Using the traditional haka dance, Maori MPs disrupted the New Zealand Parliament session to disrupt the vote on the controversial bill. This should enable a new interpretation of the wording of the 184-year-old agreement between the British and the indigenous Maori inhabitants, Reuters reported.
The so-called Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840 by representatives of the British Crown and Maori tribal chiefs. The agreement guarantees Māori the right to land and also sets out a form of governance agreed upon by both parties. The interpretation of its text still governs legislation and politics in the country. Decisions by the courts and a separate Māori tribunal have gradually expanded Māori rights and privileges over the decades. However, in the opinion of some, non-native residents are discriminated against.
ACT New Zealand, the minority coalition party in the centre-right government, therefore introduced a bill last week to enshrine a narrower interpretation of the treaty. At the moment when Parliament was about to vote on the bill in its first reading, Maori MPs stood up and started dancing the haka dance. They were joined by people from the guest gallery and due to the noise, the proceedings were interrupted for about 30 minutes. Later, the law passed in the first reading.
The controversial law is seen by Maori and their supporters as undermining the rights of indigenous people, who make up about 20 percent of New Zealand’s 5.3 million people. Hundreds of people embarked on a roughly 1,000-kilometre, nine-day march to the capital, Wellington, to show their opposition to the law.
Although the bill passed the first reading, it is unlikely to be approved in subsequent readings as the other two coalition parties have announced that they will not support it. In the coalition agreement, they committed to support the law only in the first reading.
The Treaty of Waitangi was written in both English and Maori, which in pre-colonial times was only a spoken language. Both language versions differ in many ways, for example in the issue of sovereignty, the BBC wrote.
Source: spravy.pravda.sk
