Statement - Neil Pearce

New uses for old Salients! Internees at Christchurch Central Police Station put last year's propaganda to efficient use when with characteristic ingenuity they converted them into makeshift mattresses and insulation devices. Other delights at the station included fifteen hour processing, new plasti-cuffs that left hands numb, (perhaps permanently), repeated promises of bail which never came, being wakened at 4am for photographing, and spending fifteen hours in custody before being permitted to ring a lawyer.

The plastic handcuffs, similar to the type used for identification in hospitals, were used for the first time in New Zeland during arrests made at the demonstration. In use in America for the last two years they have been available to New Zealand police for the past six months. Fastened with a rachet device they must be applied tightly to secure the hands, their rounded plastic edges damaging the hands without leaving marks. One of the first arrested suffered so much pain that he tried for half an hour to make his wrists bleed so that the handcuffs would be taken off but only succeeded in damaging the tendons further, still without leaving any marks. Altogether, of the twenty-three arrested, five suffered what may be permanent damage to their wrist nerves. One has lost all feeling in his left hand, while the other four have suffered similar impairment to their left thumbs and areas surrounding the tendon leading to it. All had unsuccessfully asked that their bonds be loosened.

A pile of old student newspapers and a copy of Socialist Action which was refused were kindly donated by the local Resistance Bookshop along with some cigarettes and copies of the 'You Are Being Questioned By the Police', leaflet. These were avidly read, swapped, spindled, mutilated, and finally converted into mattresses, (there was a shortage of mattresses and on each night several of the internees slept on the stiff wire beds without them). The most gratifying boost to morale came to those in the cells at Lyttleton when on Sunday evening the Wellington contingent returning on the ferry gathered outside the station and sang 'The Red Flag'. At least Marx was with us even if Jesus was in the "don't knows".