Roiri Waititi, the Maori party’s co-chairman, was expelled from the New Zealand parliament on Wednesday after performing the traditional Maori dance, the hawk, in protest of the racist rhetoric and propaganda of the opposition National Party.
National Party leader Judith Collins has spoken out against Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern regularly for nearly two weeks during the latter’s search for ways for indigenous peoples to better exercise their rights, which Collins said is part of a “disengagement plan”.
Roire Waititi: Maori parliamentarian kicked out of New Zealand parliament debate for ‘haka’ | world News – https://t.co/V38AN1oSy4
A Maori member of parliament has been expelled from a New Zealand parliament debate for performing a haka in protest of what he said were racist comments he made… pic.twitter.com/DNszd5pjsK
– Eric Thompson (@isearch247) May 12, 2021
Tensions continued to escalate on Wednesday after Maori co-leader Debbie Ngariwa Packer asked Ardern if he considered the “continued attacks on Maori” to be racist, referring to Collins.
Parliamentarian Trevor Mallard answered the question: It is not the Prime Minister to answer that. Waititi then stood up and said she had been listening to racist propaganda against indigenous peoples in recent weeks and was holding Parliament accountable for it. Mallard then asked him to sit down, and Waititi performed the traditional Maori dance, the hawk.
# Rawiri_wetiti Hakka performance after checking some conservatives for their racist propaganda and rhetoric. They kicked him out of the New Zealand Parliament. I say he left. And his sister dropped the microphone. Classic ✊
pic.twitter.com/5zz0H0UMUM– Blue Muse (Mystics_Blues) May 12, 2021
Mallard then kicked Waititi out of the room, who criticized Parliament for enduring racism.
This isn’t the first time Waititi has been kicked out of the room: He had to leave in February because he refused to wear a tie, Arguing that it is not part of traditional Maori clothing and colonial clothing.
New Zealand, with a population of five million, has a population of about 850,000 people belonging to the Māori ethnic group. Most of them live in poverty, financial insecurity and social problems.
