TThe day before the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attack at my mosque, New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon sent an email to the families and survivors of the Christchurch massacre, including myself. On March 15, 2019, 51 Muslims were killed and 40 injured at Masjid Al Noor and Linwood Islamic Center during Friday prayers. In his memo Thursday, Mr. Luxon praised our strength, courage, compassion and dignity.
“The Government is committed to keeping New Zealanders safe,” he wrote. “We will continue to apply the lessons learned from these attacks to the way we keep New Zealand safe.”
These words make me angry. Those contradictions are confusing. Despite saying this, the Prime Minister and his government… Preparing to roll back some gun control reforms It was created in the aftermath of a mass shooting by a legally armed white supremacist. The government has not ruled out the possibility of making semi-automatic weapons more widely available.
Today I am going to Friday prayers at the mosque and it feels like March 15, 2019 is happening all over again. When you see people praying, you see the dead and the injured. I remember feeling like my life was in danger. I see bullets and smoke.
On that day five years ago, I was shot nine times with a semi-automatic gun. I want the Prime Minister to put himself in my shoes and imagine this happening to him and his wife. Perhaps he thinks that it’s in the past and he doesn’t need to be caught up in our suffering any longer.
I know that politicians only propose legal changes if they think the public will support them. If that’s true after just five years, it feels like something is wrong with this country. Since the attacks, New Zealand has been too nervous to have the difficult conversations that would help raise awareness about the problems we face and how to solve them. We need a public forum to discuss online extremism and racism on the streets, how it happens and how to prevent it. We need to talk more.
Questions still remain about what happened that day.Even some of the conclusions reached in the official investigation – that the terrorist was a lone wolf and did not tell anyone about his plans – have been called into question. This year’s new research It found an online post he made It has never come to light before. That requires further investigation.
Much remains to be done to prevent such atrocities from happening again. Jacinda Ardern understood our pain and responded honestly when she was Prime Minister, but I was also disappointed in her Labor government. They limped. In the four-and-a-half years before it was voted out, it did not strengthen laws against hate speech or regulate social media. The issue of compensation for victims was not resolved.
The Royal Commission of Inquiry into the attack made 44 recommendations, and the government said all work had started or been completed. But aside from gun reform, he’s hard-pressed to name one change since the attack that has made him feel safer. The same problem keeps happening over and over again. No one accepts responsibility. Our leaders don’t seem to care about us anymore. They try to make us so frustrated and tired that we think we’ll give up.
To be eligible for income support under New Zealand’s Disaster Compensation Scheme, you must obtain a new medical certificate every three months proving that you are still unable to work due to your PTSD. It’s as if they believe that in 3 months I might be okay and ready to go back to work. I’m a strong person, but this will stay with me for the rest of my life.
For a long time, I remembered holding someone’s hand under a pile of corpses as the attack continued. I couldn’t see the man I was holding, and I didn’t know if he was alive or dead. That was tough. A few months ago, four and a half years after the attack, I finally learned his identity. The man I was holding the hand of also got shot and survived the same way I did. All these years, he too has wondered who I am. When I met him, we said to each other: you were holding my hand ”
I want people to know that we can’t expect things to go back to normal again. We still have very tender feelings about it. We are still immature. This is different from other types of pain, such as the end of a relationship or a physical wound. I still can’t come to terms with what I witnessed. It will never go away.
I hope in 5 years I won’t have to worry about safety. I have never felt unsafe in New Zealand. Now I don’t leave the house unless it’s necessary. But I will continue. When I was playing walking soccer, when I met my soccer friends, the noise in my brain stopped and I didn’t feel any fear for an hour.
I believe that the reason I survived is because Allah left me something to do on this earth. And I still believe in this country. We can confront our biases and change. Understand each other better.In a recent list, New Zealand Ranked 4th safest country In the world. I think we should aim to be the safest.
