'Sorry Day If Minority Groups Are Squashed’

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30856, 15 September 1965, Page 12

'Sorry Day If Minority Groups Are Squashed’

It will be a sorry day when any Government of New Zealand takes steps to “squash” minority groups, said Mr A. G. Long, president of the Christchurch branch of the United Nations Association, yesterday.

Mr Long was commenting on a discussion on minority groups—which opposed New Zealand's military intervention in South Vietnam—at an R.S.A. executive meeting in Christchurch on Monday evening.

Mr Long said he did not condone “the intolerant advocacy of suppression of freedom of thought and expression declaimed at the R.S.A. meeting.”

An impression created by Mr J. Green, who spoke at the R.S.A. meeting, required a reply, said Mr Long. Mr Green had said he had been sent by the R.S.A. to a meeting of the United Nations Association because the R.S.A. expected the meeting to be “invaded” by communists. “The Press” reported Mr Green as saying: “The communist forces defeated us. Thev were .just young boys but they were very fluent on

keeping us out of Vietnam. They defeated us.” Mr Long said that the young men whom Mr Green wryly complimented for their fluency were just as much strangers to people who usually attended United Nations Association meetings as Mr Green was.

“If Mr Green was champion of a cause against them, he was most ineffectual, confining himself to one outburst of about two sentences,” said Mr Long.

“Our meeting was poorly attended, and the branch council did not regard a resolution passed—by a very narrow majority—as being a consensus of opinion of members of the branch worthy of being commended to our Dominion council,” Mr Long said. “Our association includes members of a wide range of viewpoints, united in a common desire to see the United Nations becoming more and more effectual in securing world peace and universal justice,” he said.

One can no more expect total accuracy in newspapers than total veracity in law courts.— Raymond Fletcher, British MT.