New Zealand Parliament suspends 3 Māori Party lawmakers who performed haka protest

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand legislators voted Thursday to enact record suspensions from Parliament for three lawmakers who performed a Māori haka to protest a proposed law.

Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke received a seven-day ban and the leaders of her political party, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi, were barred for 21 days. Three days had been the longest ban for a lawmaker from New Zealand’s Parliament before.

The lawmakers from Te Pāti Māori, the Māori Party, performed the haka, a chanting dance of challenge, in November to oppose a widely unpopular bill, now defeated, that they said would reverse Indigenous rights.

The protest drew global headlines and provoked months of fraught debate among lawmakers about what the consequences for the lawmakers' actions should be and the place of Māori culture in Parliament.

A committee of the lawmakers’ peers in April recommended the lengthy bans. It said the lawmakers were not being punished for the haka, but for striding across the floor of the debating chamber toward their opponents while doing it.

Judith Collins, the committee chair, said the lawmakers' behavior was egregious, disruptive and potentially intimidating.

Maipi-Clarke, 22, rejected that description Thursday, citing other instances when legislators have left their seats and approached opponents without sanction. The suspended legislators said they are being treated more harshly than others because they are Māori.

“I came into this house to give a voice to the voiceless. Is that the real issue here?” Maipi-Clarke asked Parliament. “Is that the real intimidation here? Are our voices too loud for this house?”

Inside and outside Parliament, the haka has increasingly been welcomed as an important part of New Zealand life. The sacred chant can be a challenge to the viewer but is not violent.

As Māori language and culture have become part of mainstream New Zealand in recent years, haka appear in a range of cultural, somber and celebratory settings. They also have rung out in Parliament to welcome the passage of high-profile laws.

Some who decried the protest haka in Parliament cited its timing, with Maipi-Clarke beginning the chant as votes were being tallied and causing a brief suspension of proceedings. She has privately apologized for the disruption to Parliament's Speaker, she said Thursday.

A few lawmakers urged their peers to consider rewriting rules about what lawmakers could do in Parliament to recognize Māori cultural protocols as accepted forms of protest. One cited changes to allow breastfeeding in the debating chamber as evidence the institution had amended rules before.

Normally the parliamentary committee that decides on punishments for errant lawmakers is in agreement on what should happen to them. But panel members were sharply divided over the haka protest and the lengthy punishments were advanced only because the government has more legislators in Parliament than the opposition.

One party in the government bloc wanted even longer suspensions and had asked the committee if the Māori party lawmakers could be jailed. Most in opposition rejected any punishment beyond the one-day ban Maipi-Clarke already served.

Speaker Gerry Brownlee urged lawmakers last month to negotiate a consensus and ordered a free-ranging debate that would continue until all agreed to put the sanctions to a vote. But no such accord was reached after hours of occasionally emotional speeches in which opposition lawmakers accused the government of undermining democracy by passing such a severe punishment on its opponents.

While the bans were certain to pass, even as the debate began Thursday it remained unclear whether opposition lawmakers would filibuster to prevent the suspensions from reaching a vote. By evening, with no one's mind changed, all lawmakers agreed the debate should end.

Every government lawmaker voted for the punishments, while all opposition members voted against them.

Thursday's debate capped a fraught episode for race relations in New Zealand, beginning with the controversial bill that the Māori Party lawmakers opposed.

The measures would have rewritten principles in the country's founding document, a treaty between Māori tribal leaders and representatives of the British Crown signed at the time New Zealand was colonized.

The bill's authors were chagrined by moves from Parliament and the courts in recent decades to enshrine the Treaty of Waitangi's promises. Opponents warned of constitutional crisis if the law was passed and tens of thousands of people marched to Parliament last November to oppose it.

Despite growing recognition for the treaty, Māori remain disadvantaged on most social and economic metrics compared to non-Māori New Zealanders.

