Justice Watch New Zealand has issued an open letter to Prime Minister Luxon challenging the Royal Commission’s Phase Two findings as unlawful under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

Justice Watch NZ is a public advocacy and legal accountability group. In its third consecutive open letter to the Prime Minister and Government Ministers critiquing the Phase 2 report of the Covid Royal Commission, it argues NZ was rendered unfree and undemocratic such that the legal justification for the suspension of key elements of the Bill of Rights Act (BORA) claimed all along by the government and endorsed by the Commissioners, was rendered moot.

PUBLIC OPEN LETTER

Justice Watch New Zealand Inc.
Public Interest Correspondence

Email: justicewatchnz@protonmail.com

Date: 17 March 2026

Subject: RCI into COVID-19: Lessons Learned Phase 2 — Legal Failure to Apply the Justified Limitations Framework of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990

Rt Hon Christopher Luxon
Prime Minister of New Zealand

And to:
All Honourable Ministers of the Crown

Dear Prime Minister and Honourable Ministers,

Purpose of this Letter

We write to explain why the Royal Commission’s Phase Two Report: Lessons Learned from Aotearoa New Zealand’s Response to COVID-19 appears to have failed to identify the misuse of the “justified limitations” provisions of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. In our view, this arises from a misunderstanding of key aspects of the COVID-19 circumstances and their proper application within the legal framework established by the Act.

The Required Legal Approach

The proper legal approach is to measure the circumstances that occurred during the pandemic against the statutory framework that existed at the time. The law cannot be adjusted retrospectively to accommodate the circumstances that arose. Rather, the circumstances must be examined against the requirements of the law as enacted by Parliament.

The law is prescriptive in this regard. Section 10 of the Legislation Act 2019 provides that “the meaning of legislation must be ascertained from its text and in the light of its purpose and context.” Any analysis of the justified limitations provisions of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act must therefore begin with a careful examination of the text of the Act and the purpose and context in which those provisions were enacted.

Constitutional Role of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act

The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act also occupies a particular constitutional role within New Zealand law. It is one of the few statutes enacted primarily to restrain the exercise of public power rather than to regulate the conduct of the public. In that sense, it is legislation enacted for the protection of the people against the misuse of governmental authority. For that reason, the rights affirmed by the Act must be interpreted liberally and applied for the benefit of the people whose freedoms the Act was designed to protect.

The Statutory Test Under Section 5

Section 5 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 is explicit that any limitation on the rights and freedoms affirmed by the Act is permissible only where it can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

The statutory language is clear that the concept of justification operates within the context of a society that is itself free. Yet during the pandemic New Zealand society was placed under lockdown conditions removing the element of freedom that is required for further justified limitations. In those circumstances the question necessarily arises whether additional limitations imposed while that condition existed could properly be said to meet the statutory requirement of justification under section 5.

Sequence of Rights Limitations

In those circumstances it is necessary to identify the sequence of rights limitations that occurred.

This sequence also raises a further issue of legal reasoning. Where successive limitations on rights derive their force from conditions created by earlier restrictions, the justification analysis risks becoming circular, because the State is effectively relying upon circumstances produced by its own limitations in order to justify additional ones.

The first limitation was the removal of ordinary freedom of movement and association through lockdown orders imposed across New Zealand.

Once those conditions were established, the restoration of ordinary freedoms was then made conditional upon vaccination uptake targets. In practical terms, the return of ordinary civil liberties was tied to vaccination compliance.

The effect of this sequence was that the restoration of ordinary freedoms was made conditional upon vaccination uptake. In substance this created a coercive environment in which individuals were pressured to accept a medical intervention, and it is now evident that some New Zealanders who complied with those conditions were subsequently injured.

