NEWS
Mark Freeman
About one hundred and fifty freedom-lovers attended a picnic on Parliament Ground in Wellington on Saturday to commemorate the second anniversary of the day that anti-mandate protesters “held the line” against the police on 10 February 2022.
One minute’s silence was observed for people injured, arrested and otherwise affected on that day when police unsuccessfully tried to evict the protesters from Parliament Ground. Several people arrested on the day two years ago were honoured at the picnic with applause.
Jeanette Wilson, whose sternum was allegedly broken by a police officer on 10 February 2022, described her experience to the crowd. Police twisted both her arms behind her back after her sternum was broken and she passed out for about a minute, she said. She was left for over an hour in agony on her hands and knees.
“When the ambulance did arrive, the first thing they say to me is, ‘Where’s your mask? We can’t set off unless you wear a mask.’ I said, ‘I’ve got a mask exemption.’ ‘Well, where’s your mask exemption?’ ‘It’s on my phone.’ Well, my phone has got a flat battery. So they went looking for a lead to charge my phone sufficiently before they set off.” Ms Wilson has written a book about her experience called Broken.
Andy Wichers from Te Puke was banned from Parliament Grounds on 10 February 2022. On Saturday, the day that his two-year ban from Parliament Grounds expired, he addressed the picnic. After the Parliament protest, he said, he talked to his local MP about the mandates but got only platitudes from him. “Something’s wrong in this country when people we elect are answering to something higher than what their job actually is – to represent their constituents.” Subsequently, Mr Wichers ran for the Western Bay of Plenty Council and was elected.
Other speakers at the picnic included River of Freedom film director Gaylene Barnes, lawyer Sue Grey and vaccine death database whistleblower Barry Young. Mr Young was honoured in an original song by Shaun O’Brien.
Matt Shelton of New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science described the Parliament protest as a coming of age for himself and “the formative experience of my life”.
He shared a tent with the Health Forum at Parliament. “I just spoke to a never-ending queue of people about their stories of vaccine injury. Never in my professional career would I have imagined that I’d have a queue of people lining up to tell me about their harms from a single product.”
“Some people have been led to their deaths, and many others are living a kind of living death with their health up in smoke and yet still being rendered invisible by a health system that was on its knees.”
The Royal Commission’s original terms of reference have a narrow focus and a lot is left out, Dr Shelton said. “It’s frankly impossible for the chosen commissioners who agreed to that very narrow focus and its terms of reference to continue with what we know now… As far as I’m concerned when it says a full and wide-ranging inquiry that is going to include issues of safety and harms from the vaccine. It just has to.”