Around 150 people gathered on Auckland's Queen Street last evening heard that prisons remain dangerous places for transgender prisoners and that the entire prison ethos needs re-thinking. The protest rally, attended mainly by young people, heard from a variety of speakers including No Pride In Prisons' Emmy Rākete and Green Party MP Marama Davidson. The plight of trans women prisoners placed in male prisons where they often have to share cells with violent prisoners was a repeated theme, with emotional recounting of incidents of abuse, violence and rape. The department of corrections was charged with not protecting the safety of such prisoners, though it was noted with deep irony that in a recent instance a public protest action brought an immediate re-housing of a vulnerable trans-prisoner. The department was also accused of bureaucratic incompetence, Victorian attitudes to sex and gender and for relying on a system of "inadequate protective segregation" for at-risk trans prisoners which it was said even the United Nations regards as a form of torture. Marama Davidson spoke of how on many marae trans people have "positions of leadership and respect" and how this broke down in urban environments. She urged those present to push back against "imperialism, colonialism and the oppression of Maori." She described her decision to take part in the rally as being based on a stance that "if you are going to stand for the rights of one group of people you have to stand for the rights of all of us. Most speakers also spoke against what they allege is a "white supremacist state" which uses incarceration to destroy Maori culture and social cohesion and misuses the Treaty of Waitangi to falsely claim sovereignty over Maori.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Saturday, 23rd January 2016 - 11:21am