Three Maori MPs suspended over ‘intimidating’ haka

The New Zealand Parliament voted to suspend three Maori deputies for their protest Haka during a session last year.

Opposition MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, which started traditional dance, was suspended for seven days, while the co-leaders of his group Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer were prohibited for 21 days.

The deputies made the hapa haka when they were asked if their to have the founding treaty of the country with natives.

The bill on the principles of the treaty has since been elected, but it has attracted indignation nationally – and more than 40,000 people protested the Parliament when reading the bill in November of last year.

We were “punished to be Maori,” Ngarewa-Packer told BBC. “We adopt the position of being shamelessly Maori and to prioritize what our employees need or expect from us.”

There were tense exchanges on Thursday while the Chamber debated sanctions, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Winston Peters, was invited to apologize for having called Te Pāti Māori a “heap of extremists” and said that the country “had enough”.

“We will never be silenced, and we will never be lost”, Maipi-Clarke, who at 22 is the youngest deputy, said at one point, holding tears.

“Are our voices too noisy for this house – that’s why we are punished?”

Last month, a parliamentary committee proposed to suspend the deputiesHe judged that the Haka, who arrested Parliament, could have “intimidated” other legislators.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon then rejected the accusations that the committee’s decision was “racist”, adding that the question was “no haka”, but “parties not following the rules of parliament”.

After a heated debate, the suspensions made Thursday are the longest that a New Zealand legislator was confronted. The previous record was three days.

New Zealand has long been praised for having respected indigenous rights, but relations with the Maori community have been recently tense under the current conservative government of the Luxon government.

Its administration was criticized for having reduced the financing of programs benefiting in Maori, in particular plans to dissolve an organization which aims to improve health services for the community.

Luxon, however, defended the results of his government on Maori issues, invoking plans to improve literacy in the community and eliminate children from emergency housing.

The bill on the principles of the treaty which was at the heart of this tension. He sought to legally define the principles of the Waitangi Treaty, the British crown pact and Maori leaders signed in 1840 during the colonization of New Zealand.

The defenders of the bill, such as Act, the right -wing party which deposited it, argue that the 1840 treaty must be reinterpreted because it had divided the country by race and does not represent the multicultural society of today.

Critics, however, say that it is the proposed bill that would divide the country and lead to dismantling essential protections for many Maori.

The bill sparked a protest march Hīkoi, or Pacific, which lasted nine days, from the far north and culminating in the capital Wellington. It increased to 40,000 more at the end, becoming one of the largest steps in the country.

The bill on the principles of the Treaty was finally elected 112 votes to 11 in April, a few days after a government committee recommended that they do not continue. The party has six seats in the parliament of 123 members.