{"id":35531,"date":"2021-08-20T09:45:46","date_gmt":"2021-08-20T00:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/commentisfree\/2021\/aug\/20\/afghans-need-our-help-there-must-be-no-empty-seats-on-new-zealands-rescue-mission"},"modified":"2021-08-20T09:45:46","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T00:45:46","slug":"afghans-need-our-help-there-must-be-no-empty-seats-on-new-zealands-rescue-mission-golriz-ghahraman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=35531","title":{"rendered":"Afghans need our help \u2013 there must be no empty seats on New Zealand\u2019s rescue mission | Golriz Ghahraman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>History judges uninterested bystanders harshly. New Zealand must commit to saving more Afghans from the Taliban regime<\/p>\n<p>What is unfolding now in Afghanistan is a moment that Afghans can\u2019t turn away from. It will mean separated families, death, torture and sexual slavery \u2013 women, the rainbow community, journalists and human rights defenders will be most zealously targeted. At this critical moment, they have hope of rescue. But in Aotearoa New Zealand, our government is at risk of letting this hope slip away. History judges uninterested bystanders harshly. It isn\u2019t like us to be one of those.<\/p>\n<p>This week our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/aug\/16\/new-zealand-to-deploy-troops-to-aid-citizens-evacuation-from-afghanistan\">government announced we would send a New Zealand defence force (NZDF) vessel<\/a> to bring a limited category of people back from Kabul. On Thursday one of our air force Hercules planes left for Afghanistan, and I acknowledge the risks our defence force personnel are taking in this time of Covid-19 to save the lives of people who have helped us.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/commentisfree\/2021\/aug\/20\/afghans-need-our-help-there-must-be-no-empty-seats-on-new-zealands-rescue-mission\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>History judges uninterested bystanders harshly. New Zealand must commit to saving more Afghans from the Taliban regimeWhat is unfolding now in Afghanistan is a moment that Afghans can\u2019t turn away from. It will mean separated families, death, torture an&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":694,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,41,56,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-asia-pacific","category-new-zealand","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/694"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35531"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35532,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35531\/revisions\/35532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}