Warning given against court disruptions

Press, 5 November 1979, Page 9

Warning given against court disruptions

PA Auckland A growing, deliberate disruption of the courts would be met with stem measures and determination, an Auckland magistrate, Mr J. R. Callander, S.M., has warned, yesterday. “The abusive, the violent, and foul-mouthed have no place here, and will not be suffered,” he said. The Magistrate gave the warning when Mangu Awarau, aged 30, alias Patrick Fonce Rivers, of Ponsonby, appeared for sentence on a charge of disorderly behaviour. Awarau was sentenced to one month in jail. The Magistrate said it was opportune to comment not only on the defendant’s behaviour in that court on July 19, but also upon the stated intention of others, in recent months, to disrupt the function of court business.

“Spitting and hurling obscenities at a judicial officer is not the abuse of an individual, it is an attack on the very fabric of the judicial system itself,” the Magistrate said. New Zealand had inherited the concept of tolerance and

freedom of speech from the traditions of the Hyde Park corner of the British and the marae of the Maori. “Both cultures think it is wise to allow even an unhappy, bitter, outcast to vent his spleen before such an audience as he can muster, in any terms he may wish.

“But a court of law is not a marae nor a Hyde Park; it is not a place in which men may harangue the public on subjects of their choice. “It is crucial that this place not be given over to the mob, to a rabble with lynch-law mentalities, or to those who wish to propound their particular political or religious creeds,” the Magistrate said.

Awarau, who represented himself, told the Court he considered he was innocent of the charge, and that the whole court system was political. He said the whole thing stemmed from an incident when he had called Princess Anne a “Royal bludger” earlier this year. As he was taken from the dock, he told the Court it was up to everyone there “to right the injustice.”