Under the radar of what we consider to be a rights-friendly country, publisher Vince Siemer has been sentenced to six weeks prison for reporting that a NZ judge denied the 18 defendants in the 2007 Urewera raids their statutory right to trial by jury in 2010. It is the first time in the free and democratic world that a country has sentenced someone to prison for reporting a criminal judgment. Significantly, the order preventing publication was unlawful under the Criminal Procedures Act (something the NZ Court of Appeal ignored in upholding conviction and sentence).
An interesting comparison of New Zealand with Fiji is up on Siemer's website www.kiwisfirst.com.
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