The right to be human
Golriz Ghahraman is the first Member of Parliament in New Zealand to be a former refugee. She started life in New Zealand with the welcome and support of The Salvation Army—now she’s on a mission to put that care of all, especially the marginalised, at the heart of our laws.
The Salvation Army was one of our first memories of New Zealand. Back then there was no Refugee Centre. I don’t know how they identified us, but it was immediate support,’ says Golriz Ghahraman, Member of Parliament for the Green Party.
Arriving in New Zealand was a relief, she says, as her family escaped the repressive Iranian regime that claimed power after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The revolution started as a dream of a more democratic, just government—but it was hijacked and turned into an oppressive nightmare, says Golriz. Her earliest memories are of her parents and their friends talking about politics and getting out of Iran. She grew up knowing at any time they could be arrested or disappear.
‘You just lived your life, but you knew you could be raided. I knew my mum could get stopped at any time for not observing Islamic dress code in some way. She was always checking. My dad could have been drafted any day. Everyone knew people that those things happened to. The pressure and the stress on my parents every day was palpable.’
Finally in 1990, when Golriz was nine, the family was able to flee. On the pretence of going on holiday, they booked a flight to Fiji with a stop-over in Auckland. ‘I knew we were leaving forever. I remember sitting in my room trying to remember it all, recording it somehow because I wouldn’t see it again.’
Getting off the plane in Auckland, the family made for the first customs officer they could find, frightened and unsure of what might happen. It was an instant welcome, says Golriz, but no-one seemed to quite know what they were supposed to do next, or what the process was for helping a refugee family settle.
A new life
This was where The Salvation Army came in. Golriz is still unclear how the Army found her family, but it was a key support in helping them set up their new life. ‘What I thought was quite cool [about The Salvation Army] was that it was all about creating a community connection. It wasn’t just about helping you out—obviously we didn’t have anything, we literally had nothing, so that side of it was also great: “Here’s some second-hand toys so you can be a child again”. I had like one toy I was able to bring. Or a little hamper would arrive or whatever. That kind of thing was a huge help—but it was also, “Come to dinner, come to some community event”. They got me into Girl Guides.’
Her early integration into New Zealand wasn’t hard, she says. Little girls are little girls the world over, and it was an age when many New Zealanders had little knowledge of the Middle East—though that also made for some funny misunderstandings along the way.
‘I remember for one of our badges at Girl Guides was you had to make a little book about Jesus, but they got me to do one about Muhammed. I was like, “I don’t know anything about this,” I’d never had any kind of religious training because my family weren’t religious. My parents helped me, obviously, and they found it really sweet that there was that cultural respect.’
She quickly felt Kiwi and largely forgot about being a refugee. It wasn’t until the first Bosnian refugees began turning up during her high school years at Auckland Girl’s Grammar School, that she reconnected with that part of her life. But after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, she began to experience hostility and outright racism.
On the international stage
At university, Golriz studied law and then worked as a defence lawyer in Manukau—something she describes as formative, working with struggling and marginalised people. She worked in the pilot Family Violence court and youth courts, as well as the mainstream court system.
It is important, Golriz says, to give all parties a fair trial with equal weight on prosecution and defence to make sure you’re bringing true justice. ‘Otherwise, do we just leave it up to the police to decide?’
Working with the most vulnerable has always been a passion. Even in her dream to become a human rights lawyer, Golriz describes setting a 10-year plan, because she was scared of being sucked down the easy road.
‘I knew you could get engulfed in this other path where you’re vying for partnership at some law firm. I felt a sense of urgency or panic about staying on the right path, not waking up 10 years later and not being 10 years closer to what I wanted to do.’
In 2008, after two and a half years as a junior barrister, she was accepted to study a Masters in Human Rights Law at Oxford University. On the way, she applied for a three month internship with the UN working on its Rwanda Tribunal, which was putting people accused of crimes during the Rwandan genocide on trial.
Three months turned into a job. She was assigned to the Yugoslavia Tribunal after the Bosnian War; as a defence lawyer for the Rwanda Tribunal; and as a prosecution lawyer for the Cambodia Tribunal, trying people accused of crimes under the Khmer Rouge.
Back to a new New Zealand
In 2012, she returned to New Zealand. She found a country that she felt was moving away from its past proud egalitarian system, where everyone was looked after. ‘This weird user pays attitude had come in … if you fall through the gaps, well, then that’s your fault—or even if it’s not your fault it’s not my problem. It just wasn’t New Zealand to me.’
