Time to clean up the streets of Christchurch?
The NZ press are reporting that women working as prostitutes in the city of Christchurch are complaining about ‘new’ clients robbing, disrespecting and abusing them.
The city is undergoing something of a mini boom with an influx of migrant workers helping out with post-earthquake reconstruction. Naturally, where there are lonely men with cash looking for entertainment, there are bound to be people wanting to keep them company.
The problem is that the men aren’t treating the prostitutes very well, forgetting that their occupation is legal in New Zealand. According to the local press
Prostitutes’ Collective regional co-ordinator Anna Reed said street workers had reported incidents of people from “other cultures” treating them rudely, trying to get more for less, being abusive or stealing money afterwards – “assuming that they wouldn’t go to the police or tell anyone because they’re just ‘common prostitutes’,” she said.
“This is in the mindset of some people from some cultures, which we will not name,” she said. “It’s not that they are flocking but we’re certainly noticing them in our stats.”
But why the coyness about the “other cultures” is she worried that naming them will be bad for business, or is this really a non-problem? What’s the real story here?
“Sex workers do have a lot of rights and we’re concerned that some of the people coming into Christchurch from other cultures don’t recognise this [or] value women as highly as we do.”
Would that be the same ‘Christchurch culture’ that highly values its women and children (Tisha Lowry, Mellory Manning, Vanessa Pickering, Rebecca Chamberlain, Ketty Downey, Emma Agnew, Marie Davis, Gaynor White, Suzie Sutherland, Emma Campbell and many others) by mutilating and murdering them; and then torching the houses of horror where they died?
In the years before earthquakes put Christchurch on the gold trail, the city was known as the “Murder Capital of New Zealand”, not so much for the number of deaths there but for the shockingly brutal and depraved way in which killers slaughtered their female victims.
“Crimechurch”
Read this from the NZ Listener in 2009 – What Lies Beneath “Bizarre and high-profile murders of Christchurch women have spawned the title “Crimechurch”. Is there something uniquely brutal lurking beneath the Garden City’s polished veneer?”
“The police found the body of Vanessa Pickering towards the end of a sunless Christchurch summer. They searched for the young mother under a monolithic grey sky and found her discarded down a hard bony slope on the dried-off Port Hills, the city’s recreational playground.
Just a few days earlier, the Christchurch High Court had handed down a life sentence to Jason Somerville for the “house of horrors” murders, in which he killed his neighbour Tisha Lowry and later his wife, Rebecca Chamberlain, by strangling them and stuffing underpants down their throats, then having sex with his dead victims and burying them under his house.
Not so many weeks before, the Garden City had seen Ashley Peach sentenced to life for murdering Kerry Downey, an animal rescue worker who had been called to his flat to pick up an unwanted cat. He’d dumped her in the Port Hills.
The list of brutalised women and children goes on: Marie Davis, the 15-year-old schoolgirl raped, suffocated and dumped in the Waimakariri River; Emma Agnew, raped, murdered and dumped in Spencer Park; Mellory Manning, stabbed, savagely beaten and dumped in the pretty Avon River by an unknown killer; Suzie Sutherland, strangled by Jule Burns and dumped in a vacant section.
Even in a country that produces roughly a murder a week, there seems to be something shockingly brutal and depraved about the way Christchurch’s killers slaughter their victims. The Christchurch Women’s Refuge reports an alarming and chilling increase in the sheer viciousness of attacks on women. “There seems to be much more anger attached to the assaults than previously,” says chief executive Annette Gillespie. “We only talk about the women who are murdered, because that’s what comes to our attention, but we see women every day who are only a second away from death but the cases are not reported because they haven’t died…” more
Turf Wars
Look deeper into the Stuff article, beyond the xenophobic attack on cashed-up migrant workers, and you’ll see the real story.
A pamphlet has been issued by Community and Public Health CPH), telling clients how to behave nicely, no one wants to ruin business during the gold rush. But, the CPH’s offices are located in Manchester Street
“…where there had also been patch conflict between prostitutes, tension between prostitutes and residents, and “so-called minders” using dogs as weapons. Those matters also needed addressing”
said the medical officer of health.
Licences for street workers – much like those required for busking – could be an option, he said. If the licences came with a small fee, the Christchurch City Council could hire security guards to monitor the area.”It would be good for the agencies to think about how this whole industry is kept safe for everyone,” he said…” full article here
Christchurch city councillor Ali Jones thinks its a good idea and has organised meetings with the local sheriff police, the collective and Manchester St residents over tensions in the residential area
Basically, Christchurch is the new wild west and the locals are kicking up a stink as the city is carved up between different cartels all looking for their share of the takings. Its a free for all, the police aren’t coping and someone needs to get in there and sort it out.
