With New Zealand's founding treaty at a flashpoint, thousands protest for Māori rights

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With New Zealand's founding treaty at a flashpoint, thousands protest for Māori rights

时间：2024-11-19 11:00 来源：未知作者：admin 阅读：次

The hīkoi, which began in Cape Reinga, is retracing the footsteps of past Māori protest movements.

In short:

Wellington police say more than 35,000 people are participating in the protest outside New Zealand's parliament.

The demonstrators are protesting against legislation that would reinterpret New Zealand's founding treaty between the British Crown and Māori chiefs.

What's next?

New Zealand's Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says the bill will not be allowed to become law.

A nine-day march from the furthest tip of New Zealand's north island to the capital Wellington has culminated with a rally of thousands of people who say the government is trying to dilute the rights of Māori.

The demonstrators are protesting against controversial legislation that would reinterpret New Zealand's founding treaty between the British Crown and Māori chiefs.

The bill is not expected to become law.

But the issue has become a flashpoint on race relations at a critical moment in the fraught 180-year-old conversation about how New Zealand should honour the promises made to First Nations people when the country was colonised.

"Today is a show of kotahitanga — solidarity — and being one as a people, and [to] uphold our rights as Indigenous Māori," said protester Tukukino Royal.

"This is generational."

A Māori man joins the march to Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand.

Among the crowd marching to parliament was Māori Queen Nga wai hono i te po who was crowned as monarch in September.

Wellington police say an estimated 35,000 people are participating in the march, known as the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti.

The bill that lit a fire under race relations

In October last year, the National Party, led by Christopher Luxon, won the most seats in the country's election.

But the party needed the support of smaller parties to form government.

The ACT's leader David Seymour, whose party won 9 per cent of the vote, agreed to join the coalition — but only if he was permitted to draft a controversial piece of legislation called the Treaty Principles Bill.

The National Party agreed to his terms, saying it would vote for the bill to proceed to a committee review, but would not allow it to become law.

Mr Seymour, who is of Māori descent, said he wanted to have an "important national conversation about the place of the Treaty in our constitutional arrangements".

His proposal would set specific definitions of the treaty's principles, and would apply them to all New Zealanders, not only to Māori.

David Seymour tabled his Treaty Principles Bill in New Zealand parliament last week.

"This bill does not change the text of the treaty itself … it democratises the principles," he said last week when the bill was introduced for what New Zealand calls a first reading of legislation.

"It reinforces the rights of the treaty as universal human rights."

In response, Māori Party MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke rose to her feet inside the New Zealand parliamentary chamber and began to perform a haka with her colleagues.

Video of Ms Clarke ripping up a copy of the legislation has gone viral online.

"It wasn't even about me," the 22-year-old MP told The Morning Shift podcast this week.

"It was about those 500 ancestors who signed that treaty and they were like, 'Nah, that's enough.'

"The treaty unites us and our country is known for having a beautiful partnership that most indigenous countries don't have and let's not give it [the Bill] the power."

'Kill the bill'

The Treaty of Waitangi was first signed in 1840 between the British Crown and more than 500 Māori chiefs.

It lays down how the two parties agreed to govern, and the interpretation of clauses in this document guides legislation and policy today.

Māori make up about 20 per cent of the population of 5.3 million and are over-represented in many measures of social and financial disadvantage.

People gather ahead of a march to the parliament in protest of the Treaty Principles Bill, in Wellington, New Zealand.

Many in the crowd gathered outside parliament said that even if the bill won't pass, introducing it into the national conversation has provoked a backlash against Indigenous people.

Abby Collier travelled 6 hours from her home in Tairawhiti to participate in the protest.

"We are coming from across the country and showing our babies we can have a positive impact through kindness," Ms Collier said.

Thousands of people gathered outside New Zealand's parliament.

Mr Seymour made a brief appearance outside parliament, but was met with chants of "kill the bill, kill the bill" before heading back inside.

"I have to say it was quite difficult to hear a lot of what was being said, but nonetheless I thought it was important to be out there," he told reporters.

Mr Luxon decided not to receive the hīkoi, instead sending out a delegation of MPs to speak to the crowd.

"My message … to the hīkoi in general, is that our longstanding position, as I've said from day one, is we don't support the bill and it won't be becoming law," he said.