MEDIA RELEASE

Monday, 11 June 2007
Burdon welcomes Press Council condemnation

Nothing short of a printed apology for a deliberately alarmist and hostile article about Asian communities in New Zealand would be acceptable from North & South magazine, says Asia New Zealand Foundation Chairman Philip Burdon.

Mr Burdon was responding to a New Zealand Press Council decision to uphold complaints made against the magazine’s December cover story Asian Angst: Is it time to send some back?

The Asia New Zealand Foundation was one of three complainants.

The Press Council ruled that the North & South had failed to meet its obligation in regards to accuracy and discrimination by publishing the article and Mr Burdon says North & South now has the responsibility to redress a bigoted attack on communities that are by and large law abiding and that make a positive contribution to New Zealand.

“There is incipient racism in this country towards people of Asian ethnicity and for a publication of this authority to give it comfort and to perpetuate negative stereotypes about Asian New Zealanders in this way is completely unacceptable.

“Asian New Zealanders are owed an apology after being targeted unfairly. It seems that a section of New Zealanders are unwillingly to accept Asians as neighbours, colleagues and countrymen from other walks of life and are determined to question their right to be here.”

He said the article was a transparent and repugnant attempt to exploit xenophobic fears about migrants from Asian countries.

“The article was clearly wrong on so many levels. The rhetoric was subjective and hostile, and depicted Asians as outsiders without common human traits while the selective use of statistics was indefensible.

“If anything, the numbers clearly demonstrate that Asians are less likely to commit crimes than the wider New Zealand population. But by gathering a number of high profile crimes together, the article sought to give the impression that crime by Asians was disproportionately higher than average when the opposite is true.”

Mr Burdon, one of the original founders of the Asia New Zealand Foundation in 1994, said one of the foundation’s key roles was to act as an advocate for Asian communities.

“In a more general sense, publications such as North and South should be deeply conscious of the cultural insensitivity that New Zealand society has historical shown to tangata whenua and the ethnic minorities.

“In particular I note the humiliating and degrading discrimination in both a legislative and social sense that the Chinese in particular and Asian communities in general have been subjected to. Their treatment has been one of the more unsavoury realities of an otherwise reasonably enlightened history.”

Mr Burdon said it was extremely disappointing to find a publication of this nature effectively supporting the insinuated and pejorative bigotry of the article which the Press Council has so rightly condemned.

“The media needs to recognise that Asian New Zealanders and visitors from Asian countries, instead of being portrayed as perpetual outsiders, are entitled to the same expectations of balanced and fair media coverage as all New Zealanders.

He said the country needed to appreciate that Asian New Zealanders represented a valued human resource in helping the country engage more comprehensively with the Asian region.

ENDS

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