The memorial includes an abstract depiction of Field Punishment No1, for which men were tied to posts and had their hands tightly bound behind their backs for hours at a time during World War 1.
Opening the Archibald Baxter Peace Garden yesterday, Mr Robertson said the punishment was a gross and inhumane form of state-sponsored torture.
‘‘I want to say sorry ...it was wrong.’’
It was appreciated as a significant moment by Archibald Baxter Memorial Trust chairman Prof Kevin Clements.
The memorial was complementary to the Otago Peninsula Fallen Soldiers' Memorial and honoured ‘‘a different kind of courage, to say no to war’’, Prof Clements said.
Prominent pacifist Archibald Baxter and 13 other objectors were forced aboard a troopship bound for Britain in 1917 and then the front line.
They were subjected to cruelty, as well as moments of humanity, Prof Clements said.
He told the gathering at yesterday’s ceremony the memorial was 10 years in the making and the site at the corner of George and Albany Sts was accepted after two false starts.
The government of the day chose to crush the peaceful resistance at Parihaka.
‘‘It’s incredibly important that we acknowledge all of our history when it comes to war, peace and conflict and in New Zealand we have a lot of memorials to those who fought and that’s the right thing,’’ Mr Robertson said.
‘‘But it’s very timely to have one to those who showed the courage of their convictions to be conscientious objectors.’’
Asked about Covid-19 vaccine mandates, which essentially require sectors of the workforce to be vaccinated, Mr Robertson said this was driven by public health needs.
Some people believed deeply they should not receive the vaccine, but this was a different realm from principled pacifism, he said.
Baxter family representative Katherine Baxter said it had been a long-awaited day.
The memorial and peace garden would be a lovely space in the middle of the bustle of Dunedin, she said.
Dunedin Mayor Aaron Hawkins was bemused that the memorial project had faced resistance 100 years after pacifists endured suffering in World War 1.
However, the trust’s painful journey to drive the project to completion bore no comparison to the suffering endured by the conscientious objectors themselves.
The design of the memorial was led by Paddy Baxter and the sculpture was by Shane Woolridge.
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They also suffered during WWII by being locked away as criminals, separated from their families. Their wives and children also suffered by being black listed by their 'friends' in NZ.
Ok, I see the artists intent, a stone column weighed down by a heavy steel ball, bending but not breaking. However, is that the best we could do for a public monument/memorial?
There is something oddly unsatisfying visually about this sculptural installation. It seems somehow simplistic, with no real emotive power. I’m not shy when it comes to contemporary expression but, in this case like the Harbour Molars, it all leaves me feeling rather empty, not stirred or moved by the work in any way.
I think to the stoic Eastern European monuments in concrete and stone, celebrating liberation, freedom or the desire for it. How epic and visually charismatic they are in their concrete brutalism, commanding the landscape in which they sit, works that embody a strong sense of drama using abstract or figurative forms.
There is something lacking in this piece, in fact it all seems rather flaccid when compared to the legacy of stronger more visually compelling works, used to amplify the stories of the oppressed across the centuries.