Petrol on the Fire: The two words from a Prime Minister that set off a fierce reaction Chapter 3: Spies and Brides – Stuff

For many, the terror attacks on the Christchurch mosques seemed to come from nowhere. But not everyone was blind to the looming danger. In this seven-part series See No Evil, Stuff investigates how a group of women desperately tried to get the attention of officials and why they failed.

This is Chapter 3: Spies and Brides. The remaining chapters will be published daily.

Parliamentary committees often deal with matters that have far-reaching consequences for peoples lives.

But rarely have just two words uttered in one of Wellingtons wood-panelled rooms where MPs gather caused as much upheaval as those spoken by Prime Minister Sir John Key on December 8, 2015.

Seven years later, those two words still rile people, and cause others to squirm.

Key was chairing the intelligence and security committee, a group of MPs whose job it is to hold the intelligence agencies to account.

He was questioning the head of the Security Intelligence Service, Rebecca Kitteridge, about people in New Zealand being influenced by the terror groups Islamic State or ISIS which at the time were thriving in Syria and Iraq.

Kitteridge replies that one recent phenomenon was the issue of New Zealand women travelling to Iraq and Syria.

Key interjects, and uses those two words: Jihadi brides.

Immediately after he says it, theres a micropause from Kitteridge. Shes sitting opposite Key at the far end of a set of tables arranged in a rectangle. Her eyes look away from him and up to right before she carries on.

Presumably, she says. I mean its difficult to see what they do when they go

Her answer continues, and she waters down the assumption that the reason Kiwi women might be going is to marry terrorist fighters.

But Key has set the tone, and speaks to the media about it after the hearing. Jihadi brides is the phrase that catches on, catches the attention of the media coverage, and lights a fire that still smoulders to this day.

KATHRYN GEORGE/123RF/Stuff

A 2015 Parliamentary committee hearing in which the issue of New Zealand women becoming jihadi brides in Iraq and Syria was raised led to another layer on the pile of discrimination faced by Muslim women in Aotearoa. Information about the issue later needed correcting but damage had been done. (The image above is a posed stock photo.)

Not that anyone in that moment seems to notice what has just happened.

Andrew Little, the Minister in Charge of the Security Intelligence Service these days, was sitting next to Key in the committee meeting, as then Leader of the Opposition; he admitted in a recent interview that, at the time, he wasnt aware of the impact those two words would have but that has changed.

Ive certainly become aware since that the community felt it was marginalising of the community and particularly Muslim women in New Zealand, Little tells Stuff.

There was that flavour of the time because of what we were told were the main terrorist threats at the time.

It was a pejorative statement that reflected poorly on the community, and they really felt that.

The way that Aliya Danzeisen and Anjum Rahman, of the Islamic Womens Council, saw things, the jihadi brides comment was another brick on a pile of prejudice which impacted Muslim people, especially women.

Its the layering, time and time again, says Danzeisen. The fall-out from the September 11, 2001, attacks on America was the first big impact, and things ramped up from there. Racism and blame would be directed at anyone in a hijab after any fundamentalist atrocity.

KATHRYN GEORGE/Stuff

Director of Security Rebecca Kitteridge was being questioned by MPs at a Parliamentary committee in 2015 when Prime Minister Sir John Key used the phrase Jihadi brides in relation to women travelling to Iraq and Syria.

Each time the language keeps getting bigger and bigger, she says.

Rahman: Its like we werent seen as human. We were just a community to be targeted.

Danzeisen says there was a media narrative about Muslims.

The kindling was there, the smouldering ash was there, and ISIS was petrol on the fire. And then you had our Prime Minister bringing it to New Zealand.

Before we go on, theres an important twist to the jihadi brides story that you need to know; a twist that didnt attract as much attention; a twist that certainly didnt reverse the impact.

Those New Zealand women who were allegedly leaving to go to Iraq and Syria? Months after that committee hearing, it emerged that actually, there were no women leaving New Zealand to become jihadi brides.

What the intelligence showed was that women with New Zealand passports had travelled from Australia. The implication that terrorist sympathisers were living amongst us, and then heading off to join ISIS, was wrong.

Kitteridge later apologised in private to the Islamic Womens Council over the affair.

To this day, it remains a sensitive topic for many officials.

Kitteridge declined to be interviewed for the series but said in a statement: I can confirm I offered an apology to the council. In particular, I apologised for the delay in the public record being corrected with regards to media reporting that New Zealand women travelled to Dish-controlled areas in the Middle East from Aotearoa New Zealand, whereas in fact they had travelled from Australia. I said how sorry I was about the way the issue had played out in the media. I acknowledged that the way in which this issue had been reported by the media at the time had stigmatised the Muslim community, and particularly Muslim women.

KATHRYN GEORGE/Stuff

Anjum Rahman, left, and Aliya Danzeisen, right, say the Jihadi brides comment created problems for Muslim women in New Zealand.

For the IWCNZ, in the aftermath of the controversy, there was some progress.

Since 2014, the council has been talking to the police about what was happening to people in their community, and, importantly, working with other agencies to help find solutions.

And by 2016, it seemed, progress was being made.

With other members of the council, Danzeisen and Rahman met Chris Finlayson, then Minister in Charge of the SIS, in Hamilton.

Finlayson says during the meeting he heard from the women about the racism they were encountering.

I distinctly remember one lady saying to me, I was in the supermarket and someone said go back where you came from, he says.

Finlayson remembers the meeting was on a weekend, and on the following Monday, during a regular briefing with senior SIS officials he told them: These people need a lot of TLC, keep in touch [with them].

