POLICE ACTIONS CRITICISED

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32099, 22 September 1969, Page 16

POLICE ACTIONS CRITICISED

The police do not have licence to suppress legitimate demonstrations by any protest group, the president-elect of the New Zealand University Students’ Association (Mr P. Grocott) says in a letter to the Minister of Police (Mr Alien).

Mr Grocott was expressing concern at police action against the Auckland Progressive Youth Movement “While we recognise that it is the responsibility of the Police Department to prevent the occurrence of violent and

damaging activities, we cannot agree that this Sat gives the police licence to suppress the legitimate demonstration of views by any protest group,” Mr Grocott said. “Moreover, it seems that in their attempts to control, disrupt or counter the activities

[ of the P.YJ4., the Auckland i police have in fact overshot ■ the bounds of justifiable in tervention. We are partialt larly concerned at the confisi cation of membership lists t not only of the P.Y.M. but of I other Left-wing groups, and • at the infiltration into these i groups of agents whose ini tentions can hardly be dei scribed as honourable. “We had believed that New Zealand might be one place where dissenting groups of al) political colourings might be i left undisturbed by the insalubrious probings of law enforcement personnel. “I hope you will be able to reassure us that such un-called-for police interference against the Auckland P.Y.M. was mistaken, that further action of this sort in these I circumstances will not be re- ( peated, and that apologies and 1 compensation to the aggrieved , will be forthcoming,” Mr Gro- . cott said. “To do less than this will

indeed be providing the P.YJL and others with the provocation they may well have been seeking.

“Alternatively, if you are in fact unable to so reassure us,, we ask for an immediate and public * exposure of the P.Y.M.’s real malintentions (which supposedly you will have by now discovered) as the only justifiable explanation for the continuation of police activity against the P.Y.M. on its present scale.”