New Zealand prison uprising: rioters surrender after six-day stand-off
- MP Rawiri Waititi of Maori Party said he escorted the men out of Waikeria Prison after they ‘achieved what they set out to do’
- Much of the prison is now uninhabitable, with the Department of Corrections saying it was concerned about the structural integrity of burned buildings
Rawiri Waititi, a member of parliament and co-leader of the Maori Party, said he escorted the 16 men out of Waikeria Prison, south of Auckland, at around midday on Sunday.
“They were ready to come down. Naturally, they were tired and hungry but still very determined to see change,” Waititi said in a statement.
“They have achieved what they set out to do when they embarked on bringing attention to their maltreatment in prison,” the lawmaker added.
Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis was cited by the The New Zealand Herald as confirming the siege was over. He said that the group destroyed the prison’s “top jail”, rendering it unusable.
The incident started on December 29, when emergency services were deployed to the prison, one of New Zealand’s largest, after some prisoners “lit several small fires in the exercise yard they were in”.
During the six-day stand-off, the group caused “extensive damage to the facility” and “constructed a number of makeshift weapons”.
“While the group state that they are protesting conditions at the prison and not rioting, their actions are clearly violent,” the Department of Corrections said during the stand-off.
Waititi, the MP for Waiariki, said the inmates must serve the time for their crimes but they deserve to be treated in a humane way.
“Even prison guards acknowledged to us that the state of the unit was unacceptable,” he said.
“These men are not animals, they are humans; they are brothers, fathers and sons and are deserving of better treatment,” he said. “If you treat a person like a dog, they will act like one and that is the saddest part of this whole saga; a failed criminal justice system adopted from a land 19,000 kilometres away.”
Much of the prison is now uninhabitable, after the rioters destroyed more than a third of Waikeria’s bedding capacity by midweek.
The Department of Corrections said it was concerned about the structural integrity of the burned buildings, saying there was potential for them to collapse.
The last major New Zealand prison riot was at Spring Hill in 2013 but it was resolved within nine hours, paling in comparison to the Waikeria unrest.
An Ombudsman’s report released in August 2020 found conditions at Waikeria in some cases failed to meet minimum UN standards. The Ombudsman found meal times across the prison did not reflect usual meal times, and many inmates voiced concern about water quality.
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Some cells were run-down, with chunks of vinyl missing from floors, some windows did not have curtains and toilets did not have lids.
Davis said responsibility for laying charges in relation to the destruction of the facility is with the police.
“The arson, violence and destruction carried out by these men were reckless criminal acts that put themselves, other prisoners, corrections staff and emergency services in danger,” he said.
Davis said there were many legitimate avenues for prisoners to raise concerns about their conditions, including through the independent Corrections Inspectorate and the Office of the Ombudsman.
The prisoners used none of those avenues and never raised any issues before the event, he said.
“No one should glorify the actions of these prisoners. They damaged property worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and they put their own lives and the health and safety of staff and other prisoners at risk,” he said. “There is never an excuse for resorting to violence and destruction.
Additional reporting by NZME
