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Are death and murder private affairs?


Fragile Bird

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I know of cases here where accident / murder victim names have been withheld from the public until the families have been more directly notified. But I'm not aware of any instances of permanent suppression of that information. Deaths have to be publicly announced anyway as a matter of law, however it is not a requirement to announce the manner of a person's death, only that they are dead, and the date on which they died.

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I know of cases here where accident / murder victim names have been withheld from the public until the families have been more directly notified. But I'm not aware of any instances of permanent suppression of that information. Deaths have to be publicly announced anyway as a matter of law, however it is not a requirement to announce the manner of a person's death, only that they are dead, and the date on which they died.


That's interesting - what law requires that? You live in New Zealand, right?
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Newspapers aren't allowed to write obituaries for all deceased persons here - if the relatives or friends want to announce that a person has died, they usually have to pay for a death notice. They usually only do that if they want to notify acquaintances who might not have received a card, so that they know where to turn up for the funeral. But as burglars read funeral announcements, too, sometimes people only say that the person has already been buried.... (The death of celebrities is also only publicly announced if the relatives are OK with that.)

 

Murder victims or people who died in accidents aren't named at all. They are only described as e.g. a '48-year-old man from ...', or 'the bus driver who worked for a company in ...', and I think that's a good thing. If the relatives want the names to be published, maybe because the police tell them it is necessary, they can do so. But they don't need to be pestered by reporters who want to write about what they felt when they heard that their relative was killed. They probably felt awful. Move on.

 

Even criminals have a right to privacy here, so that they at least have a chance to be re-integrated into society again after they served their sentence. So there is normally only the first name and the first initial of the surname mentioned in the press. If at all. Juveniles even get a different first name. Remember 'Mehmet', the juvenile serial offender from Munich?

 

Of course the surname can be published if the police need help to catch a criminal, though.

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That's interesting - what law requires that? You live in New Zealand, right?

Seems I interpreted "notification" wrong and I equated it with public announcement. It's only a requirement to notify to the registrar not a public notification.

 

It is interesting that a non-disclosure order under the births, deaths, marriages and relationships registration Act can only be made on births, marriages/civil unions and name changes, but not deaths. However there are controls around accessing the deaths register like you have to request information for a named person, so you can't just ask to scan the register. You also have to provide ID so that the registrar knows who accessed information about what person. And you have to pay a fee to find out if a person is on the deaths register

 

So the deaths register isn't exactly private, but it's not easily accessible either.

 

One thing I'm not sure about is if the name of the deceased can be published after having obtained confirmation of someone's death from making a request of the registrar. The Privacy Act might address that but I haven't really looked into it.

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