Schematic Representation of the Issue

The issue can be illustrated schematically as follows:

Statutory Requirement
New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 — Section 5
Limitations permitted only where demonstrably justified
IN A FREE AND DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY

Circumstance That Occurred
Nationwide lockdown orders imposed across New Zealand

The practical effect of those orders was the removal or severe restriction of the ordinary civil freedoms that define a free society, including:

• Freedom of movement — people were required to remain at home and were prohibited from travelling except for limited purposes.
• Freedom of association — people were prohibited from meeting with others outside their household.
• Freedom of peaceful assembly — public gatherings were prohibited.
• Freedom to carry on ordinary work and livelihood — many people were prohibited from attending workplaces or conducting normal economic activity.

In those conditions New Zealand society was operating under lockdown restrictions in which the ordinary freedoms presupposed by section 5 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act were substantially removed.

Further Limitation
Restoration of ordinary freedoms made conditional upon vaccination uptake targets.

Practical Effect
Individuals pressured to accept a medical intervention in order to regain ordinary civil liberties.

Observed Outcome
Some individuals who complied with those conditions were subsequently injured.

Issue Identified
The Royal Commission does not appear to analyse this sequence of limitations within the statutory requirement that justification occur in a free and democratic society.

Conclusion

The Phase Two report appears to reach conclusions about justified limitations without properly examining the statutory condition required by section 5 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 — namely, that any limitation must be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

In our submission, any limitations imposed on the population at a time when New Zealand society was not operating as a free and democratic society — or where individuals were subject to conditions of coercion — were incapable of meeting the statutory threshold for justification under section 5. It follows that such limitations must properly be regarded as unlawful, as they fall outside the limits permitted by law. In that context, the conclusions reached by the Commissioners in the Phase Two report are in error.

Where such unlawful limitations have contributed to outcomes involving serious harm, including injury or death, the question of legal responsibility necessarily arises and cannot properly be set aside.

Yours faithfully,

Andrew Major
Chairman & Lead Investigator

Justice Watch New Zealand Inc.
(Incorporated Society)

Email: justicewatchnz@protonmail.com
Website: www.justicewatchnz.net

Distribution:
Prime Minister and all Ministers of the Crown

Read the other Justice Watch NZ Letters:

• Letter One: Open Letter to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon Challenges Evidence Behind Pfizer Vaccine Safety in New Zealand
• Letter Two: Open Letter to PM Challenges Royal Commission Phase Two Silence on Non-Derogable Rights and Myocarditis Fatalities

FILE PHOTO. ©  The ruins of the church of St. George are seen in the village of Taybeh, West Bank, on August 1, 2025.

RT

👍 US-Israel-Iran war | @geopolitics_prime

Emergency crews rushed to contain fires across Tel Aviv after Iranian strikes, with footage showing burning vehicles and large blazes, SSN reported.

Reports also indicate a fire near Ben Gurion Airport following the strikes.

Via https://t.me/healthimpact/3284

The theories have been swirling around medical chat rooms for decades. It started when I began my medical practice in 1987 after moving to Hyde Park, N.Y., which I didn’t know at the time, was one of the number one hot spots for Lyme in the United States. I remember hearing about Plum Island 40 years ago when I started seeing chronic Lyme disease patients. The primary theory was that it was no coincidence that the outbreak of Lyme disease took place in Lyme, Connecticut, right across from Plum Island where the government was doing experiments on ticks.

The reason these patients were so sick, according to the theories, was that the bacteria was bioengineered to be more potent. It certainly was possible, since governments around the world all have their secret bioweapons programs, but of course it was difficult to prove the theory beyond a reasonable doubt. And then there are of course conspiracists putting out far-reaching theories in different areas, like ‘we are not alone in the universe’… (of course, which we’re not!) …so we needed reasonable proof. The prevailing thinking on Plum Island was that Nazi scientists were recruited after WWII to work on ticks and weaponize them. Now more information is emerging on these theories. This past week two articles came out. One by Dr Robert Malone and the other by the Daily Mail.

For those not Lyme history buffs, part of the initial information on Plum Island came from the book by Michael Carrol, Lab 257, released back in August 2005.

