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.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      22 days ago

      Hakas are designed to be intimidating. If you don’t know that, you might be a Great White Savior yourself.

      You could argue that they should be afraid after introducing racist legislation, like they did, but that’s not where anyone is going here (yet).

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        22 days ago

        Sure, if you’re willfully ignoring context. These were legislators wearing suits doing it in parliament to make a political point, not armed warriors doing it on a battlefield. The only ‘fear’ was entirely dishonest and performative, not real.

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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          22 days ago

          My goddamn family doing that to me in suits would scare me. They’re effective, and they did a good job performing it.

          Sure, at no point was there a literal threat of actual physical violence. If there was, I’d expect them to be barred for life.