Ministry quiet on India Gloriavale

| Greymouth Star | Laura Mills |
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A year after a television documentary looked into Gloriavale’s outpost in India, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) is declining to say what action it took.

In the TVNZ ‘docuseries’, Escaping Utopia, former Gloriavale members travelled to India and met a member who moved there eight years ago and now has six children. She was among five women born on at the Lake Haupiri Gloriavale, who had mothered children in India.

Deborah Manning — a specialist in refugee, immigration and human rights law — subsequently claimed concerns of “trafficking” under the Crimes Act as well as coerced marriage. A year on, MFAT again said only that consular officials had been in touch with the community.

“For privacy reasons, no further information will be provided.” A Gloriavale spokesman provided a statement to RNZ recently: “We are in constant contact with our brethren in India and have heard no complaints from them on these issues”.

“Our New Zealand women who went to India and married there did so of their own free will and with the convictions they had in their own hearts. Some of those people have also returned to New Zealand with their families, and then gone back to India. Family relatives from New Zealand also visit them regularly.”