“I have not at all violated or crossed the line of that side of racial disharmony; that’s absolutely stupid and really rubbish, it’s just rubbish.
“All of my statements have been religious … and I’ve been very consistent about that.”
He believed the prosecution was “politically motivated”.
“I intend to challenge these charges and defend my right to speak freely, preach my faith and hold foreign political leaders accountable.”
Tamaki said that while police haven’t confirmed to him what event the charges are in relation to, he believed it was over comments made about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Tamaki alleged police came to his door this morning without any warning.
“It’s an interesting charge. I don’t know if I’ve seen any racial charge.”
He said the charges “won’t stick” and that he planned to fight the allegations in court on Monday.
“It was about that statement basically there. So you’re talking about something that was already clear that I made statements from somebody that was a human rights abuser. I exposed that big time what he was doing in India with the persecution of Christians.”
Earlier, Detective Senior Sergeant Natalie Nelson said because the charges were laid under the Human Rights Act, consent was required from the Attorney-General for police to prosecute.
However, Attorney-General Chris Bishop told the Herald he was not involved in the decision-making, and that consent to prosecute an offence under the Act was delegated to the Solicitor-General.
“This reflects the fact that it is not appropriate for the Attorney-General to be involved in individual prosecutions, which must be carried out without any appearance of political interference,” Bishop said.
Police amended their statement a couple of hours later to confirm it was the Solicitor-General who has the authority to provide consent to prosecute, not the Attorney-General.
In June this year, Tamaki made remarks on his podcast accusing Modi of persecuting Christians in India and said if churches were being burned down in India, “why don’t we burn mosques and their temples down? Tit for tat”.
He later told Ryan Bridge TODAY he didn’t mean what he said when he called for mosques and temples to be burned down.
Tamaki acknowledged he had not been threatened by any Hindu people and no churches had been burned down in New Zealand.
An anti-immigration protest has been planned by Destiny Church for later this month in downtown Auckland.