Christchurch Mosque Shooting

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Christchurch Mosque Shooting

About This Shock Site Maker: Brenton Tarrant Type: Shock video, mosque massacre livestream Date: March 15th, 2019

On March 15th, 2019, Christchurch Mosque Shooting occurred in a terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The attacks, carried out by a lone gunman who entered both mosques during Friday prayer, began at the Al Noor Mosque in the suburb of Riccarton at 1:40 pm and continued at the Linwood Islamic Centre at 1:52 pm. 51 people were killed, and 40 were injured.

The gunman, 28-year-old Brenton Harrison Tarrant from Grafton, New South Wales, Australia, was arrested after his vehicle was rammed by a police unit as he was driving to a third mosque in Ashburton. He was described in media reports as a white supremacist. He had live-streamed the first shooting on Facebook, and before the attack, had published an online manifesto; both the video and manifesto were subsequently banned in New Zealand and Australia. On 26 March 2020, he pleaded guilty to 51 murders, 40 attempted murders, and engaging in a terrorist act, and in August was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole – the first such sentence in New Zealand.

The attack was linked to an increase in white supremacy and alt-right extremism globally observed since about 2015. Politicians and world leaders condemned it, and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described it as "one of New Zealand's darkest days". The government established a royal commission into its security agencies in the wake of the shootings, which were the deadliest in modern New Zealand history and the worst ever committed by an Australian national. The commission submitted its report to the government on 26 November 2020, the details of which were made public on 7 December.

Content

Tarrant live-streamed for 17 minutes (before and during the first shooting, and between the two shootings) on Facebook Live, starting with the drive to the Al Noor mosque and ending as he drove away. Just before the shooting, he played several songs, including "Remove Kebab", a Serb nationalist and anti-Muslim song; and "The British Grenadiers", a traditional British military marching song. During the shooting, he continued to play "military music" from a portable speaker attached to a tactical vest he was wearing.

As Tarrant approached the mosque, a worshipper greeted him with "Hello, brother". Tarrant fired a Mossberg 930 semiautomatic shotgun nine times towards the front entrance from outside, killing the worshipper. He then dropped the shotgun and opened fire on people inside with an AR-15 style rifle, killing three other men near the entrance and dozens more inside a prayer hall; a strobe light attached to one of his weapons disoriented victims. Another worshipper charged at Tarrant but was shot and fatally wounded. This worshipper, Naeem Rashid, was posthumously awarded the Nishan-e-Shujaat and the New Zealand Cross, the highest awards of bravery in Pakistan and New Zealand respectively.

Tarrant fired at worshippers in the prayer hall from close range, shooting many multiple times. He then went outside, where he killed another man and retrieved another weapon from his car, before going to the mosque's car park and shooting several people there. He reentered the mosque and fired on already-wounded people in the prayer hall, then again went outside, where he killed a woman. He drove off about five minutes after arriving at the mosque, firing at people and cars through the windscreen and closed window of his own car. He said, on the livestream, that he had planned to set the mosque on fire; four modified petrol containers were later found in his car.

Victims

Forty-four people were killed at the Al Noor Mosque and seven at the Linwood Islamic Centre; almost all were male. Their ages ranged from three to 77 years old. Thirty-five others were injured at the Al Noor Mosque and five at Linwood.

Preparator

Brenton Harrison Tarrant (born 27 October 1990), a white Australian man, was 28 years old at the time of the shootings. He grew up in Grafton, New South Wales, where he attended Grafton High School. After Tarrant's parents separated when he was young, his mother's subsequent boyfriend abused her and the children. He worked as a personal trainer in his hometown from 2009 to 2011, quitting after an injury; in that time, he inherited A$457,000 from his father, who committed suicide in 2010. In 2015, he took a trip to Ukraine and came into contact with extreme right-wing groups.

At the time of the shootings, Tarrant had been living in Andersons Bay in Dunedin since 2017. He was a member of a South Otago gun club, where he practised shooting at its range. A neighbour described him as a friendly loner. In 2018, Tarrant was treated for eye and thigh injuries at Dunedin Hospital; he told doctors he had sustained the injuries while trying to dislodge an improperly chambered bullet from a gun. The doctors also treated him for steroid abuse, but never reported Tarrant's visit to the authorities, which would have resulted in police reassessing his fitness to hold a gun licence.