Lab 257 Was Based On Declassified Government Documents

Lab 257 and the release of bioengineered ticks has been discussed in one form or another for over 20 years. I listened to the theories for decades, and ignored them for the most part, because Borrelia burgdorferi had been known to be around for over a million years. It was not a new bacteria. And even if the government had bioengineered it, what difference was it going to make in getting my patients better? (more about that in a bit). It’s not like I could call up the secret scientists and ask for the secret sauce, although an AI search on potential solutions was interesting, as I will discuss below.

Then came Kris Newby, who wrote the book Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons

This was 14 years after Lab 257 was released. Some theories just won’t die!

Kris was senior producer of the documentary ‘Under Our Skin’ which I was in. She had strong scientific credentials. You can see the interview with Dana Parish back from several years ago, through Bay Area Lyme Foundation:

As per this interview from Kris and the BAL Ticktective Podcast:

“In this interview, author/filmmaker, Kris Newby, explains the murky history behind the US government’s involvement with Lyme disease and continued efforts to hide how the military’s bioweapons programs caused the spread of tick-borne pathogens. She explains how alliances between pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, university-based research teams, and the government led to inaccurate testing and denials of care, causing untold suffering to millions. Kris draws parallels between Long Covid and chronic Lyme and shines a light on how we are being dismissed, misinformed, and deliberately misled by the very institutions that should be protecting us.”

https://www.bayarealyme.org/tag/bitten-the-secret-history-of-lyme-disease-and-biological-weapons/

The Theories of Bioengineered Ticks Resurfaced Over A Decade Later

Bitten by Kris Newby was the second book to receive a lot of attention, discussing the above research on Plum Island and why it was done. Some patient advocates and doctors firmly believed that the Plum Island experiments were the reason Lyme was so controversial. After all, if the government accidentally (or not so accidentally) released ticks or bioengineered them, and then it was making tens of thousands of people sick (the numbers kept getting bigger year after year) that could explain why the government kept covering up the inaccuracy of testing; attacking doctors who were trying to find answers, backing IDSA researchers who claimed it was no more than an ‘autoimmune phenomenon’ vs ‘a persistent infection’ (hey, we didn’t do anything to the ticks to make them more potent biological weapons and resistant to standard therapies), not to mention the governments continued focus on finding a vaccine.

If they caused part of the problem, they would want a vaccine to protect people, right? Perhaps that is why they kept focusing on that aspect of the equation?

Did Financial Gains in Vaccines Obfuscate ‘Gain of Function’ Research?

Unfortunately, the argument that we are creating a vaccine to protect people gets mired in whether you caused the problem in the first place, and of course, financial collaborations. The patents for the LYMErix vaccine were primarily held through a collaborative arrangement between SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline [GSK]) and Yale University (who also received a lot of government grant money to study ticks), as well as the CDC. SmithKline and the CDC reportedly filed a joint patent application related to Lyme disease diagnostics and components.

The NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) also funded basic research grants which provided the foundational patents for cloning the genes used to create the vaccine. Let’s be clear. I have nothing against vaccines that save lives as I use them all the time; but when you remove the 31 (OspA) an 34 (OspB) bands from the Lyme diagnostic criteria at the Dearborn conference in 1994 because they were antigens used in the vaccine (their presence could indicate either infection or vaccination confusing the situation) and never put these Lyme-specific bands back in your official two-tiered testing years later, once the vaccine was off the market, when they could improve diagnostics for sick patients, that is just plain wrong. Your job as the top health related organizations in our country is to protect and save lives. Not obfuscate.

Now comes the third act of this long-running play. An article released last week by Dr Robert Malone by Trial Site News discusses once more ‘declassified documents’ linking the Lyme outbreak to a US bioweapons program. See below:

Declassified Documents Link U.S. Bioweapons Program to Lyme Disease Outbreak

Who is Dr Malone, who wrote this recent article, and why should we care about the extensive AI search he did? As of early 2026, Dr. Robert Malone serves as a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a key federal vaccine panel within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He was appointed to this position in June 2025 by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was appointed as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). For those of you following the news, Secretary Kennedy has vowed to stop ‘gaslighting Lyme patients’ and get to the truth behind the present epidemic. That means the scientist writing this article has the support of the present HHS Secretary of Health, who himself has admitted that he has had chronic Lyme disease. Secretary Kennedy has stated on multiple occasions that it is “highly likely” that Lyme disease was developed as a military bioweapon.

