Charlotte Bellis (centre front) at the first Taliban press conference - pic taken by her lover, NYT photographer Jim Huylebroek |
Well what do you know? Turns out our Prime Sinister Stabcinda Ardern can act so cruel she makes even the Taliban look kind.
The story of Kiwi journalist Charlotte Bellis, illegally pregnant and unmarried stuck in Qatar, refused entry to her own country and forced by the Ardern regime to turn to the terrible Taliban for help, is so YOOOGE that even Ardern's media stooges were forced to report it. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-omicron-charlotte-bellis-an-open-letter-on-miq/U4WQGYTJHUP36AGVOBN3F6PJSE/?ref=readmore
My name is Charlotte Bellis and I am from Christchurch New Zealand, but based in Afghanistan.
You might know me for being that Kiwi journalist who asked the Taliban in their inaugural press conference:
... (see pic above) ...
“what will you do to protect the rights of women and girls?”
What no one has known, until now, is that I conceived a little girl a week after that press conference. I had been told by doctors I would never have children. I threw myself into my career and made my peace with it. Now, during the fall of Kabul, a miracle.
Bellis will write a book about this. Any bets? "A miracle" by definition can occur only by the direct intervention of the Almighty. It's to be hoped that Bellis, a nice Christchurch girl who went to Selwyn House of Anglican origin and tradition, has given thanks to God for her baby.
I was deployed to Afghanistan by Al Jazeera (her employer) from my base in Doha, Qatar. When I returned to Doha in September, I realised that I was a few days late.
In Qatar it's illegal to be unmarried and pregnant. And of course, illlegal to have an abortion. Thank God.
I went to a pharmacy with a cover story about buying a pregnancy test for a married friend and returned to my apartment. I took the test and called my mother in Auckland.
I was pregnant.
Charlotte Bellis and partner Jim Huylebroek |
With Jim stuck in Kabul, we made a plan to keep everything secret until I was safely out of Qatar and try to get an MIQ spot in New Zealand. I immediately started playing the MIQ lottery, waking up at 3am and staring at my computer, only to miss out time and again. I resigned from Al Jazeera in November, losing my income, health insurance and residency. …
Bellis found herself in a hideous situation. Illegally pregnant and alone in Qatar, longing to be home again and shut out of her country by the ridiculous, horrendously expensive and unnecessary imprisonment of New Zealand citizens that's called MIQ (Managed Isolation and Quarantine). Jail by another name. By what right do Ardern,Robertson&Co,Death Dealers to the Nation, forbid the return of Kiwis to their own country and put the few to whom they graciously allow to return in the slammer? In fact it is by our NZ Bill of Rights that we are guaranteed our right to return home.
Then, some relief. The Government announced that New Zealand would open to citizens at the end of February. The timing was perfect. I would be 29 weeks pregnant and could get back in time for our little girl’s birth
..."little girl", note. Not "a fetus" ... The ODT published a pic of Bellis' babe in utero but you have to pay to use it. There are pix of her showing her baby bump, undressed, but they're not for this blog.
in May. Foreigners would be allowed in from the end of April, so Jim could be there for the birth too. We booked flights home and found a midwife in Christchurch.
The problem was the only other place we had visas to live was Afghanistan. I organised a meeting with senior Taliban contacts, “you know how I am dating Jim from The New York Times, but we’re not married, right?” “Yes, yes we respect you both and you are foreigners, that is up to you.” I nervously continued. “Well, I am pregnant and I can’t get back into New Zealand. If I come to Kabul, will we have a problem?” One translated for the other and they smiled. “No we’re happy for you, you can come and you won’t have a problem. Just tell people you’re married and if it escalates, call us. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”
When the Taliban offers you – a pregnant, unmarried woman – safe haven, you know your situation is messed up.
Yes, your situation was messed up in more ways than one. Being pregnant and unmarried is a mess up in the eyes of God. It used to be a mess up in the eyes of society too, a very embarrassing mess up - but no more. In the mad, bad and dangerous to know world that is New Zealand now, it's the Ardern regime, not Charlotte Bellis, which finds this situation most extremely embarrassing.
Taliban behead a university student |
It seems, on the face of it, in this instance at least that the suicide-bombing, mass-beheading Taliban's Afghanistan is a safer haven than the mass-jabbing, baby-killing rigged 'democracy' of Ardern et al. This government has succeeded in placing the dreaded Taliban in a rosy glow on the international stage. Even the poor old lefty Guardian was having a hard time praising their erstwhile poster girl Ardern over this debacle: "Stories of citizens stranded abroad in dire circumstances have caused embarrassment for prime minister Jacinda Ardern and her government."https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/29/taliban-helps-pregnant-new-zealand-journalist-stranded-by-quarantine-rules
No wonder Stabcinda has plummetted in the polls. No wonder she is reported as 'self-isolating after coming in contact' with someone who might have been in contact with someone in some 'place of interest'. Many thousands of NZ citizens would cheerfully see her 'self-isolating' for ever and a day. One fed-up Kiwi reported seeing "F.... Jacinda' writ large on the wall of a Maccas drive-in and commented that no prime minister ever in our history has been so much hated as Stalinda.
