo-4709333
Tuesday 10 October 2017 — Opinion piece
Barbara Creswell
MA, Mass Communications, Leicester


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