Great place to take your family? think again and ride on by.
Are you a Christchurch resident affected by these issues? we’d like to hear from you.
Update
Looks like prostitution and drug use are closely associated in Christchurch, and the Mongrel Mob gang is right there in the thick of it controlling the action.
Today’s the second day of the trial of the murder of Mellory Manning (one of the women named above) ” allegedly tracked down and murdered by the Mongrel Mob because she owed the gang drug money.”
“Licence to Kill”
“…Mauha Huatahi Fawcett, 26, is defending himself in the High Court in Christchurch, where he faces a charge of murdering Manning, 27, on or about December 18, 2008. Her partly naked body was found in the Avon River on December 19, 2008.
The six-week trial began yesterday when the court heard harrowing evidence about Manning’s “bloodbath” killing…
prosecutor Pip Currie told the jury Manning was strangled, raped, stabbed and bashed at the Aotearoa Mongrel Mob’s “pad” in Galbraith Ave, Avonside.
Several people, including Fawcett, were involved in the killing and any of her wounds could have been fatal, Currie said…
Known as “Muckdog” or “Little Muckdog”, Fawcett was a prospect for the Christchurch-based Mongrel Mob chapter, which wanted to “take over” Manchester St and tax the prostitutes $20 from each of their jobs.
Prospects, also known as “soldiers”, were expected to do various tasks for the gang, which could include making money or putting their hand up to crimes to prevent a patched gang member from being arrested, a police witness told the court.
Fawcett’s job was to watch over the street workers on Manchester St. Senior gang members had told him being patched gave you “licence to kill”, Currie said.
Prostitutes could be taxed using standover tactics, and failure to pay would result in a beating – usually by a gang prospect or associate rather than by a patched member, Detective Kelvin Holden told the court…” more here
Also read more from the trial – Mob owned streets sex workers say.
E2NZ.org 
SFNZ, I would repectfully suggest that you study NZs recent history and also note the origins of a property bubble during the deregulation of the financial services sector in the 1980s, combined with the reckless provision of credit turning NZ from a nation with no personal debt in 1980 to an extremely indebted one. Your very observations as to structural inefficiencies in the NZ economy and industry during a time of the most radical deregulation and privatisation program seen outside of post-communist Russia give lie to the alleged benefits of the free market. This is not merely an NZ story but one shared across other English speaking countries with their peculiar predilection for unfounded economic myth and the unfettered growth of credit and dominance of economies by the international financial sector. Is effects in an isolated, vulnerable island nation will always be more extreme than other countries closer to trade routes.
The free market for land was probably best represented by Britain prior to the enclosures with shared ‘ownership’ of land, but such a situation is not compatible with capitalism. Going back further, there was a free market for land in the early days of hominids, however that state of affairs is unlikely to recur for at least another hundred years or so when societies collapse en masse with climate change and rising sea levels. Boy, will things be fun.
The machinations of central bankers and their colleagues in the finance sector is the reason for the enormous and unsustainable growth of credit in New Zealand and throughout the world. However, central banks effectively set or can greatly influence interest rates and the price of credit. This is antithetical to the free market where the supply of depositors and demand from borrowers sets the price of credit.
Believe me, no one is as staunch a critic of central banking and the inordinate growth of financial services over the past several decades as I am. I view the financial sector as parasites sucking wealth from people and businesses that actually produce goods and services. However, this is not the product of deregulation, but rather, a well-organised cartel that has manipulated and rigged the economy and public policy for the benefit of the banking insiders.
If the free market existed, then governments would have allowed the banking sector to fail in 2008 rather than bailed out the banking sector. A ruinous policy of privatised gains and socialised losses for the banking sector allows banks to continue with the same practices that led to the GFC. In fact, I anticipate something worse on the horizon because the “recovery” is simply governments and central banks papering over the fetid “assets” on the bank balance sheets, such as bonds from bankrupt governments. Sovereign governments are more indebted than they were in 2008, so many will not be able to bail out the financial sector this time around. Perhaps they will resort to confiscating assets from the public instead.
My only point is that one cannot call this rigged system the free market. To do so is to display an ignorance of the facts or intellectual dishonesty.