Soon after, the February border reopening was "delayed" and the lottery suspended. We were devastated. There was no way home other than to apply for emergency MIQ spots. We had read the horror stories of pregnant women being rejected, seen the statistics of just 5 per cent of Kiwis being approved if they are unable to stay in their current location and only 14 per cent being approved if there is a risk to their health and safety.Between Jim and I, we submitted 59 documents to MIQ and Immigration NZ, including a cover letter written by our lawyer summarising our situation.
On Monday, 24 January, we woke up to an email. We were rejected.
It could very well be her own Ministers of the Crown that Jacinda's hiding from,as well as the voters. Just imagine how cross Head Prefect Hipkins must be at his failure in intervening to try to get MIQ to accept Bellis' application? And how nervous the rest of them are, at the prospect of losing their limos at the next election?
MIQ said "you did not provide any evidence" that "you have a scheduled medical treatment in New Zealand", that it is "time-critical" and that "you cannot obtain or access the same treatment in your current location". Our current location being Afghanistan.It finished with: we have "deactivated your application".
The morning we were rejected, I sobbed in my window overlooking Kabul’s snow-covered rooftops. I wasn’t triggered by the disappointment and uncertainty, but by the breach of trust. That in my time of need, the New Zealand Government said you’re not welcome here. It feels surreal to even write that. And so, I cried. I thought, I hope this never happens again. I thought, we are so much better than this. I thought back to August, and how brutally ironic it was, that I had asked the Taliban what they would do to ensure the rights of women and girls. And now, I am asking the same question of my own Government.
I thought about sending them a story I did in October at a maternity hospital in Kabul where they had no power so were delivering by cell phones at night. They couldn't do caesarean deliveries and the only medicine they had were tabs of paracetamol wrapped in crinkled newspaper. The hospital staff said even those would run out in a month's time. The UN wrote recently that they expect an extra 50,000 women will die during childbirth in Afghanistan by 2025 because of the state of maternity care. Note "extra" – the total will be closer to 70,000.
Here, getting pregnant can be a death sentence.
Here, getting pregnant can be a death sentence for babies - one in five. Not in Afghanistan.
I phoned a close friend in PR in Auckland and asked her advice, was it time we talk to the media? And, I talked to a politician I knew, complaining about how it didn't make sense, how we were preparing a legal response and to talk publicly about our experience. I understand Minister Chris Hipkins was then told of our case.
And this is where the story gets interesting.
On Wednesday, 26 January, I woke up to an unsolicited email from MIQ.
"We have reviewed your emergency allocation application ..." it began.
They asked for proof of Jim's immigration status. There was no mention of my application, although it was no longer deactivated, but "in progress" on the MIQ portal.On Thursday, 27 January, Jim woke up to an email from Immigration NZ.
His visa was approved and he could now apply for an emergency MIQ spot.
MIQ: welcome home to lala land, bro |
My lawyer who has represented nearly 30 pregnant New Zealand women declined by MIQ, has never seen such a turnaround. Why us?
My lawyer has taken MIQ to court eight times on behalf of rejected, pregnant Kiwis. Just before the case, every time, MIQ miraculously finds them a room. It's an effective way to quash a case and avoid setting a legal precedent that would find that MIQ does in fact breach New Zealand's Bill of Rights.
MIQ has set aside hundreds of emergency rooms for evacuating Afghan citizens, and I was told maybe, as a tax-paying, rates-paying New Zealander, I can get home on their allotment. Is this the Hunger Games? Pitting desperate NZ citizens against terrified Afghan allies for access to safety? Who is more important – let's let MIQ decide.
Surely even the most devoted Jacinda fan - surely even the NZ Conference of Catholic Bishops - can see how unfair this is. It's simply not kind.
With the news that another country has offered Charlotte Bellis asylum, we can picture the government's collective face getting redder and redder.
She cannot name the country for now, but said they are exploring what visas can be offered to her and her partner, New York Times photographer Jim Huylebroek.
"To have another country come forward and say, 'Let's try and find some solutions for this' when they have no responsibility for me, I'm not their citizen, is just a line in the sand of how ridiculous this situation is," she told the Herald
https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/national/miq-saga-pregnant-kiwi-journalist-charlotte-bellis-offered-help-from-kiwis-and-around-the-world/
She said watching New Zealand handle the pandemic from overseas made her proud, but she believed it should not be this difficult to make it home and that played into her decision to go public.
"I've been so proud and a huge advocate of MIQ, the questions that I'm raising now are if you're negative, and boosted, and in a dangerous situation abroad, you have to fight as hard as we're fighting to try to get on a plane." She said watching New Zealand handle the pandemic from overseas made her proud, but she believed it should not be this difficult to make it home and that played into her decision to go public.
So a dose of cold, hard reality has made this 'huge advocate of MIQ' change her mind. Oh how we wish we could post all the sheople who voted for Jacinda Ardern overseas in a brown paper parcel and let them apply for MIQ to get home again ...
Bellis says she's been inundated with messages and offers of help from around the world - even offers of MIQ vouchers from fellow Kiwis - but she has not heard anything from the New Zealand Government.
Fancy that.
Ardern is a psychopath. Yes, she's a neo-Communist but it looks increasingly as though she is mentally ill as well and very much in need of our daily prayer for her healing, repentance and conversion.
Incidentally, it seems like a good idea to publish the best current memes as they turn up. Otherwise they get lost in the laptop and forgotten. So here you go:
"The power of evil men lives on the cowardice of the good." St John Bosco, on your feastday please pray for our Government and its leaders. |