‘s parliament on Thursday agreed to lengthy suspensions for three lawmakers who , a traditional Maori dance.
Two parliamentarians — Te Pati Maori co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and RawiriWaititi — were suspended for 21 days and one — Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, from the same party — for seven days.
Before now, the longest suspension of a parliamentarian in New Zealand was three days.
While the members are suspended, they will not be paid or be able to vote on legislation.
The bill being read at the time of the incident last November, and has since been voted down, would have rewritten a 185-year-old treaty between the British crown and Indigenous Maori tribal leaders that still guides the country’s policy and legislation.
Why were the lawmakers suspended?
In May, a parliamentary privileges committee recommended the three be suspended for acting in “a manner that could have the effect of intimidating a member of the house.”
In the incident concerned, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, who at 22 is New Zealand’s youngest parliamentarian, tore up a copy of the bill and started the along with the other two members of her party.
Some lawmakers were concerned that during the performance of the haka — a Maori dance that was traditionally used to welcome visiting tribes or to animate warriors ahead of battle — strode across the floor toward government politicians.
Judith Collins, who heads the privileges committee and serves as attorney-general, also told Parliament ahead of Thursday’s vote that the speaker had been forced to suspend proceedings for 30 minutes.
“It’s not about the haka … it is about following the rules of parliament that we are all obliged to follow and that we all pledged to follow,” Collins said.
Maipi-Clarke, for her part, told lawmakers ahead of the vote that the suspension was an effort to stop Maori from making themselves heard in Parliament.
“Are our voices too loud for this house? Is that the reason why we are being silenced? Are our voices shaking the core foundation of this house? The house we had no voice in building …We will never be silenced and we will never be lost,” she said.
Despite the signing of the treaty in 1840, there were many bloody conflicts between the colonial government and Maori tribes in ensuing years, resulting in the confiscation of large amounts of Maori land. Tensions remain to this day between New Zealand’s Indigenous people and the descendants of the Europeans who colonized their country.
Edited by: Elizabeth Schumacher
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