In Defence of Golriz Ghahraman

In 2017, when Ghahraman was elected to Parliament as a Green MP, she recounted both the highlights and challenges of her role -

There was love, support, and encouragement.

And on the flipside, there was intense, visceral and unchecked hate.

That came with violent threats - many of them. More on that later.

People accused her of being a terrorist, of planning to smuggle bombs into Parliament, and other nefarious motivations.

Back then, Gharaman revealed:

“Post 9/11, I began to realise at least somewhere out there in the world I wasn’t welcome and I wasn’t trusted and I wasn’t equal.

It didn’t matter that I felt Kiwi; it is the way people look at you.

When they start blaming a whole group of people based on their race, or religion or ethnicity or nationality for something like terror, or any social ill.”

“That is the basis of all the atrocities I’ve worked on.

That is how it starts.”

At the time, she also noted the perils of dehumanising another - i.e. removing from another their fullness as a human being, including their kindness, generosity, suffering, as well as their dignity.

Gharaman had worked for the UN as a prosecutor for the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Cambodia. It would have been excruciating, and for a person of sensitivity, traumatic.

The Khmer Rouge was one of the most inhumane regimes in South East Asia., causing more than 2 million deaths during a 4 year reign.

Gharaman returned to NZ in 2012 after her work.

That was what drove her to political life in my view - an intimate understanding of the realities of being a minority; knowing war from a young age; and of deeply realising that unspeakable injustice can be borne from prejudice, dehumanisation, and unchecked power.

She wanted to make a difference —

Gharaman’s future was bright, her resume impeccable.

She was young, and undeniably beautiful, intelligent, caring and articulate.

She remains so today.

But her career and prospects are no longer as bright….conventionally speaking.

Two years into her tenure as MP, in 2019, Gharaman told Spinoff’s Leonie Haydn that the persistent barrage of hate, and threats of violence, had escalated so seriously and credibly, she had been assigned a security detail in Parliament - commensurate to that of a sitting Prime Minister.

The escalation occurred soon after ACT’s David Seymour told Sean Plunket on radio that Ghahraman was a:

“menace to freedom in this country”.

When asked about this, Seymour, in typical fashion, shrugged his shoulders and denied responsibility.

He also suggested Gharaman could easily absorb such incendiary speech.

But Seymour is not the victim, is he?

He is the aggressor: an Atlas Network trained stooge honed in the skills of dog-whistling, deception, and plausible deniability.

Likewise, Jordan Williams, who devoted one sided hit piece articles on Gharaman in NZME’s NZ Herald.

Unlike her, neither had to face the consequences of their speech — ongoing, persistent threats of gun violence, sexual assault, physical violence, including white supremacists in New Zealand idescribing her murder in detail by "hanging her like a lynch mob".

In 2019, Gharaman admitted to counselling due to the anxiety:

“In terms of actual abuse, rather than micro-aggressions that you get every day undermining you generally, it’s definitely a heightened sense of anxiety.

If I see something that’s particularly threatening then it makes me worry about my family, and worry about all the other sort of young women of colour that might be consuming it when they look at my articles and things.

You kind of feel that responsibility.”

A heavy burden to bear.

In 2022, in a speech to Parliament, Ghahraman spoke of her experiences as she called for peace, cohesion and support for minority groups and communities:

I know it as my daily truth, as a politician perceived to be Muslim, known to be a refugee. I’ve spoken about the threats I receive, of gun violence, death threats, calls for shotguns to be loaded.

Every minority in New Zealand knows this truth … and women in online spaces - snapping eventually into real life violence.

As leaders, we have to stop, and listen.

Last year, Ghahraman was convicted in New Zealand of shoplifting. She had stolen items of clothing from some high end stores.

I recall the excitement of the media at the time - and the glee of many at her downfall.

Stuff parked outside her home for days to report on “developments” and photograph her and her house. NZ Herald joined in the furore, naturally.

I felt Stuff in particular was uncouth.

Ghahraman had already admitted responsibility for her actions and was going through the legal system.

Since that time, I have frequently wondered why no-one parks outside Casey Costello’s house to ask her about the $216m of taxpayer money she set aside for tobacco companies - while the government tells us they are broke and can’t fund our healthcare - or perhaps question Costello as to why she omitted telling NZ about the $46b of benefits we would have accrued if we did not repeal smoke free generation.

How many lives would be saved?

How much more benefit and revenue we would gain from lightening the load on our healthcare and our people?

$46 BILLION - not small change and lives - Kiwi lives!

Or why Brooke Van Velden gets a pass for copying and pasting Uber policy as law into NZ.

Or why no-one has shoved a camera at Chris Bishop’s house or face asking him why his mates at Winton Property Development got on the lucrative fast-track list to build property on flood plains in South Auckland - a plan no-one else would approve.

And why David Seymour’s early childhood education changes that benefit multi-millionaires is not scrutinised with alarm - when his own Ministry says it puts NZ children at an “unacceptable risk of harm”.

Do those things not matter?

Children, lives, homes, livelihoods, our planet.

Is that not important enough for you Stuff, NZ Herald, NZME?

