Two men were charged with assaulting New Zealand Prime Minister John Key yesterday as he arrived at a Maori meeting house for a ceremonial greeting on the eve of the country’s national day celebrations.
One man grabbed the prime minister around the chest and neck and another shouted, “Don’t believe you are coming on here, mate,” as Key got out of his car at the Te Tii Marae meeting house grounds in Waitangi in the Bay of Islands, news reports said.
Key’s police bodyguards arrested the men, one of whom was carrying a Maori flag. Key was reported to be shaken but unhurt.
PHOTO: EPA
“When I got out of the car a couple of young guys tried to thump me,” Key said, adding that Waitangi Day was about “dialogue and understanding each others’ points of view, not thumping each other.”
Key currently has one arm in a cast after breaking it in a fall last month while attending Lunar New Year celebrations.
The two men, 19 and 33, who said the prime minister was not doing enough for indigenous people, were remanded into custody until Monday when they are to appear in Kaikohe District Court on assault charges.
The exact cause of the attack was not clear. However, many Maori still consider that the country was stolen from them, and the Waitangi Day has become a flashpoint for Maori grievances. The day marks the 1840 treaty that guarantees Maori land rights after the arrival of British settlers.
The Te Tii Marae has long been a hotbed of Maori protest. Key’s predecessor, Helen Clark, refused to go there for the annual celebrations after being jostled and abused by demonstrators in 2004.
Key said earlier that he would go to the marae, a sacred and ceremonial place for Maoris, because he wanted to see today’s Waitangi Day as a day of unity and celebration.
“If they think it is going to stop me coming back next year and again and again they can think again because I am a lot of things but I am not a quitter,” he said. “They were out of step with what the majority of people think.”
A public holiday, Waitangi Day commemorates the signing of a treaty between Maori chiefs and representatives of the UK’s Queen Victoria at Waitangi on Feb. 6, 1840.
Maori militants have long complained that successive governments of the former UK colony have failed to honor the treaty’s commitments to preserve the rights and welfare of the nearly 600,000 indigenous people who comprise about 15 percent of New Zealand’s population.
Maori are among New Zealand’s poorest citizens, with low education and income levels, poor health and housing standards and higher numbers of unemployed. They make up more than half the country’s prison population.
Formal ceremonies are to be held today at Waitangi.
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