I also do not share your apocalyptical climate change claims, which I liken to a Kiwi and/or leftist secular religion. It contains similar and ridiculous apocalyptical claims of an end times as Christianity and other religions. The most salient difference being that the world can atone for its sins simply by handing over power to the government to limit everyone’s carbon footprint rather than by handing their hearts to Jesus Christ and following his rules inscrutably written in Greek that is not even grammatically correct whereas the climate change rules are written in incomprehensible prolix. Like the medieval clerics who had plenty of mistresses yet preached ad infinitum against sexual immorality, the people managing this show will not subject themselves to the same rules. You simply need to see how much Al Gore spends on his electric bill and measure the carbon footprint of celebrities flying aboard their private jets to the next climate change conference.
The climate has warmed since the last Ice Age and, as much as I view much of humanity as a virulent disease, I do not blame man for inducing climate change. Climate change arguments often are nothing more than pseudo intellectualism masquerading as science. It is very difficult to prove a direct causal link between CO2 emissions and climate change due to the presence of variables. For example, CO2 emissions are higher than they were two centuries ago, but so is the energy emitted by the sun as demonstrated by sunspots. It is not so easy to prove the link and many of the climate change scientists depend on grants and funding, so their opinions contain some partiality or perhaps a conflict of interest.
I’m sorry, Alexander, but your views ignore the terrible state of Maori and pacific island people in New Zealand. I do not deny the attitudes you note, but the state of Maori and PI people, having been on the up until the 1970s, has been trashed in the last 30 years of a disastrous economic experiment. Maori and PI people do not need to separate but need jobs, better healthcare and better housing. And as others have noted, poor white people are rapidly joining them on the enforced race to the bottom. If anyone needs to separate, it’s the pin striped clad white male financiers and their moronic libertarian lackeys who really f****ed the place up well and truly. This doesn’t excuse the attitudes you note but there is more to the story than asserting that Maori and PI people are inherently uncivilised.
I would respectfully disagree with you Phil. The problem with New Zealand is Socialism rather than the free market itself. I would certainly argue that the excessive growth of the financial sector relative to actual productive enterprises is at fault.
For example, New Zealand has some of the world’s most astronomical house prices and the worst quality of housing that I have ever seen in a “developed” country. Given the low population density, it should have some of the cheapest housing.
Nonetheless, the councils restrict residential land development, in part, because the people with money in New Zealand all own rental properties. Their “investment” will go down in value if New Zealand ends its artificially imposed land scarcity to make it affordable for people to own houses and apartments. Likewise, the building cartel of Fletchers wants to retain its monopoly status on building materials. Landlords charge high rents because of the “free market”. If the free market existed, then people would have the freedom to buy land and build houses rather than deal with the onerous regulatory burdens designed to pocket money for the parasites at the council.
The banks love this because the scarcity of housing because it protects the value of their collateral, although risks of a house price collapse remains. Banks do not want to open up land to housing because their “collateral” will go down in value. The Prime Minister is an ex-banker and everyone is beholden to the mighty banks.
At any rate, New Zealanders love collectivism, but the best New Zealanders needed for the population to sponge off have gone overseas, so the country hoodwinks migrants to offset the losses. New Zealand is a vampire economy where individuals and businesses find ways to fleece the customer rather than genuinely providing quality goods and services.
New Zealand wages are high relative to the poor productivity of the workforce. The reason New Zealand and Australia are so expensive is not so much the tyranny of distance, but that the businesses and employees are inefficient and unproductive along with their being cartels that control goods and services. Kiwis think that technology and automation render people redundant. They do not understand that mechanisation of agriculture made it possible for one man to produce food for hundreds of people therefore freeing up everyone else to produce other goods and services. Thank God, that technology has made rendered certain jobs obsolete, which makes life better for all.
As a Relief/Substitute Primary School Teacher I encounter racism on a daily basis from Maori students. I have found Maori students to be deliberately disruptive, mean, nasty and racist to European, Asian, Indian and other ethnic groups!
There was a lovely Asian girl at a school where I taught last year, from the Philippines, a top student, an extremely diligent worker in the classroom, who became so depressed by the Maori and Island girls negative behaviour toward her that she used to just lay out on one of the benches outside her classroom and cover her face every morning tea and lunch time while I was there.
