The New Zealand Parliament has voted to impose record suspensions on three lawmakers who did a Maori haka as a protest. The incident took place last November during a debate on a law on Indigenous rights.
New Zealand’s parliament on Thursday agreed to lengthy suspensions for three lawmakers who disrupted the reading of a controversial bill last year by performing a haka, a traditional Maori dance.
Two parliamentarians — Te Pati Maori co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi — 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.
You are being downvoted because, whether you realize it or not, what you wrote is extremely racist.
These are Maori. It’s their land and their traditions, and they are being attacked for both by white, authoritarian colonists. It’s unacceptable.
If you think what I said was racist then you’re an idiot who doesn’t know what racism is.
Calling New Zealand of all places authoritarian is the dumbest thing I’ve read all day. No, being Maori or any specific ethnic group doesn’t excuse anyone for acting like a jackass. At the end of the day people of all different races live in New Zealand, and that’s the way it is and will be. If you hold different standards on how people of different races can and can’t behave, then you yourself are racist.
Keep in mind, we’re not talking about regular people here, we’re talking about elected representatives. These people studied the political sphere, they campaigned, and they won elections. They understand what their duties are and what the scope of their activity should be. The whole point of their job is for them have civil dialogue with their colleagues on how the country should function. If they can’t do that then they’re disrupting the functions of the parliament and they should be condemned for it.