Editorial: Tell facts on jihadi brides

Anna Wallis PHOTO/FILE

TO THE panoply of things we wished were Kiwi but turn out to be Australian, add jihadi brides.

Like pavlova and Phar Lap, New Zealand can't lay claim to a single married woman heading off to Syria for less than wedded bliss with Isis.

After a bit of scaremongering by the head of the SIS, Rebecca Kitteridge, and Prime Minister John Key in December, it's been confirmed those women were New Zealand citizens but living across the ditch. None were living in New Zealand and none left from New Zealand.

Scaremongering - yes, because neither bothered to correct the impression that the jihadi brides had been living in New Zealand and were leaving from this country.

When Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei said Mr Key and Ms Kitteridge had misled the nation, she was right.

But the media must take a lot of the blame. The questions "Are they living in New Zealand?" and "Did they leave from New Zealand?" seem reasonable to ask. Of course, this is 20/20 hindsight, but at least from now the prime minister and head of the SIS will not be able to get away with such omission again.

Radio New Zealand did ask, and got the information from the SIS through the Official Information Act last week, almost four months after the comments. Before that, the Muslim community here expressed bewilderment with the Federation of Islamic Associations of NZ saying it had not seen any evidence of New Zealand having jihadi brides.

No one thought to correct the federation, including Ms Kitteridge or the PM.

Yet that's the rub - it suited them to have us thinking jihadi brides were local. There is a real danger of crying wolf. The concern of jihadi brides is real, not least of all for the women who go. We need timely, correct information, not insinuation.