Asia-Pacific News
New Zealander tried on sedition charges
Jun 6, 2006, 2:43 GMT
Wellington - A man who has admitted throwing an axe through the window of New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark's electorate office went on trial on a once-in-a-century seditious conspiracy charge in Auckland on Tuesday.
Timothy Selwyn, 31, denied the charge of seditious conspiracy, which was reportedly last laid in 1908, and a further charge of publishing seditious material.
The court was told he had admitted charges of causing intentional damage in December 2004 but had left pamphlets at the scene encouraging other people to commit similar acts, Radio New Zealand reported.
Prosecutor David Johnson said the pamphlets threatened democracy and law and order.
Selwyn admitted writing them but denied they were seditious and said the charges were more appropriate to an authoritarian country like Zimbabwe.
© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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Idiot/SavantJun 6th, 2006 - 03:26:01
The charge of 'seditious conspiracy' has been withdrawn, and its now two charges of 'making a seditious statement'. As for the history, it's unclear. An academic paper I've read suggests that there were two sedition charges dealt with summarily in 1967, but there's no apparently documentary evidence beyond police statistics. Before that, there are cases from the early 30's under a parallel piece of legislation, taken against people distributing communist literature (they were jailed for 'inciting violence and lawlessness' by talking about global revolution and encouraging people to resist government policy). But the last case under a strict sedition law (either the Crimes Act provisions or those in the War Regulations Continuance Act) was probably that against Bishop James Liston of Auckland, who criticised the British government's treatment of the Irish and rferred to the Black and Tans as 'murderers'. He was acquitted by a jury.
More information on sedition is here:
http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2005/08/sedition-index.html
and examples of New Zealand prosecutions are here:
http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2005/08/sedition-by-example-index.html< br />
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