Christchurch Call undermined

Remember the Christchurch Call? In Paris on May 15, two months after 51 people were killed in attacks on two Christchurch mosques, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron joined other heads of state and technology company leaders to sign a well-intended declaration.

The call was in response to the alleged Christchurch shooter’s use of social media to livestream the attack. Tech companies were urged by Ardern and Macron to do more to regulate and limit the spread of hate and terror on the internet. ‘‘The dissemination of such content online has adverse impacts on the human rights of the victims, on our collective security and on people all over the world,’’ the document stated.

Those are high-minded aspirations, and the New Zealand media has mostly followed the spirit of Ardern’s initial response to the attack, and the thinking that led her to the Christchurch Call, by not naming the alleged shooter and instead honouring the experience of the victims. This has increasingly become media practice in the wake of mass shootings – the Dallas Morning News did not name the El Paso shooter on its front page this month.

These criminals seek notoriety. They hope to be remembered as martyrs whose words and deeds will inspire others.

It seems astonishing that the good intentions of the Christchurch Call were so easily undermined by failures in the Department of Corrections. Rather than a livestream or a coded post on a social media channel, the accused communicated with supporters by good old-fashioned snail mail. He sent a handwritten letter to a supporter in Russia

that was quickly shared on a website favoured by white supremacists. The letter reportedly described a visit to Russia and the influences on his ideology, including British fascist Oswald Mosley. It ended with an emotive call to likeminded people.

Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis is probably correct when he says that New Zealand has never had to manage a prisoner like this one before. But there are already well-established rules in place. Section 108 of the Corrections Act states that prison managers can withhold mail if it endangers the safety or welfare of any person, or promotes or encourages the commission of an offence. No-one disputes that prisoners should be allowed to send and receive mail, but an informed understanding of the alleged shooter’s ideology and the means by which it has been spread would have seen this letter fail the test. We do not need to change the rules in response to this mistake – we simply need to follow them.

Corrections’ actions reek of naivete and incompetence. Davis has confirmed that the alleged shooter has sent seven letters from prison. Two were sent to his mother. And the other five? Davis has said only that they were responses to unsolicited mail from around the world, but he could not say where they were sent.

The Christchurch Call, the reform of gun laws and the swift banning of the accused’s so-called manifesto all showed we had a Government willing to do more than idly offer thoughts and prayers after a mass shooting. Those responses were admirable, which only makes the slip-up by Corrections staff look more egregious.

We do not need to change the rules in response to this mistake – we simply need to follow them. Corrections’ actions reek of naivete and incompetence.