The loathsome thing was that her European teacher refused to acknowledge there was a problem whenever I mentioned it. That poor girl lived a life of hell at school and every time I relieved/substituted at that school I could see she was becoming more and more depressed. Those Maori and Island girls never let up on her. It was disgusting! I’ve noticed that the Maori and Island girls act all tough and bully others to cover their own feelings of inferiority. I asked these particular bullies why they were like this and their answer was, “Because we are poor, Mister,” and then they laughed in that mean Maori/Island way. I can’t stand them and I hate teaching most of them. They are anti everything and refuse to learn at school but are happy to leave at sixteen, have a baby that the state will support and live on the dole for the rest of their lives. It is hardly any wonder the New Zealander’s of European origin hate the Maori, I know I can’t stand them!
I realise that the hate these Maori students have has been encouraged by their parents who hate everyone they see as ‘in authority,’ and everything derived from the white culture except for the life the state gives them to free load for their entire life.In my opinion, Maori need to segregate themselves entirely from the rest of New Zealand and live in their own generated squalor of gangs, drugs and abuse. Then they might appreciate the life that the other hard working cultures within New Zealand provide for them, namely the unemployment benefit, single parent and health benefit support. Maori represent the highest numbers in all of these government funded social support agencies – ironically, Maori often work in these agencies and openly favour their own race when vetting applicants for these benefits.
The world needs to realise what a racist country New Zealand really is. I know my own comments sound racist but when you work day after day with a culture that feels entitled to the extent that it disrespects and denigrates others so obviously, you would develop a distaste and even a hatred for them too.
If I was an Asian parent from overseas I would never send my child here to be schooled, especially in an area where there is a high Maori population. They will make your child’s life hell on earth!
This article has been updated to include information about the involvement of the Mongrel Mob in controlling drugs and prostitution in Christchurch. Looks like Aotearoa’s brutal culture is more damaging for women than a small number of migrant workers not being polite.
There’s a real undercurrent of woman-hate in New Zealand. I was shocked at the number of public attacks by politicians on the appearance etc. of women running against them or on prominent women. As if this invalidated their views. These sorts of attacks were not labeled immature by the public, and were accepted in a docile way, even snickered at. Kiwis produce and distribute a lot of joke mails and cards (as in, Hallmark type like birthday) especially very visual ones, made at the expense of ‘fat, wrinkled old ladies’ (but not at men!), pointing fun at their ‘ugliness’, etc, This level of hostility would not have been acceptable where I live now, where older women have a status that is more dignified and such attacks would be seen as petty and worthy of a trailer trash 12 yr old, and any politicians or other public figures making them would be cast into disrepute. They wouldn’t be able to find women to support them if they acted like that here in my country. As one prominent feminist described it, New Zealand has a “misogynistic discursive environment”. https://www.facebook.com/NzMisogynistOfTheDay
The irony is that New Zealand men are hideous with their big beer guts, dishevelled appearance, and overall slovenliness. I recall a new commentator citing John Key’s supposed handsome looks. I am a straight male, so maybe I am not qualified, but John Key is very ordinary if not below average in appearance.
Those attacks are and incredibly stupid – more so coming from the leaders of a supposedly developed country.
Unfortunately its not just the men who are responsible, the women can be just as bad – Green MP Metiria Turei and the ‘Jacketgate’ debacle was a cringeworthy example of NZ’s toxic culture.
Nat pack jacket attack is naked animosity – Stuff.co.nz
The most comical thing is the supercilious and sanctimonious attitude of many Kiwis. They speak ad infinitum about the manner in which their “culture” reveres women when in actuality the incidence of maltreatment of women is appallingly and unacceptably high in New Zealand. Many Kiwis seem to think their country offers unique attributes that only they have. In actuality, Kiwis have few of the benefits of the developed world whilst retaining most of its disadvantages. Likewise, they have most of the disadvantages of the Third World whilst possessing few of its advantages (e.g. low cost of living).
BTW, this might interest you. http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/9704932/More-migrants-would-benefit-all You will see plenty of antipathy towards migrants.
E2NZ: Are you still stuck in New Zealand? I wonder if you and I have crossed paths.
Thanks for citing those figures. When I had the misfortune to live there for three years, I often remarked to my wife how the foreigners had the better skills, better houses, and were, on average, higher up the socioeconomic ladder compared to the Kiwis.
I do sense that blogs like these are illuminating the challenges that many migrants to New Zealand confront. I do believe that New Zealand is great for a certain type of person (a lazy person that is not picky and wants to accomplish the most for the minimum amount of effort), but it is certainly not a good fit for the types of migrants that New Zealand is trying to attract.