W.A.Y.N.C.R? Number 8, Helen Te Hira.

My eighth Where Are You Now Campus Radical?, concerns hard core activist, Helen Te Hira.


Active at Auckland University in the late '90s, Te Hira was involved in the Neo-Maoist, "Radical Society" (Radsoc) and in 1998 was editor of their national newsletter.

The same year she was on the founding executive of the newly formed UNITE union, now led by comrade McCarten.

In 1999, Te Hira was Auckland University Students Association laison officer, until she was laid off when Voluntary Student Membership was won by Graham Watson and co.

Part of that "laison" work involved helping to organise the NZ tour, that year, by Crispin Beltran, leader of the Communist Party of the Philippines aligned Kilusang Mayo Uno, trade union confederation.

Te hira also worked closely with the radical Maori students group at Auckland Uni, Te Kawau Maro.

By 2000, Te Hira was working in Hong Kong, as part of the three man secretariat running the Asian Students Association. A grouping of Maoist leaning student unions, the ASA is the leading radical student body in Asia and the Pacific. At the time ASA numbered among its affiliates several Nepali, Filipino and Arab student unions as well as NZUSA, Radical Society, the federation of Maori student groups Te Mana Akonga and Resistance, the Youth wing of the Australian Democratic Socialist Party.

That year, Te Hira took part in a protest with several Hong Kong groups outside the NZ consulate, against the killing of maori Steven Wallace, by the NZ Police.

In 2002 "Human rights advocates", "civil libertarians", Filipino migrants groups, local Hong Kong associations, and local NGOs staged a silent protest in the Netherlands Consulate in Hong Kong to protest the "unjust and inhuman actions of the Netherlands government" towards Communist Party of the Philippines, leader, Professor Jose Maria Sison.

Helen Te Hira, a protest organizer, criticised the Dutch government for what she called terrorism against political dissenters and political refugees."Since 1998, the Dutch government, together with the governments of US and the Philippines has steadily pushed for the persecution of Joma Sison. He has been denied the right to stay despite their recognition of him as a political refugee. Now he is outrightly denied of his right to life by starving him and forcing him out to live in the streets,"

Te Hira's term finished in 2003,but she found time to attend, as one of five NZ delegates, the first assembly of a world wide Maoist umbrella group, the International League of People's Struggles in.

In March 2004, in Auckland, Te Hira addressed the International Women’s Day Committee on the seabed and foreshore issue. Te Hira was then working for the Service Workers Union.

In May 2004 Global Peace and Justice Auckland and the Wellington Palestine Group hosted talks by Te Hira"a trade unionist and member of ARENA, has recently returned from Palestine where she visited the Union of Palestine Medical Relief Committees and met with youth and student organisations inside Israel and Palestine."

ARENA is a Christchurch based radical group consisty mainly of ex Maoists like Robert
Reid, radical academics like Jane Kelsey, Radha D'Sousa and David Small and ex Radsocers like Luke Coxon and Desigin Thulkanan. According to a group newsletter ARENA Advisory Board members, David Small, Helen Te Hira and Luke Coxon have all been involved in the campaign to have Ahmed Zaoui released from prison, cleared of being a‘security risk’ and granted refuge in NZ.

In 2005 Te Hira was a Planner,Awhina Takawaenga with "Safer Auckland City" working on a partnership project with the Police, Housing New Zealand and SAC to reduce crime in the residential areas of Panmure and Glen Innes.

This February, Te Hira joined the National Distribution Union as an Auckland based Education Officer. I'm sure she'll be comfortable in NZ's most Marxist-Leninist major union.