Critic spoke to Errol Wright and Abi King-Jones, directors of The 5th Eye, a film making it’s debut at the New Zealand International Film Festival. Eight years in the making, and finished only three weeks prior to the beginning of the festival, this surprising and informative film tackles the issues surrounding the GCSB bill and New Zealand’s role in global surveillance.
What do you want the outcome of the documentary to be? Educational? Something more?
Errol Wright: I think our desire to make the film was to put some information into the vacuum around this issue. So people can have an informed discussion about it and decide as a country whether to have it or not. secrecy around issues like this is used against the public because the public never really has an idea of what’s going on. But thanks to some whistle blowers, we know a lot more about it now. And I think people will be in a position to make a call on it.
What are your views on GCSB, and New Zealand’s relationship with the five eyes?
Errol Wright: We only know what we know from following the story of those three men and the subsequent stories of the GCSB and the Snowden disclosures which have shown all this mass surveillance and targeting for bombing overseas. all of this is happening in secret. Anyone’s communications are private, and they shouldn’t be collected and stored in bulk at all. That’s just a basic human right. When we get into the kind of military applications for surveillance, then we have the targeting of people to be blown up by air strikes or drones. We’re not at war with Iraq or Syria or Pakistan. Intelligence is being used by coalition forces for a variety of things, including the targeting of bombing. A lot of the people being killed are just people who happen to be around when these bombs or drone strikes occur.
Abi King-Jones: A good example of that is where we are in 2016, everyone is patting ourselves on the back about how New Zealand didn’t go into Iraq - Helen Clark made the right decision. We know that GCSB was involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now here we are with John Key and sending troops to Iraq this time round. We don’t want to be in that similar situation in five or ten years to look back and be like, “really?”
Why are these issues so important? Why did you want to tell this story in this way?
Errol Wright: the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation; the war that wasn’t sanctioned by the UN. It was the US saying “we’re going to go in regardless and we want other countries to support us.” They destroyed the whole country and have killed 650,000 people in Iraq. It is a massive murder of people. The whole premise was that Saddam had something to do with Al Qaeda and 9/11, and they had weapons of mass destruction, which of course wasn’t true, but everyone knew that 3000 people were killed in the twin towers, that’s terrible of course, but they went and invaded Afghanistan, and then Iraq—the whole exercise is an absolute nightmare.
And it just keeps escalating…
Errol Wright: The people who are affected are mostly in the Middle East. That is where the most people are killed. And now there are these random attacks around the world which is a direct result of those actions. I guess that kind of ties in with the whole idea of mass surveillance the politicians always say we need because it’s going to help us stop terrorism. But it can’t stop people from doing horrible things. They’re doing it because their country has been destroyed and they’re feeling totally disenfranchised. The only way to solve that is to try and go and resolve those issues that are the root of the problem. I.e. removing foreign troops out of other countries and giving them their sovereignty back. Trying to surveil people and bomb them is only going to make things worse.
I definitely feel like I know a lot more coming out of it, and it was really interesting to watch.
Abi King-Jones: Our job here is done!