THE DAY WE’LL NEVER FORGET
Former Christchurch city councillor Ali Jones says she will always remember her fear and disbelief on the day of the mosque shootings in her hometown. Since then, however, there has been an outpouring of love and support from the world. She says there has been an almost total focus on the victims rather than the perpetrator; something she believes wouldn’t have happened in any other country.
It was around 1.50pm on a Friday when we heard the first sirens. I was at the New Zealand College of Midwives, and we had just finished managing media interviews related to the measles outbreak in the city.
“There’s been a shooting,” someone in the hallway said, looking at their phone, “down at the Deans Avenue Mosque.”
We all immediately went online, but there was very little information. A banner on the local newspaper site said “Breaking News: Serious Incident at Mosque” – but nothing else. As the sirens grew in number and volume, it all felt so close. The mosque was four kilometres away but just over the park from where we were and, wow, those sirens were loud.
Eyewitnesses were being quoted on the radio as having seen bodies on the floor, though the host was quick to add that, “We don’t have official confirmation of that yet”. We heard more sirens – and then helicopters as well. It was like the earthquakes all over again.
About 10 minutes passed as we all tried to find out what was happening. Police were telling us it was a “serious incident”, but not much else. Another eyewitness on the radio was saying he had heard many gunshots – that the shooting seemed to go on for about 20 minutes.
“My daughter’s school is in lockdown,” said someone else as she came into the office, still looking down at her phone. That school was about two kilometres away from the mosque – about the same distance as our 16year- old son’s school. I texted him.
Me: “Tom. Are u ok? Police at Deans Ave”
Tom: “Yeah. There were shots outside the mosque on Deans Ave. Us and Girls High are in lockdown” Me: “U ok???”
Tom: “Yeah I’m good”
That was at 2.11pm.
Now we were hearing that people had been killed and injured. The radio was reporting eyewitnesses having seen “bodies on the ground”. We were hearing that people had died, but no numbers were being given. All of the schools were in lock- down and office workers in the CBD were being told to stay inside. That meant to me the shooter or shooters were still out there somewhere, and hadn’t been apprehended by police.
I waited until about 2.45pm and decided I could zoom home – about a four-minute drive, and in a different direction from the mosque. On the way there, I heard on the radio that a mosque in Linwood had been attacked, and the reporter believed there could be at least two shooters. It all seemed incredible to me. I thought this kind of thing only happened in places like America, where gun laws are lax and weapons are plentiful.
My husband was working on a building site that I would pass on the way home, so I stopped to make sure he knew what was happening, that our daughter was safe and our son’s school was in lock-down. Everyone on the site knew what was happening – much like me, they had been alerted by the sirens and helicopters and had checked out the situation online.
In times of stress I tend to want to nest, to make our home a refuge. It’s what I did after the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes and the thousands of aftershocks, and it was what I automatically wanted to do now. The supermarket is my usual go-to. It has all the things the family want for dinner, that Tom would like after he was allowed home, tired and hungry. And wine – a glass or two of wine always helps. In a daze, I listened to the three o’clock news on my phone. That was the first time I heard the potential number of victims.
“Up to 50 people are believed to have been killed or injured in shootings at mosques…” the newsreader said. My eyes filled with tears and felt like I was in a bubble. Another woman looked across at me, perplexed. “Could be up to 20 dead…” I mumbled. “The mosque shootings…” I trailed off.
I can’t really remember leaving the supermarket, but I went home with fresh bread, blue cheese and deli sliced ham. I texted our daughter, who is at Canterbury University. She was safe at her flat with friends.
A friend sent me a video at about 3.30pm, via Messenger – “Look at this”, he wrote. I clicked on it. A gunman walking into a mosque and … oh my God. I watched maybe five seconds, until I realised what it was and turned it off – but you can’t un-see that stuff. Later that night, my husband told me that the guys he was working with had watched it, but he’d refused to. I know a lot of kids have seen it too, and that really upsets me.
Throughout the afternoon, news reports ran updates on the number of people who had possibly been injured and killed; the dozens of ambulances heading to the hospital, and of course, the arrests. Had they caught them all? Were there more shooters out there? Were we safe now?
