‘Grief does not have an expiry date’
As the fifth anniversary of the Christchurch mosque attacks is marked today, some March 15 families are still struggling with bureaucracy as they move forward with the pain of having lost loved ones. Charlie Mitchell reports.
Farah Talal doesn’t want to move on. Not even on the days when the pain stings, or when the void feels overwhelming. She wants to move forward. It has been five years, today, since her husband, Atta Elayyan, was martyred at the Masjid Al Noor.
Much has changed since then. Their daughter, Aya, will soon turn 7. She asks about her dad - where he’s gone, why he can’t pick her up from school - but the answer is unspeakable.
“She’s starting to understand the depths of the pain,” Talal said this week.
“I’ve never mentioned anything. I’ve never popped that bubble. I want to keep it for as long as I can, because I think it’s beautiful for children to have a sense of security.”
In the days that followed the terrorist attack, Talal - like other relatives of the 51 martyrs - had to climb through the fog of grief. After a period of mourning, she returned to her home country, Jordan, to focus on healing.
Even before the attack, she had dreamed of bringing her parents to live in New Zealand. Now, as a widowed single mother, she needs support more than ever.
But that dream - as with other parts of the March 15 response - has collided with cold reality.
Five years on, some of the March 15 families are struggling to steer through thick layers of bureaucracy. While many are grateful for the support they’ve received, some are falling through the cracks and feel powerless before the machinery of government.
Big, thorny issues remain unresolved. The solidarity shown five years ago appears, at least in some ways, to be running out of steam.
In one stark example, some March 15 widows will have welfare payments cut off today - under ACC, they automatically expire five years after a spouse’s death. No special accommodation was made.
It has played out in other administrative decisions, too. While Talal was in Jordan, she went through the process of trying to bring her family to Christchurch as permanent residents.
Visitor’s visa
The application was rejected in 2021. So, too, was a request for special direction - a process allowing the Minister of Immigration to bypass the immigration requirements.
Since her return, Talal’s father has joined her on a visitor’s visa, allowing him to stay for a set period. She cannot imagine his absence; he helps looks after Aya, and keeps them both anchored.
They applied for a visa extension, and she was afraid to open the emails, afraid they would contain a rejection.
“I am in pain because I lost Atta, but I’m also trying to focus on the blessings, and my family are a blessing,” she said.
“I am blessed to have the support that I need. But [the Government] can make it less challenging to prove that we actually need our immediate family to support us, because grief does not have an expiry date.”
Even Aya has offered to help; if only she could get on the phone and tell them “we need grandpa to stay”.
“I wish things were that simple,” Talal said, with a sigh. “But they’re not.”
Social catastrophe
The terrorist attack on March 15, 2019 was unique in its scope and cruelty. But it was also a complex social catastrophe, affecting a minority group with a wide range of specific needs.
Many of the martyrs were older men who provided for their families, and were leaders in the Muslim community. Their surviving widows and children, adrift with fear and grief, had to come to grips with what happened while navigating an unfamiliar world.
Nathan Smith was praying inside the Masjid Al Noor during the attack. He saw everything, but escaped without physical wounds.
The attack, he said, has changed the composition of the Christchurch Muslim community. Many of the elders are gone; a loss that has rippled down the generations.
“When we go to the mosque now, it's dead,” he said.
“That’s how I feel. A lot of the youngsters now haven’t got that leadership. There’s no teaching or explaining because we've lost the elderly.”
It was frustrating, then, that Talal and others struggled to bring their families to New Zealand. There was a pressing need for the wisdom of older Muslims to provide guidance and comfort.
It spoke to the bureaucratic struggles he and other survivors have experienced. Early on, the Government chose to filter the community’s ongoing welfare needs through existing programmes and agencies, with some wraparound support and oversight from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC).
The physically injured, and those who lost a loved one, had ACC as a primary contact. The mentally injured had the Ministry for Social Development (MSD). Victim Support had a role, and immigration was a different matter entirely. Some jumped between them, or had needs across multiple agencies.
It had the effect of carving up the community into silos. Even though they shared the same trauma, some would get what they needed and others would not, and it was often unclear why.
“We’d go to big meetings and they’d pull people who asked questions into rooms and say it was a private matter,” Smith said.
“Everyone had gone there for the same information, but they would never share
it because of confidentiality... People became bitter, and it destroyed the community.”
At the same time, they were dealing with the toll of severe stress. Smith is a scaffolder and isn’t afraid of much, but that changed after the attacks. He would hear a noise outside and hide under the bed; he would cower in the bathroom at 3am, petrified, unable to control himself.
