Legislator in New Zealand on Thursday voted to enact record suspensions from Parliament for three lawmakers who performed a Māori haka to protest a proposed law.
Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke received a seven-day ban and the leaders of her political party, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi, were barred for 21 days.
The lawmakers from Te Pāti Māori, the Māori Party, performed the haka, a chanting dance of challenge, last November to oppose a widely unpopular bill, now defeated, that they said would reverse Indigenous rights.
However, the protest drew global headlines provoking months of fraught debate among lawmakers about the consequences for the lawmakers’ actions and whether New Zealand’s Parliament welcomed or valued Māori culture
A committee of the lawmakers’ peers in April recommended the lengthy punishments in a report that said the lawmakers were not being punished for the haka itself, but for striding across the floor of the debating chamber towards their opponents while they did it.
Maipi-Clarke Thursday rejected that, citing other instances where legislators have left their seats and approached their opponents without sanction.
During hours of long speeches, government lawmakers rejected opposition proposals for lighter sanctions and as such, no accord was reached by Thursday.
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