CORRECTS DATE TO NOV. 14, 2024, NOT MAY 15, 2025 - In this image from video provided by the New Zealand Parliament TV, lawmaker Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke performs a Māori haka to protest a proposed law during a session of Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand, on Nov. 14, 2024, (New Zealand Parliament TV via AP)

New Zealand lawmakers, Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, center at second row, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, center in front row, and Rawiri Waititi, bottom right, who received lengthy suspensions from Parliament for a protest haka they performed last November, watch as other legislators debate their proposed bans in Wellington, New Zealand Thursday, June 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Charlotte Graham-McLay)

In this image from video provided by New Zealand Parliament TV, lawmakers, from foreground left, Rawiri Waititi, Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer perform a Māori haka to protest a proposed law during a session of Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand, on Nov. 14, 2024, (New Zealand Parliament TV via AP)

In this image from video provided by New Zealand Parliament TV, lawmaker Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke tears papers as she performs a Māori haka to protest a proposed law during a session of Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand, on Nov. 14, 2024, (New Zealand Parliament TV via AP)

This image from May 15, 2025 video shows New Zealand lawmaker Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke performing a Māori haka to protest a proposed law in Parliament, in Wellington, New Zealand, (New Zealand Parliament TV via AP)

New Zealand lawmakers Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, top left, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, bottom left, and Rawiri Waititi, bottom right, watch as other legislators debate their proposed bans in parliament in Wellington on Thursday, June 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Charlotte Graham-McLay)

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The FBI said in a court document made public Monday that it had found no surveillance or other video of a Border Patrol agent shooting and wounding two people in a pickup truck during an immigration enforcement operation in Portland, Oregon, last week.

Agents told investigators that one of their colleagues opened fire Thursday after the driver put the truck in reverse and repeatedly slammed into an unoccupied car the agents had rented, smashing its headlights and knocking off its front bumper. The agents said they feared for their own safety and that of the public, the document said.

The FBI has interviewed four of the six agents on the scene, the document said. It did not identify the agent who fired the shots.

The shooting, which came one day after a federal agent shot and killed a driver in Minneapolis, prompted protests over federal agents’ aggressive tactics during immigration enforcement operations. The Department of Homeland Security has said the two people in the truck entered the U.S. illegally and were affiliated with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

None of the six agents was recording body camera footage, and investigators have uncovered no surveillance or other video footage of the shooting, FBI Special Agent Daniel Jeffreys wrote in an affidavit supporting aggravated assault and property damage charges against the driver, Luis David Nino-Moncada.

The truck drove away after the shooting, which occurred in the parking lot of a medical office building. Nino-Moncada called 911 after arriving at an apartment complex several minutes away. He was placed in FBI custody after being treated for a gunshot wound to the arm and abdomen.

During an initial appearance Monday afternoon in federal court in Portland, he wore a white sweatshirt and sweatpants and appeared to hold out his left arm gingerly at an angle. An interpreter translated the judge’s comments for him. The judge ordered that he remain in detention and scheduled a preliminary hearing for Wednesday.

The agent’s affidavit said that after being read his rights, Nino-Moncada “admitted to intentionally ramming the Border Patrol vehicle in an attempt to flee, and he stated that he knew they were immigration enforcement vehicles.”

His passenger, Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras, was hospitalized after being shot in the chest and on Monday was being held at a private immigration detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, according to an online detainee locator system maintained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Nino-Moncada and Zambrano-Contreras are Venezuela nationals and entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 and 2023, respectively, the Department of Homeland Security said. It identified Nino-Moncada as an associate of Tren de Aragua and Zambrano-Contreras as involved in a prostitution ring run by the gang.

“Anyone who crosses the red line of assaulting law enforcement will be met with the full force of this Justice Department,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said Monday in a news release announcing charges against Nino-Moncada. “This man — an illegal alien with ties to a foreign terrorist organization — should NEVER have been in our country to begin with, and we will ensure he NEVER walks free in America again.”

Oregon Federal Public Defender Fidel Cassino-DuCloux, whose office represents Nino-Moncada, did not immediately return messages from The Associated Press seeking comment. He told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the federal shooting of and the subsequent accusations against Nino-Moncada and his passenger follow "a well-worn playbook that the government has developed to justify the dangerous and unprofessional conduct of its agents.”

Portland Police Chief Bob Day confirmed last week that the pair had “some nexus” to the gang. Day said the two came to the attention of police during an investigation of a July shooting believed to have been carried out by gang members, but they were not identified as suspects.

Zambrano-Contreras was previously arrested for prostitution, Day said, and Nino-Moncada was present when a search warrant was served in that case.

Johnson reported from Seattle.

Law enforcement officials work the scene following reports that federal immigration officers shot and wounded people in Portland, Ore., Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

Law enforcement officials work the scene following reports that federal immigration officers shot and wounded people in Portland, Ore., Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)