Christchurch, New Zealand – Tens of thousands of New Zealanders have turned out for a mass vigil in Christchurch to mourn the 50 Muslims killed in the city during an attack on two mosques last week.
Nearly 40,000 people – equalling about four-fifths of the entirety of New Zealand’s Muslim population – attended the emotion-laden ceremony on Saturday evening in Christchurch’s Hagley Park, according to local officials.
The city’s Al Noor and Linwood mosques were the two places of worship targeted in the March 15 attack, which marked the worst mass shooting in New Zealand’s history and was branded a “terrorist attack” by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
The mass killing has prompted an outpouring of grief on an almost unprecedented scale in the historically peaceful Pacific nation, with remembrance events and ceremonies held repeatedly across the country since it took place.
‘May your spirits go to Aoraki’
Saturday’s vigil for the victims of the massacre – believed to have been carried out by 28-year-old Australian born Brenton Tarrant – included speeches, singing and silence from representatives of the Muslim community, indigenous Maori and others.
It started with an Islamic prayer, recited by Linwood mosque Imam Alabi Lateef Zirullah, followed by the reading out of the names of the 50 worshippers killed on March 15. Many in the crowd wept as each victim, starting with 3-year-old Mucaad Ibrahim, was announced.
“These people came here as refugees and migrants,” a Maori speaker said afterwards.
“May your spirits go to the top of Aoraki … and look down on us and give us peace and love,” he added, using the traditional Maori name for Mount Cook, New Zealand’s highest peak.
More than 40 of the victims, many of whom had arrived in New Zealand seeking refuge from instability and conflict elsewhere in the world, were buried in Christchurch’s New Park Cemetery earlier this week.
Survivor praises New Zealand’s ‘unity’
Mustafa Boztas, a 21-year-old survivor of the shootings at Al Noor, said Saturday’s ceremony and other events in recent days showed “New Zealand cares” about it’s minority Muslim community, which accounts for just over one percent of the country’s nearly five million people.
Earlier on Saturday, more than 1,000 people marched in a rally against racism in Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city, carrying “migrant lives matter” and “refugees welcome here” placards.
The rally came a day after Ardern and some 20,000 other New Zealanders attended a Muslim prayer ceremony in Hagley Park, near the Al Noor mosque. Ardern, who has won widespread praise from Muslims and non-Muslims for her response to the mosque shootings, wore a headscarf and quoted the Prophet Muhammad.
Before the ceremony, two minutes of silence was held nationwide and the call to prayer was broadcast on national television and radio stations.
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| Many non-Muslim women have worn headscarves in recent days as a show of solidarity with New Zealand’s Muslim community [Edgar Su/Reuters] |
“This shooting has united us together, as one,” Boztas, who is currently wheelchair-bound after being shot in his leg, told Al Jazeera from the front row of the vigil.
“It takes time to recover … [but] I’m glad to be here,” he added.
Fifty people were wounded in the March 15 attack, 24 of whom are still being treated in Christchurch hospital. Four people remain in critical condition, as does a four-year-old girl being treated in the North Island city of Auckland.
‘The world is watching what we do next’
Glenda Joy, whose Muslim boyfriend lost several friends in the March 15 attack, said life would “never be normal again” for those directly impacted by the shootings.
“The shock for him is wearing off and now he is just very quiet, he’s trying to process it and that is going to take a long time,” Joy, one of many non-Muslim women wearing a headscarf at Saturday’s vigil, told Al Jazeera.
She also said New Zealand needed greater “education” about Islam and called on the country to battle back “everyday racism” present in some pockets of society.
Though New Zealand is renowned for its perceived tolerance, experts have warned Muslims continue to face everyday racism, negative stereotyping, including in the media, and a lack of knowledge about their faith and its associated customs.
The country’s other minority communities, including the indigenous Maori population, also frequently report facing discrimination from parts of the majority-White population.
Sam Brosnahan, president of the New-Zealand based University of Canterbury’s student association, said New Zealanders needed to respond “long term” to the March 15 attack and use the wave of compassion it has unleashed across the country to put a permanent end to discrimination.
“The world has watched in wonder at how we have all responded,” he said.
“But the world is also watching what we do next, so let’s show them the Aotearoa the world needs,” he added, using the Maori name for New Zealand.
Ardern said on Sunday that a national remembrance service would be held on March 29 to honor the victims of the mosque killings.
“The service will be a chance to once again show that New Zealanders are compassionate, inclusive and diverse, and that we will protect those values,” she said in a statement.
‘Islamophobia kills’
Ardern and Muslim leaders have both called in recent days for the ending of racism and Islamophobia in New Zealand and across the globe.
Imam Gamal Fouda, prayer leader at the Al Noor mosque who was present during last week’s attack, told attendees at the ceremony in Christchurch on Friday that “Islamophobia kills” and the March 15 attacks had not “come overnight”.
“It [the attack] was the result of the anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim rhetoric of some political leaders, media agencies and others,” Fouda said.
“Last week’s event is proof and evidence to the entire world that terrorism has no colour, has no race, and has no religion,” he added.
“The rise of white supremacy and right-wing extremism is a great global threat to mankind and this must end now.”
Tarrant, a self-avowed white supremacist is scheduled to appear in court on April 5.
He was charged with one count of murder during an earlier hearing, on March 16, though police later admitted that the person in question had been wrongly declared dead.
He is expected to face more charges of murder during next month’s hearing, in which he is set to represent himself.
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