Wellington (AFP) – New Zealand's parliament on Thursday handed record-long suspensions to three Indigenous Maori lawmakers who last year staged a protest haka on the debating floor.
Maori Party co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer were banished from parliament for 21 days, the longest-ever suspension.
Fellow Maori Party lawmaker Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, New Zealand's youngest current MP, was suspended for seven days.
The bans stem from a haka performed during voting in November on the contentious Treaty Principles Bill, which sought to redefine the principles of a key pact between Maori and the government.
Waititi held up a noose as he rose to speak in defiance of the ban on Thursday.
"In my maiden speech, I talked about one of our (ancestors) who was hung in the gallows of Mt Eden Prison, wrongfully accused," Waititi said.
"The silencing of us today is a reminder of the silencing of our ancestors of the past, and it continues to happen.
"Now you've traded the noose for legislation. Well, we will not be silenced."
Although performed on many different occasions, haka are often used as a kind of ceremonial war dance or challenge to authority.
New Zealand's foreign affairs minister Winston Peters earlier mocked Waititi for his traditional full-face Maori tattoo.
"The Maori Party are a bunch of extremists, and middle New Zealand and the Maori world has had enough of them," said Peters, who is also Maori.
"The one that's shouting down there, with the scribbles on his face... can't keep quiet for five seconds."
Maipi-Clarke, 22, sparked the affair as parliament considered the highly contentious Treaty Principles Bill in November last year.
In footage widely shared around the world, she rose to her feet, ripped up the bill and started belting out the strains of a protest haka.
She was joined by Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer, who strode on to the chamber floor chanting the Ka Mate haka famously performed by the country's All Blacks rugby team.
Ngarewa-Packer was also accused of pointing her fingers in the shape of a gun at the leader of the right-wing ACT Party, David Seymour, who had proposed the bill.
The trio were hauled before parliament's powerful Privileges Committee, but refused to take part in the hearing.
Supported by New Zealand's three governing coalition parties, the bans were voted on and accepted Thursday.
Maipi-Clarke said Maori would not be silenced.
"A member can swear at another member, a member of Cabinet can lay their hands on a staff member, a member can drive up the steps of Parliament, a member can swear in Parliament, and yet they weren't given five minutes of suspension," she said.
"Yet when we stand up for the country's foundational document, we get punished with the most severe consequences."
The Treaty Principles Bill sought to reinterpret New Zealand's founding document, signed between Maori chiefs and British representatives in 1840.
Many critics saw the bill as an attempt to wind back the special rights given to the country's 900,000-strong Maori population.
Parliament resoundingly voted down the bill in April.