New Zealand’s parliament has voted to suspend three Māori MPs for their protest haka during a sitting last year.
Opposition MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, who started the traditional dance after being asked if her party, Te Pāti Māori (Māori Party), supported a controversial bill, has received a seven-day ban.
The party’s co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer have been banned for 21 days.
The bill that sparked the protest haka sought to redefine the country’s founding treaty and has since been voted down.
New Zealand has long been lauded for its attempts to uphold indigenous rights, but its relationship with the Māori community has deteriorated in recent years under the current conservative government.
Last November, a video of the trio performing the haka – a chanting dance of defiance sometimes performed at sports events and graduation ceremonies in New Zealand – went viral and drew global attention.
A parliamentary committee ruled last month that the act could have “intimidated” other lawmakers.
Their suspensions are unprecedented. Before this, the longest ban for any New Zealand lawmaker lasted three days.
Maipi-Clarke delivered an emotional speech on Thursday as the house debated the penalties.
“We will never be silenced, and we will never be lost,” she said, holding back tears.
“Are our voices too loud for this house – is that why we are being punished?”
During the debate, New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters was asked to apologise after calling Te Pāti Māori a “bunch of extremists” and said the country “has had enough of them”.
The Māori party holds six of parliament’s 123 seats.
The Treaty Principles Bill, which sought to redefine New Zealand’s founding treaty with Māori people, was voted down 112 votes to 11 in April – days after a government committee recommended that it should not proceed.
Act, the right-wing party which tabled it, argued there is a need to legally define the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi – the 1840 pact between the British Crown and Māori leaders signed during New Zealand’s colonisation – which it said resulted in the country being divided by race.
Critics, however, said it was the Treaty Principles Bill which would have divided the country and led to the unravelling of much-needed support for many Māori.
The proposed legislation sparked widespread outrage across the country and saw more than 40,000 people taking part in a protest outside parliament during its first reading in November last year.