Afghans hold vigil after bombing

"I'm grateful we now live in a place like New Zealand where we have peace, equality and freedom." Gul Agha Alizadah

For Christchurch’s Afghan community, waiting for terrorist attacks to hit their families and homeland is like waiting for aftershocks.

After Saturday’s suicide bombing in Afghanistan, which killed scores of people during a peaceful demonstration in Kabul, the Afghan community desperately checked in on their own family and friends.

University of Canterbury student Gul Agha Alizadah, 21, said his cousin had been at the demonstration earlier in the day, but left before the suicide bomber attack that killed 80 and left hun- dreds wounded.

‘‘We all have contacts back home,’’ said Alizadah, who moved to Christchurch in 2004, three years after his father was forced to flee the Taliban.

ISIS had claimed responsibility of the attack on the group of demonstrators, who were peacefully protesting for a power line to pass through their province.

‘‘We know it first-hand of what is going on. With a lot of us being former refugees, we have had to leave that sort of situation and I’m grateful we now live in a place like New Zealand where we have peace, equality and freedom.’’

Alizadah was among the second-generation Afghan refugees who led a candlelight vigil in Cathedral Square on Monday night to pay tribute to the victims and to remind the wider community about ‘‘what is going on in parts of the world’’.

‘‘It’s got to the stage where you just don’t know where the next attack will come from. It reminds me when we started having the earthquakes. . . you just didn’t know when the next one would be.’’

Canterbury Refugee Council youth co-ordinator Suhayla Asghari, 23, was in ‘‘total shock’’ when she learnt of the attack targeting fellow Hazaras, a minority in Afghanistan.

When she woke on Sunday morning, she channelled despair into organising the vigil.

‘‘If there is nothing else we can do, this is the least we can do. If all human beings stood up together, there would be no terrorist attacks.’’

PHOTO: STACY SQUIRES/FAIRFAX NZ Members of the Afghan community of Christchurch held a candle-light vigil in Cathedral Square for victims of the Kabul bombing.