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Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33046, 13 October 1972, Page 12

Sir, —The New Zealand Government has again dodged the issue in deciding not to join the United Nations Special Committee on Apartheid. A closer examination of this decision reveals that New Zealand is not in the position of being forced to disclose exactly where it stands on the question of “legalised” slavery. Instead, our Government can sit back, and continue to mislead the public with meaningless, hypocritical press releases, without fear of adding to the long list of indictments brought against it by courageous groups such as H.A.R.T. and Nga Tamatoa. In this light, one can only applaud South Africa and its ethnocentric racist leaders, for at least they have shown sufficient guts (even though it is misplaced) to say Apartheid.—Yours, etc., TE M. M. CHADWICK. October 12, 1972.

Sir, —So long as today’s correspondents wear rosetinted spectacles when they regard their own country, and take them off with a vengeance when looking overseas, their judgments are aiding New Zealand’s decline in international effectiveness and prestige. Offered the chance to show that our motives in not boycotting racialist sport do not reflect political sympathies, and thus are “respectable,” we turn it down. We have a history of racialist exploitation and war, with a bitter aftermath that seems to be getting worse, not better. We seized land from the “natives” to despoil it with unprecedented rapidity, and lately began selling out the remains of land, independence, and respectability to the United States at a cost in blood to the Vietnamese. What gall to talk of our “providing respectability” when it is our own tatty, besmirched showcase that, like Haiti’s, sorely needs refurbishing by membership of

such committees. — Yours, B. P. LILBURN. October 12, 1972.