New Zealand university administration calls police on protestors


By the Victoria University of Wellington ISSE
16 November 2009


In a blatant attack on democratic rights, two former university students were arrested when they attempted to deliver a petition to the administration of Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) in New Zealand on October 21. The petition, signed by 50 academics, union officials and educationalists, called for the lifting of a two-year trespass order imposed by the university on the pair, Heleyni Pratley and Joel Cosgrove, over a protest against fee increases a month earlier.

Rather than allow the two to present the petition, the university authorities mobilised security personnel to block their entry and called the police, who arrested them. They have been released on bail on condition they neither enter university property nor associate with each other.

The VUW administration had earlier engaged a security company to serve its trespass notices on Pratley and Cosgrove. Pratley claims she was accosted by two security guards who turned up at her home to give them to her. Despite being asked repeatedly to leave, they attempted to physically force their way into the property.

The university’s actions underline the thoroughly anti-democratic methods now being used to impose the National Party government’s pro-business “user paysâ€