Aftermath

Governmental response

Police advised mosques to close temporarily, and sent officers to secure and patrol various sites in Christchurch. All Air New Zealand Link services departing from Christchurch Airport were cancelled as a precaution, due to the absence of security screening at the regional terminal. Security was increased at Parliament, and public tours of the buildings were cancelled. In Dunedin, the Police Armed Offenders Squad searched a house, later reported to have been rented by Tarrant, and cordoned off part of the surrounding street in Andersons Bay because Tarrant had indicated on social media that he had originally planned to target the Al Huda Mosque in that city.

For the first time in New Zealand history, the terrorism threat level was raised to high. Prime Minister Ardern called the incident an "act of extreme and unprecedented violence" on "one of New Zealand's darkest days". She described it as a "well-planned" terrorist attack and said she would render the person accused of the attacks "nameless" while urging the public to speak the victims' names instead. Ardern directed that flags on public buildings be flown at half-mast.

In May 2019, the NZ Transport Agency offered to replace any vehicle number plates with the prefix "GUN" on request.

In mid-October 2019, Ardern awarded bravery awards to the two police officers who apprehended Tarrant at the annual Police Association Conference in Wellington. Due to the legal proceedings against Tarrant at the time, the two officers had interim name suppression, but in December 2019, this was lifted.

On 1 September 2020, Prime Minister Ardern designated Tarrant as a terrorist entity, thereby freezing his assets and making it a criminal offence for anyone to support him financially.

Media response

For the three months following the shooting, almost 1,000 reports were published in major news outlets in New Zealand. Less than 10% of news reports published by major media outlets mentioned Tarrant's name. Susanna Every-Palmer, an academic psychiatrist, suggested that the media made a moral choice to deny Tarrant exposure and not sensationalise his views, deviating from how similar events internationally were covered in the media. The court required the media to pixelate Tarrant's face when covering the legal proceedings, thus, within New Zealand, he remained largely faceless and nameless. Instead, media coverage focused largely on the victims and their families.

In contrast, the media response in Australia was different, focusing on the extreme violence of the attack, as well as the attacker and his manifesto. For example, The Australian published an audio excerpt containing cries for help, and The Herald Sun wrote dramatic descriptions of victims being shot and used poetic devices to create more vivid imagery. Coverage of the victims was largely focused on physical horrors such as bloodshed, injuries, and graves being dug.

Other responses in New Zealand

Within an hour of the attack, all schools in the city were placed in "lockdown". A ministry report launched after the attacks said schools' handling of the events were varied: some schoolchildren in lockdown still had their mobile phones, and some were able to view the footage of the first attack online, while some schools had children "commando crawl" to the bathroom under teacher supervision. Student climate strikers at the global School Strike for the Climate rally in Cathedral Square, near the sites of the attacks, were advised by police either to seek refuge in public buildings or go home. The citywide lockdown lasted nearly three hours.

In response to security concerns, the University of Otago postponed its sesquicentennial street parade which had been scheduled for 16 March.

The third test cricket match between New Zealand and Bangladesh, scheduled to commence at Hagley Oval in Hagley Park on 16 March, was likewise cancelled due to security concerns. The Bangladesh team were planning to attend Friday prayer at the Al Noor Mosque and were moments from entering the building when the incident began. The players then fled on foot to Hagley Oval. Two days later, Canterbury withdrew from their match against Wellington in the Plunket Shield cricket tournament. Likewise, the Super Rugby match between the Crusaders, based in Christchurch, and Highlanders, based in Dunedin, due to be played the next day, was cancelled as "a mark of respect for the events". After the attacks, there were renewed calls to rename the Crusaders team, since its name derives from the medieval Crusades against Muslims.

