The Maori Party stands to share in the collective sorrow of this House as we pay our respects for the people of Poland in their own homeland, and the many who have come to call Aotearoa home.

This was a national tragedy beyond all proportion.

The death of top Polish political and military officials, including President Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria and 94 others has been described as Poland’s worst tragedy since World War Two.

And there is a poignant irony to the fact that the fatal journey taken by those senior leaders was enroute to the 70th anniversary of another severe tragedy in their national memory.

As the news filtered through of the tragic plane crash, associations were quickly made to the events of seventy years ago, when an estimated 22,000 prisoners held in Soviet internment camps were murdered under instruction by Stalin.

The senior members of the Polish bureacracy and President were travelling to a memorial in the Katyn forest to remember and mourn for the lives of those lost some seventy years prior.

There has been no question of the depth of a nation’s grief as we observe the streets of Warsaw lined with thousands of mourners, the candles flickering, the simple placards with photographs of the 94 victims who lost their lives.

Each simple wreath of flowers reminds us of the personal dimensions to this tragedy.

And we feel the close association in our own world, through the simple placement of a condolence book in Parliament, in which we have seen the people come to cry, to pay their respects, and to remember.

And so our statement is simply one of peoples reaching across the world to others.

We pay our respects to the families – the children taken before their time, families who are robbed of parents and grandparents. May they all rest in peace.

ENDS

© Scoop Media