As a lawyer, she volunteered for NGOs doing work on justice and children’s rights. However, that growing sense that the vulnerable were being left behind propelled her to become more active in politics—in order to be part of writing the laws that govern the system.
‘If I’m absolutely truthful about why I’m here: it is to bring human rights to our law and policy-making. We’re all better off as a society when we protect vulnerable communities.’
She also noticed the rise of rhetoric against minorities around the world, including Brexit and the language of Donald Trump—a change in rhetoric she had seen before the genocide in Rwanda, the Balkans and Cambodia.
‘I felt New Zealand could be different and will be different. We’re going to stand against that stuff,’ she says.
Entering politics
Golriz decided to stand as an MP for the Green Party because ‘it would be nice for us to say that we do elect younger, browner women who are from the Middle East’.
That building pressure to do something was solidified by her partner, comedian Guy Williams encouraging her that she could, and should, stand.
Golriz met Guy at a fundraiser for a legal advocate in Manukau who was about to lose her funding to support defendants, victims and families. ‘So all of us got together, the judges and lawyers and staff, and decided to do a fundraiser and form a trust to keep her funding. Guy was hosting and we got talking afterwards—he stole my name badge,’ she laughs.
Emboldened by encouragement from Guy and others, she put her name forward just before the election campaign. She was thrust into a whirlwind of chaotic campaigning, where her chances of making it to parliament changed week-to-week and day-by-day—from ‘yes’ to ‘no’ and back again.
It wasn’t until special votes were counted two weeks after the election that Golriz was confirmed as an MP. Despite the wait, the news came rather abruptly. ‘I got a call from our party secretary and it was, “You’re in, we’re meeting at 3pm, bye”. It was the weekend we were moving house—we had to get dressed up and go straight to this formal press conference and we were knackered. I still haven’t celebrated, because everything happened at once—I really should do that,’ she laughs.
That whirlwind hasn’t stopped—in addition to being the Green Party spokesperson on trade, Golriz is the second woman to hold the defence portfolio for a New Zealand political party, and is the Green’s spokesperson on justice.
She is especially passionate about youth justice, and is keen to change the law allows children to be locked up with adults in prisons or police cells.
‘I got a call a couple of months ago about a 13-year-old who’d been held overnight with adults in a police cell. Thirteen’s little! He was charged with something really serious in order to hold him—but all charges were dropped.
‘Because we don’t have facilities, we’ve created this weird culture of over-charging children just so we can hold them. These are really troubled kids, they’re the most vulnerable kids that get embroiled in the type of offending where you can arrest them.’
Most of all, though, she wants to put people at the centre of all our laws—because, as she said in her maiden speech in parliament, we all have rights ‘not because we’re good but because we’re human’.
‘You don’t get to give tax cuts or sign trade deals at the expense of housing, health care, or access to justice, or of our Treaty of Waitangi obligations and our environment—because, what’s money if we’re destroying our environment, our rights and our indigenous culture?’
She’s also honest about the limitations of the role. ‘It’s hard to know if you’re making a difference,’ she says. ‘But it’s such a privilege you do your best and try and maximise that opportunity.’
More than an ‘immigrant’
While running for parliament she faced some extreme racist abuse, along with threats, accusations of being a terrorist, and more subtle hostility. In fact, her Twitter feed during the election has been kept by Archives New Zealand as a snapshot of political history, with all the racist comments as well as the supportive ones.
‘Outside of the aggro commenters there is just a vibe of, “Why can immigrants run?” People do say that. They don’t realise that what they’re saying is that we should have second class citizens. That’s what it means if you say you can come here as a child, not be able to go back to where you are born, grow up here, always contribute to this country, but can’t sit in our house of representatives.
‘It’s important to dismantle those attitudes, because every time a young person from a migrant background reads those comments you’re telling them they can’t achieve here because of their race, ethnicity or religion. You’re saying there’s an idea of who is and isn’t Kiwi and you’re not one of us.’
Instead, Golriz sees her election as symbolic of a different kind of value—of the outsider, the poor, the marginalised and the vulnerable—that she saw from her first days in the country through The Salvation Army.
by Robin Raymond (c) 'War Cry' magazine, 19 May 2018, pp6-9. You can read 'War Cry' at your nearest Salvation Army church or centre, or subscribe through Salvationist Resources.