Civil rights activist finds ‘strong support’ in N.Z.

Press, 27 May 1989, Page 6

Civil rights activist finds ‘strong support’ in N.Z.

By MICHAEL RENTOUL The wife of a jailed United States civil rights activist who is spearheading an international campaign for her husband’s release, says she has had overwhelming support from New Zealanders.

Kate Kaku, who is on the last leg of a tour which has taken in the Philippines, Sweden, Canada, and Australia, is fighting for the release of her husband, Mark Curtis, aged 30, who is serving a 25-year jail term for sexual assault and burglary, in Des Moines, lowa. They allege the charges are false.

Ms Kaku is heading an international campaign which lists among its supporters in New Zealand, members of Parliament Messrs John Terris and Larry Sutherland, an Auckland senior law lecturer, Ms Jane Kelsey, University of Canterbury lecturer Professors Bill Willmott and Ron MacIntyre, and a former Christchurch Council of Trade Unions president, Mrs Hilary Brown. Ms Kaku has spoken at public meetings in Inver-, cargill and Wellington and at 7.30 p.m. tonight will speak at P.S.A. House, Madras Street.

International opinion would be a key factor in ensuring that justice was served, she said, and audiences also appreciated that it was natural for someone who was victimised, to reach out for support in any way they could. The arrest of Curtis, a meat worker, occurred on

the same day in March last year as a Federal immigration raid at his plant. His supporters believe that Curtis’s history of campaigning for foreign workers’ rights and his other political involvement account for his “frame-up” for sexual assault and burglary. Curtis, maintains he was approached by a woman while stopped at a traffic light on the way to a grocery store, to drive her to a nearby house; she said someone was threat-

ening her. She urged him to wait outside while she checked the house to make sure it was safe; Curtis never saw her again. A policeman allegedly appeared from inside the house, took Curtis to a back room and pulled his pants down. He was then allegedly taken outside, and handcuffed, while trying to. pull his trousers up. This act reinforced police testimony that Curtis had been caught raping a 15-year-old black girl who lived at

the house. Ms Kaku claims Curtis was later beaten by the police. Earlier this month his lawyers filed a Federal civil rights suit against the city of Des Moines and the police who put him in jail.

According to Ms Kaku, witnesses at Curtis’s trial, in September last year, proved that Curtis was elsewhere at the time the girl insisted she was attacked by Curtis. Curtis was prevented from introducing evidence that the arresting officer who gave testimony had earlier been suspended from the police department for “brutalising” suspects and lying in a police report.

These were but two aspects of an unusual case, said Ms Kaku, who for this reason doubts that Curtis will be released from prison in the two or three years estimated by his lawyers. “The prosecution never questioned the alibi,” she said.

"The weight of the county prosecutor’s office is large and Mark was not tried by a jury of his peers. Mark did not have a fair trial,” Ms Kaku said.

The Des Moines police, she said, had since been condemned by the lowa Civil Rights Commission for its “rampant racism and sexism,” acts which she says included white officers dressing up as members of the Ku Klux Klan to frighten fellow black officers.