HART offers $500 for ‘inaccuracy’

Press, 28 October 1982, Page 2

HART offers $500 for ‘inaccuracy’

PA Auckland The anti-apartheid movement, HART, has offered to give $5OO to the Prime Minister's favourite charity if he can produce “one factual inaccuracy” in information the organisation supplied to the United Nations. HART’s national chairman, Mr John Minto, said it wrote to the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid this, month and asked it to include the names of six anti-Springbok tour protesters on its list of political prisoners. The six are serving jail terms ranging from six to 12 months. One had earlier been convicted on a charge of flying dangerously, four had been convicted of taking part in a riot, and the sixth on a charge of riotous destruction of a motor-vehicle, Mr Minto said. While the six had broken New Zealand law, their actions had been in support of their political beliefs and

those of the international community, he said. Mr Muldoon said on Tuesday that HART’s assertion that there were political prisoners in New Zealand jails was “a downright lie.” He accepted that many people had acted during the tour from political motives but they were prisoners because they broke “New Zealand statute law passed by Parliament.” But Mr Minto said that there would not be a political prisoner anywhere who had not broken some law in his country. “Those people were imprisoned because of their beliefs about apartheid and their determination to support the international boycott of South Africa in sport,” he said. “I think it is absolutely crazy that you have people put in prison for protesting against sports contacts. If anyone should be in jail it should be the politicians who allowed the tour to go ahead."