Canadian rock singer-songwriter Bryan Adams and American thrash metal band Slayer both cancelled their concerts that were scheduled to be held in Christchurch on 17 March, two days after the shootings. The Polynesian cultural festival Polyfest was cancelled after the shootings, with security concerns cited as the reason. The music and cultural festival WOMAD went ahead in New Plymouth despite the attacks, with armed police stationed around the festival perimeter, inside the event, and outside artists' hotels.

Mosques around world became the focus of vigils, messages, and floral tributes. The mayor of Christchurch, Lianne Dalziel, encouraged people to lay flowers outside the city's Botanic Gardens. As a mark of sympathy and solidarity, school pupils and other groups performed haka and waiata to honour those killed in the attacks. Street gangs including the Mongrel Mob, Black Power, and the King Cobras sent members to mosques around the country to help protect them during prayer time.

One week after the attacks, an open-air Friday prayer service was held in Hagley Park. Broadcast nationally on radio and television, it was attended by 20,000 people, including Ardern, who said, "New Zealand mourns with you. We are one." The imam of the Al Noor Mosque thanked New Zealanders for their support and added, "We are broken-hearted but we are not broken." A national remembrance service was held on 29 March, a fortnight after the attacks.

Fundraisers and philanthropy

An online fundraiser on the fundraising website "Givealittle" started to support victims and their families had, as of August 2020, raised over NZ$10,903,966. Counting other fundraisers, a combined total of $8.4 million had been raised for the victims and their families (as of 20 March 2019). Prime Minister Ardern reiterated that those injured or killed in the shootings and their immediate families are covered by the country's accident-compensation scheme, ACC, which offers compensation for lost income and a $10,000 funeral grant, among other benefits.

In late June, it was reported that the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh had raised more than NZ$967,500 (US$650,000) through its New Zealand Islamophobia Attack Fund for the victims of the Christchurch mosque shootings. This amount included $60,000 raised by Tree of Life – Or L'Simcha Congregation. These funds will be donated to the Christchurch Foundation, a registered charity which has been receiving money to support victims of the Christchurch shootings. This philanthropy was inspired by local Muslim support for the Pittsburgh Jewish community following the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in late October 2018.

Video Distribution

Copies of the live-streamed video were reposted on many platforms and file-sharing websites, including Facebook, LiveLeak, and YouTube. Police, Muslim advocacy groups, and government agencies urged anyone who found the footage to take it down or report it. The New Zealand Office of Film and Literature Classification quickly classified the video as "objectionable", making it a criminal offence in the country to distribute, copy, or exhibit the video, with potential penalties of up to 14 years' imprisonment for an individual, or up to $100,000 in fines for a corporation.

Stuart Bender of Curtin University in Perth noted that the use of live video as an integral part of the attacks "makes [them] a form of 'performance crime' where the act of video recording and/or streaming the violence by the perpetrator is a central component of the violence itself, rather than being incidental."

Arrests and prosecutions

At least eight people in New Zealand have been arrested for possessing or sharing the video or manifesto; most of their names have been suppressed either to prevent threats against them or in support of freedom of expression online. The first was an 18-year-old man who was arrested and charged with inciting racial disharmony under the Human Rights Act on the same day as the shooting. Early news media reports identified him as an accomplice to the shooting, but the police have denied this.

On 20 March 2019, Philip Arps was indicted for sharing the video under the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993, he subsequently pleaded guilty to the charges. In June 2019, he was sentenced to 21 months' imprisonment and was released in January 2020, under the condition of him wearing a GPS electronic monitor. Arps had also expressed neo-Nazi views and sent letters advocating violence against New Zealand politicians. On 26 February 2020, another Christchurch man was jailed for nearly two years for doctoring footage of the shootings upon Arps' request, two days after the attacks.

Media outlets

Several media organisations in Australia and tabloid-news websites in the UK broadcast parts of the video, up to the point Tarrant entered the building, despite pleas from the New Zealand Police not to show it. Sky Television New Zealand temporarily stopped its syndication of Sky News Australia after that network showed the footage, and said it was working with Sky News Australia to prevent further displays of the video. At least three Internet service providers in New Zealand blocked access to 8chan and other sites related to the attacks; and they temporarily blocked other sites hosting the video such as 4chan, LiveLeak, and Mega until they comply with requests to take down copies of the video. The administrator of the online message board Kiwi Farms refused a New Zealand Police request for the data of users who made posts related to Tarrant and the attack.

