Day 43: The Christchurch Mosque Shootings
What it was like being in the city at the time
We arrived in Christchurch on our forty-second day of travelling around New Zealand. The Airbnb was amazing. The hosts were great; we could park the van for free; we had everything we needed to clean the van inside and out; breakfast was included; the shower was the best we’d had in a long time; everything was immaculate. We were made to feel right at home and we were looking forward to our week-long stay in the city. Thanks, Abram and Faith!
Around lunchtime the following day, we were meeting a couple who were interested in buying the van. They took it for a test drive and told us they’d let us know their decision after they’d had some time to mull it over.
It was when we got back from that meeting that we saw the news.
The day only got worse from that point. As more information became available, the city and the country began to realise the extent of the crisis.
We were three kilometres — a five-minute drive — away from the attack when it happened, and the only thing we saw and heard was a police car, presumably on its way to the mosque. A hundred others weren’t as fortunate; at the time of writing, fifty people have died and a further fifty are injured.
Not long after the attack, I stumbled across a short snippet of the clip that the shooter streamed live on Facebook. I didn’t really realise what it was and even whether it was real or not. It’s something that I won’t be able to unsee.
We stayed in for the rest of the day as advised and followed the story on the news.
We watched Jacinda address the nation and answer questions.
We watched the Police Commissioner address the nation and answer more questions.
We watched footage of parents, partners, friends, and family grieving for the ones they’d lost.
Unfortunately, these kinds of attacks happen far too frequently and although they’re always disgusting and devastating in equal measure, being so close to one when it happened made it seem all the more real. Being in the city at the time, we experienced the pain and the heartache that the Muslim community and the Kiwi community as a whole were going through in the aftermath of the attack.
In defiance of Jacinda Ardern’s urgings that the media not perpetuate, share, or give any oxygen to this act of violence, a number of UK tabloids including The Mail, The Sun, and The Mirror continued to do so. The same thing happened with sharing the name of the terrorist. Their desire for profit again outweighed the wishes of New Zealand’s justice department — sharing the name can make the prosecution’s job more difficult — and also put the attackers family at risk — they’ve been put under police protection in the meantime.
It’s precisely the immigration fearmongering and the Islamophobic rhetoric — that media outlets like The Daily Mail publish — that play a role in convincing terrorists who believe in white supremacy that they are justified in their beliefs and consequently, their actions.
The social media posts that are created by far-right groups — that are often based on nothing more than lies — that vilify immigrants or Muslims and portray them as a threat ultimately have the same effect: convincing people who hold extreme views that what they believe is okay.
It was on Facebook later that day that I came across other shared posts from these types of groups that were hailing the terrorist as a hero, even as children were lying dead or were in the hospital fighting for their lives. Comments that described these innocent human beings as nothing more than “mozzies.” Quite frankly, it was sickening to read. We all know that there are people who hold these beliefs, but it is something else entirely seeing them aired so proudly just hours after the massacre.
Fortunately — or unfortunately, depending on the perspective — social media is a double-edged sword. While there were cruel and racist posts popping up, they were far outweighed by the better side of humanity. New Zealand-based Facebook groups that I’m a part of were flooded with offers of food, shelter, company, protection, and more.
In the same way that Islamophobic groups hate the members of the entire Muslim religion based on the actions of a tiny minority, those hateful groups are themselves a tiny minority. Their repulsive message was all but lost in the surge of positivity and compassion that came from everywhere else.
It was an awful day, but New Zealanders as a whole came together to stand by their Muslim compatriots. A definite level of animosity towards Muslims and immigrants has spread across Western countries in recent years, but times like this just go to show that they are often the victims of extremism themselves.
We visited one of the memorials in the city a couple of days after the attacks and it was heartwarming to see just how many people were turning up to pay their respects to those whose lives were taken from them. It was extremely sad but it also acted as a stark reminder that although humans are capable of enacting incomprehensible acts of violence upon each other, those acts never produce the results they intend to. Instead of dividing the people of Christchurch and New Zealand, the bonds between people only became stronger.
Just days after the attacks, a wheelchair-bound man — whose wife was killed in the shootings when she ran back in to save him — has forgiven the killer. The video below is well worth watching…
In any fruit basket you get one or two bad fruit, so we should not hold onto that thought. We are one people and some people are trying to spread hate to create animosity between us.
Farid Ahmed
Here are some photos that I took from the memorial when we visited…
Kia Kaha is a Maori phrase that literally translates to Stay Strong. It became the iconic phrase used after the Christchurch earthquakes to support the community in their time of need and it has become so again after this tragedy.
Kia Kaha.