This, he said, is part of the problem. The attacks were not a normal event; they were extraordinary in so many different ways, some of which will linger forever.
“I’d say 95% of us aren’t alright,” he said.
Marked by failures
In response to some of these issues, the March 15 Whānau Trust was formed to advocate for the victims’ families.
Raf Manji, a former Christchurch city councillor and an adviser to the trust, said the response had been marked by failures from the start.
Instead of coming up with a bespoke solution, recognising the unusualness and complexity of the event, the government took a more traditional route.
“The government did not take a victim-centred approach, they took a department-centred approach,” he said.
“That’s why a lot of the issues have happened. It might have looked for Wellington like there’s lots of money being poured in here, but it didn’t always get to the right place… you end up with a very fractured community.”
Nor were the agencies a natural fit. ACC was designed for no-fault accidents, not carefully planned terrorist attacks, yet it was tasked with providing ongoing welfare support despite eligibility requirements excluding some survivors.
Splitting roles between agencies made oversight difficult. There was no equivalent of a big white board with every family’s name on it, listing what they needed. No-one had the power to make decisions unilaterally across departments.
For Manji, in his role distributing funding, it was like assembling a puzzle.
“I had to pull stuff from ACC, I had to pull stuff from MSD, but they couldn’t talk to each other. Victim Support couldn’t talk to them. No-one over here can kind of see what's going on.
“Any normal person would have said ‘this doesn’t make any sense...’ They should have just appointed somebody and said, ‘right, you’re in charge of looking after the victims, and whatever you need, you get.’ They didn’t do that.”
A further sticking point has been the slow progress toward some recommendations made by the Royal Commission of Inquiry. When its report was released in December 2020, the government accepted in principle all 44 recommendations.
Some - such as forming a new national security agency, introducing hate-speech laws, and releasing a public reporting tool for suspicious behaviour - have made slow or stilted progress.
Of particular concern to the trust is Recommendation 27, directing officials to talk to affected families about “restorative justice”.
“We consider it critical that affected whānau, survivors and witnesses are engaged with in an empowering way – that is, they are given the opportunity to collaborate in the design and delivery of such processes,” the inquiry’s report said. “This may require special legislation.”
Three years later, that simply hadn’t happened, Manji said. Difficult questions around what restorative justice might look like - whether that be financial compensation, as Manji has proposed, or family-led forums to raise questions and have them answered - have not been explored.
“The way the government approached things, the community felt quite powerless,” Manji said.
“It’s the fifth anniversary and we’re still talking about this stuff. I remember CTV, I
“The government did not take a victim-centred approach, they took a department-centred approach... It might have looked for Wellington like there’s lots of money being poured in here, but it didn’t always get to the right place… you end up with a very fractured community.”
Raf Manji, adviser to the March 15
Whānau Trust
remember Pike River, and if we don’t get on top of this we’re going to be here in 10 years having the same conversations.”
‘Long journey’
Anniversaries don’t hold significance in Islam. The martyrs are in a better place, and remembered by their loved ones every day.
Commemorating the anniversary allows the wider community to reflect on the day’s significance, allowing it to hold a place for the many families still living through grief.
“This community is trying hard to rebuild itself, but it’s a very long journey and it’s not easy,” said Maha Galal, chair of the March 15 Whānau Trust. “It’s a long journey. We cannot say it’s been five years and we need to move on.”
A lingering concern was that the community needed to feel heard. On that front, there is a glimmer of hope. Earlier this week, some trust members met with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who they said was attentive and considerate.
The coronial inquest process had been well-received by the families, Galal said, and showed some institutions would fight for answers to their questions.
“Nothing can bring back those we lost on that day because of someone motivated by hatred,” she said. “But the changes we make now could save lives in the future. What happened to us could happen to any other community.
“We hope we can learn lessons and try to change the legislation and the system so people in the future will not have to go through what we went through.“
The anniversary also marks an opportunity to publicly remember the heroes who were lost, and the progress their families have made in their absence.
Rashid Omar lost his son Tariq in the attack. For weeks afterwards, Rashid’s daughter was afraid to get on the bus. His other son had planned to study engineering at university; instead, prompted by Tariq’s death, he studied philosophy, and recently graduated.
It has taken time for Rashid to come to terms with his son’s death. He had tried to convince himself he was OK - that he wasn’t overwhelmed with sadness.
Now, five years on, he feels fulfilled. There is no shame in grieving a lost child.
“I was the first one to give my son a bath and a shower when he was born, and I gave him the last body wash,” he said.
“I was the last one to leave the cemetery. I was the last one to leave him.”