“On October 15th 2007, activists around New Zealand woke to guns in their faces. Black-clad police smashed down doors, dragging families out onto roads and detaining some without food or water. In the village of Ruātoki, helicopters hovered while locals were stopped at roadblocks. Operation 8 involved 18 months of invasive surveillance of Māori sovereignty and peace activists accused of attending terrorist training camps in the Urewera ranges – homeland of the Tūhoe people. Operation 8 asks why and how the raids took place. How did the War on Terror become a global witch-hunt of political dissenters reaching even to the South Pacific?” Operation 8; cutcutcut.com/; 2/12/2011
“A huge strength of this meticulously constructed documentary is its scope. The 15 October events are carefully outlined – the arrests of several people under the 2002 Terrorism Suppression Act, the refusal of the Solicitor General, David Collins, to give consent to the charges being brought, the subsequent charging of 18 people in February 2008 (charges include ‘participation in an organised criminal group’ and ‘possession of weapons under the Arms Act’) and the strict bail conditions forcing many defendants to regularly travel the many miles to Auckland.
While local in focus, the issues raised in Operation 8 are global. Alongside the narration of events the film patiently provides a voice for a great number of protagonists – defendants, lawyers, Ruātoki locals, academics, former undercover cops and others, as it unpicks the historical, political and social contexts of those events: the Suppression Act looking for an outing; police abuse of power (some of which, such as the Guantanamo Bay threat, is just plain laughable); media demonisation of Tūhoe, in particular poster bad boy Tame Iti, capitalising on good ratings opportunities and to hell with the truth; government denial of Tūhoe’s claims for ownership of Te Urewera; the crude face of unabashed racism and class division in this country; and the insidious surveillance culture in which we are all now deeply embedded.
With a massive amount of footage to wrangle, filmmakers Errol Wright and Abi King-Jones (Caretakers of the Land, The Last Resort), with support from veteran documentary makers Gaylene Preston and Alister Barry, spent over three years making Operation 8. Their dedication and commitment is to be applauded.” Onfilm; www.onfilm.co.nz; 2/12/2011