In other words, he passed on what hed been told, albeit that he does not recall there being any specific threats mentioned.

It was more what you would call Islamophobia.

This is not how the women recall the seriousness of what they passed on to the minister but well come back to this.

Regardless, the SIS did take on board Finlaysons advice to show the women TLC, and in 2016 Kitteridge met with Rahman and others from the council.

The next day, Kitteridge wrote to Rahman to thank her for the meeting and to say that she saw them as partners. In our different ways we contribute to keeping New Zealand safe and secure, wrote Kitteridge.

A partnership things really were looking up.

And certainly, there was one senior official who got where they were coming from.

One autumn afternoon, there was a community picnic in a park. The Race Relations Commissioner, Dame Susan Devoy, was invited along.

It was an informal event, but during it, Devoy approached Danzeisen and said she was hearing a lot of reports about Muslim women getting harassed. Could she help?

I said yes, says Danzeisen.

The women laid everything out to Devoy, Danzeisen sending a detailed email explaining how Muslim women and youth were struggling, and how things could change.

From that moment on, Devoy became a fierce advocate, working within the system to draw attention to what the community was enduring and the warnings they were sounding.

Meanwhile, within various Government departments and agencies, sure, things were happening, but it was scattergun and seemed to meander along like pieces of driftwood.

KATHRYN GEORGE/Stuff

Chris Finlayson was Minister in Charge of the Security Intelligence Service from 2014-2017, under the National Government. He met with the Islamic Womens Council twice.

In fact, by 2016, there had already been 10 years of work to address issues within ethnic communities, including the Muslim population.

Labours Ethnic Affairs Minister Chris Carter took a paper to Cabinet after noticing disruptive events overseas including the so-called Cronulla Riots of 2005 when groups of Anglo-Australians sought to reclaim beaches in Sydneys eastern suburbs, attacking people who looked Middle Eastern.

New Zealand ministers approved a cross-Government work programme called Connecting Diverse Communities. But as one official familiar with the programme put it: Nothing ever really came out of it.

Ministers in the National Government of 2014-2017 had their officials working on a programme with a similar-sounding goal, around strengthening communities.

But there was a bit more to it than that.

A 2015 briefing to Nationals Minister for Ethnic Communities, Sam Lotu-Iiga, plays up the value of making diverse communities stronger. Underneath it, though, was a desire from the Government to ramp up efforts on Counter Terrorism.

In other words: bring these communities inside the tent, quickly.

Because it wasnt just any terrorism that was causing the concern the officials were laser-focused on one particular strand of terrorism.

With the rise of Islamic State [ISIS], there is heightened interest in Countering Violent Extremism internationally and in New Zealand, the briefing explained to the minister.

Countering this threat has become a core security concern for many of New Zealands key security and regional partners. And as the threat develops globally, it is increasingly a concern of our own.

The message was clear: these Islamic extremists are becoming increasingly problematic, and we need to head them off by making sure our communities arent vulnerable to radicalisation.

A Countering Violent Extremism programme was established for the newly-formed Community Strengthening Working Group of officials, to meet the needs of the Counter Terrorism Co-Ordination Committee, chaired by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

KATHRYN GEORGE/Stuff

Key players: Over the years of trying to get help for the Muslim community, Anjum Rahman and Aliya Danzeisen met with senior civil servants and politicians.

Serious stuff: All those programmes and working groups and committees.

But what was being done to meet the needs of the community itself, a community whose members were telling officials they felt unsafe?

At one point, a member of the Muslim community who said he had come up with a way to avert extremism was invited along to the Community Strengthening Working Group. Government-led programmes would not get through to the people they needed to, the man told the group. Initiatives needed to come from the community.

After he presented his ideas, documents seen by Stuff show, officials discussed in private what they thought. It had merit, they agreed, but it was light on detail. Some officials pondered how else the man and his community might help.

One senior official suggested the man who presented to the group be asked: Who are we worried about?

When you think about it, its an odd question. It implied that while, at that time, many in the community were asking for help, asking for protection, the Government's prime concern was protecting people from the community (or at least some individuals within it).

Thats how Danzeisen and Rahman were thinking, anyhow. The vibe they were getting was: Oh, yeah, sure, tell us about dangers you see, but when it comes to solving anything within your community

Theres a thing called epistemic injustice, says Danzeisen. Its a phenomenon in which people are discriminated against when they try to impart knowledge.

We were seen as valuable in the sense of informants, but we were not informed, in their eyes, on community issues.

Rahman: When we present, This is what the issue is, its not taken as, This is someone who knows what theyre talking about.

Someone within the Government was listening to them Devoy, the Race Relations Commissioner.

She took up their case with the State Services Commissioner, Peter Hughes (his position is now Public Service Commissioner), including sending that letter we learned about in Chapter One, the letter in which she lambasted the Government reaction to the communitys concerns.

In response, another meeting was arranged, jointly hosted by the SSC and the Human Rights Commission. Except this was no ordinary meeting. It was an all-of-Government meeting, with representatives from 10 Government agencies high-powered stuff.

And invited along were representatives of seven Muslim community organisations, including the Islamic Womens Council.

Think about that: some of the most powerful civil servants in the country, people in control of huge budgets, people who can effect change real change sitting in a conference room together to listen to people from a sector of the community which has been crying out for help.

On March 23, 2017, Danzeisen and Rahman, stood in front of these senior bureaucrats and prepared to put their case once and for all.

At last, they thought, they were going to be heard.

This is Chapter 3: Spies and Brides. The remaining chapters will be published daily.

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Petrol on the Fire: The two words from a Prime Minister that set off a fierce reaction Chapter 3: Spies and Brides - Stuff