KEY POINTS:
Police actions against protesters during the visit of Chinese President Jiang Zemin eight years ago were unjustified, says the Police Complaints Authority.
But there was no evidence of police acting under political direction, a report of the investigation released by the head of the authority, Justice Lowell Goddard,
found.
Complaints arose from two incidents in Wellington on September 14, 1999, involving police and protesters demonstrating against Chinese rule of Tibet.
The first incident involved two women, one with a 2-year-old child, who had positioned themselves on a traffic island along the route the President's motorcade would take.
The women told police they planned on waving their flags and were advised they could not protest there, or anywhere in the immediate vicinity.
"When the President's motorcade approached ... the women got to their feet and reached for their flags, but the three police officers stood in front of them and on top of their flags.
"The women shouted 'Free Tibet' but their right to peacefully protest as they had wished had been arbitrarily curtailed," the report said.
The second incident happened near a hotel where the President was staying, where about 20 protesters, some with megaphones, had gathered.
"It appears however that Chinese officials at the hotel became seriously concerned that the noise from the protest might be heard from within the hotel," the report said.
Without warning 15 to 20 police officers moved in between the protesters and the barricade.
"Police personnel then moved the protesters along using a skirmish line of some six police men and women."
The protesters were moved about 100m along Featherston St, where they were out of sound and sight of the hotel.
Although some complained of excessive force being used by police, the report said there was no evidence of that on videotapes of the incident and police officers denied the use of such force. Five of the protesters were arrested.
The report found the police explanation, that the road had been closed, was without legal foundation, as was a suggestion the protesters were causing an obstruction.
The report rejected complaints that police were subject to political direction to ensure the President did not see or hear protesters during his visit to New Zealand. However, it was clear Chinese officials had been at pains to impress upon the operational commander for Wellington their wish that the President neither see nor hear protesters.
The police operational order noted the President's sensitivity to protest and recorded that police would "make every effort to minimise the impact of protest ... "
"That undertaking, while ostensibly innocuous, carried with it the obvious and inherent risk of curbing or inhibiting the right of protesters to carry out a lawful and peaceful protest," the report said.
Justice Goddard said: "What is absolutely clear however is that, in the circumstances, the lawful rights of the protesters should have been preserved."
The organiser of the protests was happy with the authority's report.
Friends of Tibet spokesman Thuten Kesang said police must remember protesters are allowed to be seen by their targets.
One complainant, Green MP Keith Locke, said he was glad there was finally a result.
"Clearly national police commanders put the right of the Chinese President not to be embarrassed ahead of the right of ordinary New Zealanders to show him what they thought of his mistreatment of the Tibetan people," he said.
- NZPA