[…]

Via https://medicaldetective.substack.com/p/why-should-we-care-if-borrelia-the-agent-of-lyme-disease-was-bioengineered

Kevork Almassian

When Israel announced that Ali Larijani had been “eliminated,” the Zionist commentariat tried to frame it the way it frames every assassination in this war: a clean tactical success, a “decapitation” of the enemy, a surgical move that supposedly brings “peace” closer.

But Larijani was not a battlefield commander. He was, in many ways, the opposite of what the war-hungry camp wants to see alive inside Iran: a balancing force, a pragmatist with institutional weight, and a man associated with diplomacy, especially the kind of diplomacy that could provide Trump with an exit ramp.

That is why he was targeted. Because in a war increasingly decided by escalation dynamics and economic blowback, Larijani represented the political capacity to craft a post-war settlement if and when Tehran decided it was ready to end the confrontation, and if and when Trump reached the conviction that he could no longer bear the historical economic repercussions.

In other words, if you want to prevent de-escalation, you hit the people who can negotiate.

Who was Ali Larijani and why he mattered

Larijani represented a pillar of institutional continuity, a bridge between security and politics, and a recognizable figure for any serious backchannel or settlement logic. Larijani was the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council. The kind of role that matters in war termination: the state’s political brain, not only its military muscle.

Two days before his assassination, Larijani addressed the Islamic world with a structured statement directed to Muslim-majority governments, calling them out, morally, politically and religiously, for their silence and complicity while Iran was being attacked.

He framed the war as a “deceptive American-Zionist aggression” launched during negotiations, aimed at dismantling Iran, and he pointed to the fact that the assault had already produced “martyrdom” at the top of the Iranian leadership and among civilians and commanders, yet was met with Iranian national and Islamic resistance.

He then delivered the line that should embarrass every Arab capital: aside from rare exceptions and mostly symbolic statements, Islamic states failed to stand with Iran, even as Iran—by his description—pushed the aggressor into an impasse.

And then, in a religious register that many Gulf monarchies understand all too well (or not?), he invoked a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad—arguing that whoever hears a Muslim calling for help and does not respond is not truly part of the community—before asking, rhetorically, what kind of Islam this is.

pravda.ru

Speculation surrounding the alleged disappearance of Benjamin Netanyahu has gone beyond mere rumor, becoming part of a broader information confrontation between Israel and Iran. The absence of clear, verifiable public appearances by the Israeli prime minister has created a vacuum quickly filled by competing narratives and digital content of questionable authenticity.

Digital Doubles and the Crisis of Trust

Attempts by Israeli sources to demonstrate that Netanyahu remains active have sparked debate online. Some commentators and bloggers have pointed to visual inconsistencies in circulated videos, suggesting possible digital manipulation. These claims, however, remain unverified and should be treated with caution.

At the same time, limited official communication has contributed to speculation. In highly sensitive security environments, reduced public visibility of political leaders is not unusual, but in the current media landscape it often leads to mistrust and competing interpretations.

“Information noise around Netanyahu reflects a classic demoralization strategy, where even minor technical inconsistencies are amplified into claims of dramatic events,”

said political analyst Mikhail Egorov in comments to Pravda.Ru.

How Iran Shapes the Narrative

Iranian media and commentators have focused on raising questions rather than making direct claims, highlighting the lack of consistent imagery and communication from the Israeli leadership. This approach allows them to influence the narrative without issuing statements that could be easily disproven.

[…]

Via https://english.pravda.ru/world/166217-netanyahu-disappearance-information-war-israel-iran/