Can’t spare a parked journalist for the real thefts in our country?

To be very clear, I am not saying that Ghahraman shouldn’t have faced what she had to.

At the time, I said she would have to take responsibility.

And she did.

She resigned, spoke up, and admitted her actions.

She then entered the legal system and has taken on the consequences of her actions: a criminal prosecution and conviction, a loss of reputation, abuse - debilitating her career, humanity, her livelihood, and in my view, worsening her mental health balance.

“It says something about us as a species that we take care of each other, and we fight for our freedom.”

Golriz Gharaman. 2022

During an appeal for her criminal conviction record, Crown solicitor Alysha McClintock - for police - argued the link between her actions and mental health (“complex PTSD”, as defined by a psychiatrist) was tenuous at best and “nothing more than a possibility”.

The judge, Justice Geoffrey Venning, sided with McClintock, and concluded Ghahraman’s criminal conviction - which would probably torpedo her prospects to work in law - would not have a large impact on her mental health.

Really?

Since then, Ghahraman’s been publicly vilified, mocked, abused - i.e. nothing has changed, but it has gotten much, much louder - and many more people feel justified to dehumanise her - characterise her without sympathy, understanding or compassion.

Consider this:

• If she was any other first time offender with the same profile - would she have had a criminal conviction on her record today?

• Would police have devoted as many man-hours, including trying to pin an incident in Pak-n-Save where she put groceries in a tote bag in her trolley and wasn’t even close to a check out aisle - onto her as evidence of ‘criminality’?

I doubt it.

To add final insult to injury, pointing out Ghahraman’s history of abuse is typically met with derision and denial by those who are quick to hate, and very keen to judge her.

Look: Ghahraman is not the first MP to have committed an offence (a quick list here), but in my view, the circumstances of her downfall are undeniably complex, long-standing, and deserving of awareness and compassion.

I am sorry for her pain, and also I’m sorry that I didn’t fully appreciate her circumstances until today.

---

Post-Script

I remember watching a years long ago interview where Ghahraman said that despite the many serious threats against her, police were effectively powerless to help.

Her Green Party leaders, Marama Davidson and James Shaw, had tried to support her, she said, but realistically, outside of Parliament House, Ghahraman had no protection and only a very small circle of understanding and empathy.

Our systems, our political class and ways of working failed to protect her - even as she asked for help…

Would her abusers and attackers feel differently if that was their mother, daughter, sister, niece, friend or lover that was subject to the same treatment?

I think they would - look at one example: Seymour valiantly defends Karen Chhour after she breaks down in Parliament, saying it’s unsafe, because she was called a “puppet” during Parliamentary debates.

“That’s totally unacceptable!” - shouts Seymour last year.

That’s very rich coming from a man who contributed to death threats on a sitting MP, yet brushed it away as ordinary political discourse.

Ghahraman once pointed out the risks if people were dehumanised.

Too many did that to her, and too many continue unrelentingly, and self-righteously, today.

Ghahraman deserves compassion, and she also deserves to know that New Zealand media will no longer persecute her for clicks or novelty.

We failed her as much as she chose her actions in the end - and as somone who left Parliament over a year ago, the time for her healing, friendship and peace is now.

Let her be, and let her be understood by more of us.

Give that gift to her, Aotearoa New Zealand.

EXTRAS

---

Criminality in politics depends on class and gender

Our political, social and legal system also reveal intense discrepancy between politicians of money and those with less, as well as the hints of misogyny that permeated both Jacinda Ardern’s tenure as well as discussions on Golriz Ghahraman.

For example: a former political figure in NZ who has been criminally convicted for sexually assaulting minors has enjoyed name suppression for years - aided by high powered lawyers and legal funding that can see through appeal after appeal after appeal.

His political leader knew the man was a “sexual predator” but kept him on as party president for another three months.

A jury took only 3 hours to convict the “sexual predator” i.e. the case seemed pretty clear cut.

When the name suppression is lifted, after the legal games cease, I await the party’s carefully crafted PR explanations, and the “calm rationale” the leader will undeniably offer.

Will there be consequences for that leader?

---

NZ Media again prints baseless, unproven allegations against Ghahraman in 2025

Last week, Ghahraman was named in multiple NZ newspapers as the subject of a supermarket shoplifting allegation.

The full details weren’t made clear in some reports, and the insinuation was she had been stealing again. That was my impression too.

But it became clear from other reports there was no shoplifting.

The standard of evidence there is to attempt to leave a shop without paying.

David Fisher

Challenged by readers on their own story, The Post/Stuff’s Editor doubled down.

But the supermarket didn’t report Ghahraman to the police and Ghahraman is no longer a sitting MP - she resigned 10 months before this incident in January 2024.

There is no public interest on this story, and despite the number of clicks Ghahraman articles generate for news media, journalists do also hold ethical and moral obligations for their work.

While I give credit to Ms Watkins for responding, it feels like some bits were not fully vetted.

---

Pictures

Photographer Rob Dickinson:

And Paul Le Comte:

Thank you for reading and for being here. I truly appreciate it.