Tom was allowed home at around six o’clock that evening, along with all the Christchurch schoolkids who had been in lock-down all afternoon. When he got home, I gave him a big hug and asked him how he was. “Hungry,” he replied. “There was no food.”
Turns out it was a good thing that I had been to the supermarket.
As the days following the shootings fell away like autumn leaves from the city’s trees, we heard very little about the man arrested for the killings. Rather, the focus of the news and the general conversation was on the victims, the police, the emergency teams at the hospital, and the wider Muslim community.
From the police who responded within six minutes of the first 111 emergency call, to the officers who
arrested the alleged offender a mere 21 minutes after that call, to the surgeon who said he ‘saw’ his own children on the table in front of him as he worked that day – we have learned so much about so many in such a short time.
Fifty funerals, dozens of gatherings and vigils, hundreds of bouquets, and thousands of people all standing together. The terrorist wanted hate, and in doing so he generated love and unity.
Our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, has been acknowledged nationally and internationally as doing an extraordinary job in the aftermath of the shootings. In fact, much of what she has said has been extremely profound to me. I believe it is not said for the benefit of the news media or the voters – what she has said is genuine and shows incredible depth of empathy and humanity.
“There is no them and us – there is only us. We are one,” she has said about our ethnic diversity and tolerance in New Zealand. Of the perpetrator she said, “He is a terrorist, he is a criminal, he is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless.”
This was a message that she reiterated when visiting Cashmere High School a week after the shootings, telling the students, “Yes, there will be some interest in the terrorist who did this. But if I can make one request: Don’t say his name. Don’t dwell on who he is. Dwell on your students and friends, on the Muslim community.”
Cashmere High lost three current and former students in the massacre, and two family members of students. Another student was hospitalised after being injured.
“You may have chosen us, but we utterly reject and condemn you”, is another quote that resonated with so many of us, and made me want to cheer. I think I did quietly one night while watching her on TV.
As the country observed and participated in the outpouring of grief and support for our Muslim community, politicians were preparing to announce changes to New Zealand’s gun laws. We knew the announcement would be swift and significant, and we weren’t disappointed.
On March 21, six days after the terrorist attacks in Christchurch, Jacinda Ardern announced a ban on military style, semi-automatic (MSSA) guns and assault rifles. She also outlined immediate action to prevent stockpiling, and a buyback scheme that could cost between $100m and $200m.
There are currently about 250,000 registered firearms licence holders, and estimates of the number of guns in NZ range from 1.2 million to three million – around 15,000 of these guns were semi-automatic weapons. The reaction both here and overseas to the change in the law was immediate and overwhelmingly supportive.
From politician Bernie Sanders to talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, a big thumbs-up. Australian actor and comedian Magda Szubanski tweeted, “I believe I’ve coined a new term: to ‘ Ardern Up’ – meaning to show strength, decency, compassion and true leadership. Politicians, you really need to ‘Ardern Up’.”
Christchurch filmmaker Gerard Smyth documented how people coped in the aftermath of the 2011 February earthquake in When A City Falls. Now he is making Faces in the Flowers, a documentary that tells the story of how a city is grieving after the mosque shootings, with a focus on the faces he is filming as they visit the Wall of Flowers by Hagley Park, to see and add to the hundreds of bouquet that have been left for victims.
“People are bewildered,” he’s said. “People are turning inside themselves, trying to make sense of it.”
That’s a description I can absolutely relate to. In the days following March 15, just like in the days following the big quake in 2011, I would look at people’s faces – maybe at the local butcher or at the petrol station – and you know they know what you know; and you know they know you know. We all know. It’s how we are after a major event, and it affects everyone. To feel like that once in a lifetime is one thing, but to have the same feelings return is just unfathomable. The anxiety, and trying to rationalise something that just can’t be rationalised, exacerbated by hearing sirens and thump-thump of helicopters every day – I’m jumping again if I hear a loud noise or a truck shakes my office or the house – it’s déjà vu of the worst kind.
But we will get through this, together. And I am proud. Very proud. Proud of my children, proud of their friends, proud of my community, our Prime Minister, our politicians. I am in awe of our Muslim community and their strength. So thank you to all for teaching the world what it means to love and care.