Call in the UN

The Press reports:

Aggrieved Christchurch red-zone residents are taking their plight to the United Nations.

They believe the Government’s buyout offer breaches their human rights and the United Nations should intervene on their behalf.

Oh yes. Send in the Peacekeepers and the black helicopters.

Kaiapoi resident and Wider Earthquake Communities Action Network (WeCan) spokesman Brent Cairns said the idea of zoning specific areas where repairs and rebuilding were allowed was a violation of civil liberties.

Yes, it is a breach of human rights to zone land as unsafe.

The “supposedly voluntary buyout offer” was structured in such a way that it was, in effect, compulsory and bypassed existing laws that regulated the taking of land by Government.

How awful – the taxpayers are offering the full GV of properties on unsafe land. That is such a breach of human rights. Some people forget that the Government was not obliged to do anything at all – they could leave it all to EQC and the private insurers.

Cairns said the Government’s threats that services would either be removed or not repaired in red-zone areas, should property owners choose to stay on in their homes, more than 7200 families were effectively being evicted.

If only 50 out of 5,000 people stay on in a red zoned area, then the funding responsibility for maintaining infrastructure services is theirs. Just as if you build a new house out in the waps, you are likely to bear the cost of connecting up services to you.

Cairns has developed a template letter he is urging people to use to write to the United Nations Human Rights Council, asking it to investigate.

Oh yes, the good Governments of Angola, Cuba, Indonesia, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Moldova, Russia, Saudia Arabia and Uganda who all servce on the HRC will be just the ones to sort this out.