Terrorist was a lone wolf, report finds
Complaints about abuse and racism were ignored by police before the March 15 terror attack, families told the royal commission. Jody O’callaghan reports.
Aterror attack survivor sets up three different beds at night so that if someone tried to kill them they would have a one in three chance of being shot.
‘‘If someone comes now, I can’t run away – my leg is gone,’’ the survivor told the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Terrorist Attack on Christchurch-mosques.
This is one example of the longterm-damage done to a large cohort of New Zealanders left to pick up the pieces following the terror attack on March 15, 2019.
Affected wha¯nau, survivors and witnesses shared their stories over months of hui (meetings) where they were encouraged to take the lead.
The royal commission ensured it always ‘‘kept the 51 shuhada (deceased) at the heart of our work’’.
‘‘Everyone we met with ... had experienced some form of psychological distress, such as anger, fear, stress, depression, anxiety, paranoia, and/or survivor’s guilt,’’ the report says.
Families were still grieving loved ones, were suffering long-term injuries and had lost jobs and businesses, and the commission recognised their ‘‘deep grief, trauma and distress’’.
Some survivors would never regain the full use of limbs, were living with ongoing pain and numbness from bullet fragments that remained in their bodies, or needed full-time care and purposebuilt facilities to help them live with their injuries.
They hoped the report would answer many residual questions.
Most could not understand how the terrorist was able to plan the attack without being detected.
They believed he must have had support from friends or online groups, and some reported hearing him talking to others during the attack.
But the commission was ‘‘satisfied the individual acted alone’’.
We felt ‘second rate’
The community’s experiences in New Zealand had been generally positive, but nearly everyone had personally suffered racist incidents or discrimination, particularly women in hijab.
‘‘One woman told us that she now wears a hooded sweatshirt when out in public to hide her hijab,’’ the report says.
Some incidents were reported to police, but were either not formally recorded or the victim felt police did not take the incident seriously.
For some it affected their trust in police, discouraging the reporting of further concerns because ‘‘we feel like we as a community are second rate’’.
The number of racist comments on socialmedia had increased over time, particularly in recent years.
Police paid insufficient attention to ‘‘multiple reports of suspicious behaviour in and around the mosques’’, representatives of both mosques targeted in the terror attack agreed.
The families believed the terrorist visited the Masjid An-nur and the Linwood Islamic Centre before the terrorist attack.
They described a man, whom they believed to have been the gunman, engaging in evasive conversation at the Masjid An-nur, including with the imam, and said his practices in the masjid, including during prayer time, suggested he was not a regular attendee.
Police said in April there was no evidence the shooter visited the mosque before the attack, but he did stop outside and send a drone over the area.
Families considered it a dereliction of the duty to protect, and a failure to acknowledge that Muslims had been subject to discrimination, scapegoating, and threats by white supremacists.
‘‘There are only so many times you want to go to someone if they give you that feeling of mistrust.’’
The commission was shown Youtube videos and Facebook pages expressing Islamophobic, racist or other hateful sentiments, which were extremely concerning to those reporting them.
‘‘These videos and pages were all from New Zealand-based people.’’
In some cases, police were notified of extreme content, but socialmedia platforms took little action to remove them.
Some people felt that, in comparison, websites containing Islamist extremist content was more readily taken down.
While some felt safer after the attacks, others felt less safe than they used to.
Concerns about safety had led some wha¯nau to feel the need for gated communities, increased safety and surveillance at their homes, and for police to be more active in building genuine relationships with Muslim communities.
Complaints about racism after the terror attack had been taken seriously, but they wanted online threats to be investigated, some said.
The commission put those concerns to police, who said they used the same assessment criteria regardless of the ideological source of the threat.
Police said they lacked a sophisticated understanding of the new iterations of the extreme Right-wing that emerged from about 2016.
Immediately after the attack
There were failures in the hours immediately after the attack, families said.
‘‘Victims are resigned to remembering the incident as a display of callous neglect and carelessness.’’
Many felt the victim identification process and the process for identifying people being treated in hospital had caused them ‘‘additional and unnecessary grief’’.
There was conflicting and inconsistent information from police and hospital staff in the first 24 hours after the attack.
Some waited outside hospital rooms for a family member only to find it was someone else and that their own loved one was still unaccounted for.
In one case, a wha¯nau member who had witnessed their loved one being killed was told by police and hospital staff not to lose hope, and that their loved one could be receiving treatment in another hospital.
‘‘This false hope caused considerable additional grief.’’
There was frustration with how long it took to move their loved ones from the scene, or for loved ones to be formally identified as deceased. One close family member even read about it in the news before police had notified them.
Others were frustrated they could not go inside the cordon to look for their loved ones. It meant many watched the livestream video to determine whether their loved one had been killed.
It also took a long time for those in hospital to be identified. They questioned whether it was to do with a lack of understanding about Muslim naming conventions and variations of spelling.
Ongoing suffering
Many survivors and witnesses still have trouble sleeping.
‘‘The experience of seeing people in their last moments of life was haunting. We heardmany examples of gruesome nightmares and visions that survivors are experiencing on a regular basis,’’ the commission said.
One person told the commission: ‘‘It’s better to stay awake, talking to people, rather than sleep and have nightmares.’’
Many children who witnessed the attacks had not been the same since.
‘‘Some children have displayed behavioural changes, do not want to attend school or continue to be traumatised by loud sounds,’’ the commission’s report said.
One parent said they felt they had lost their child, despite the child having physically survived the attack.
The families asked for practical support in their long-term recovery, including uninjured witnesses who felt unsupported without the help of third-party advocates.
Some relationships with spouses, wha¯nau and friends had been affected.
Deaths and illnesses suffered in the community since the attack had been attributed to the effects of the terrorist attack.
Agency failings
Support offered by non-muslims in the aftermath encouraged some to stay in New Zealand.
But there were frustrations with dealing with public sector agencies, where there was little cultural understanding of the more than 50 countries represented in the group.
‘‘Going on a year post the attacks, families are still waiting for adequate wrap-around services that are culturally and linguistically responsive and which fully addresses their complex needs.’’
Trauma was exacerbated when the lack of translators available meant other familymembers were required to interpret for them.
Some felt well-supported, but the commission was also told about how agencies had been unco-ordinated and inflexible, disempowering them and adding to their re-traumatisation.
‘‘A large number of victims feel aggrieved and hampered by their own individual day-to-day survival, whether financially or emotionally.’’
The lack of co-ordination between agencies meant many were forced to repeat their difficult story numerous times, ‘‘and some continue to do this more than 18 months on from the terrorist attack’’.
A few people felt ACC did not have enough flexibility for events such as this, ‘‘and it was not taking into account the complications caused by firearminjuries, such as retained bullet fragments and nerve damage’’. One person even felt forced to go back to work againstmedical advice.
The same was felt about social welfare under the Ministry of Social Development.
Some widows felt pressured to put their children into preschool so they could look for work.
‘‘One woman told us that she now wears a hooded sweatshirt when out in public to hide her hijab.’’
Royal commission report