Social media companies

Social media sites including Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter said they were working to remove the video from their platforms, and would also remove content posted in support of the attacks. According to Facebook, no complaints were made about the video until 12 minutes after the live-stream ended; the original video from Tarrant himself had been viewed fewer than 200 times before Facebook was notified of its content, and it had been viewed only 4,000 times before it was removed, which happened within minutes of notification. Facebook created a digital hash fingerprint to detect further uploads after the video had been propagated on other sites. The company said it had blocked 1.5 million uploads of the video. Reddit banned "subreddits" named "WatchPeopleDie" and "Gore" for glorifying the attacks. Microsoft proposed the establishment of industry-wide standards that would flag such content quickly, and a joint project to manage and control the spread of such information via social media.

Despite the networks' attempts to self-police, New Zealand officials and other world leaders have asked them to take responsibility for extremist content posted on their services. Australia introduced legislation that would fine content providers and potentially imprison their executives if they do not remove violent imagery of these types of attacks. The French Council of the Muslim Faith filed a lawsuit against Facebook and YouTube, accusing the companies of "broadcasting a message with violent content abetting terrorism, or of a nature likely to seriously violate human dignity and liable to be seen by a minor". Facebook has contested the lawsuit, saying, "Acts of terror and hate speech have no place on Facebook, and our thoughts are with the families of the victims and the entire community affected by this tragedy. We have taken many steps to remove this video from our platform, we are cooperating with the authorities".

On 15 May 2019, Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron co-hosted the Christchurch Call summit in Paris, which called for major technology companies to step up their efforts to combat violent extremism. The initiative had 53 state signatories and eight large tech companies.

Reactions

World leaders

Queen Elizabeth II, New Zealand's head of state, said she was "deeply saddened" by the attacks. Other politicians and world leaders also condemned the attacks, with some attributing them to rising Islamophobia. The prime minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, announced that the Pakistani emigrant who charged at Tarrant and died, would be posthumously honoured with a national award for his courage.

The president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, showed footage taken by Tarrant to his supporters at campaign rallies for upcoming local elections. The New Zealand and Australian governments, as well as Turkey's main opposition party, criticised his actions. President Donald Trump condemned the "horrible massacre". When asked after the attacks if he thought white nationalists were a growing threat around the world, Trump replied, "I don't really. I think it's a small group of people that have very, very serious problems. It's certainly a terrible thing."

Far-right

Two New Zealand-based anti-immigration groups, the Dominion Movement and the New Zealand National Front, condemned the attacks, distanced themselves from the perpetrator, and shut their websites down. Some in the broader far-right culture celebrated the attacks and "sanctified" Tarrant as a central figure. Tarrant's manifesto was translated and distributed in more than a dozen different languages with a number of supporters on 8chan making photo and video edits of the shooting. Some extremists were inspired by Tarrant, committing violent incidents and deadly attacks of their own, such as those in Poway, El Paso, and Bærum. The United Kingdom's domestic intelligence service, MI5, launched an inquiry into Tarrant's possible links to the British far-right.

Islamic groups

Ahmed Bhamji, chair of the largest mosque in New Zealand, spoke at a rally on 23 March in front of one thousand people. He claimed that Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence agency, was behind the attack. The claim has been widely described as an unfounded, antisemitic conspiracy theory. The chairman of the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand said that Bhamji's statement did not represent other New Zealand Muslims, but Bhamji defended his statements.

The attack was also condemned by the Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, Harun Khan, describing it as "the most deadly Islamophobic terrorist attack" observed recently. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called on Donald Trump, then U.S. president, to condemn the shootings. Speaking to reporters in Washington, D.C. Nihad Award, executive director of CAIR said: "You should condemn this, not only as a hate crime but as a white supremacist terrorist attack."

People and countries mentioned by Tarrant

Just before carrying out the attacks, Tarrant asked his audience to subscribe to YouTuber PewDiePie's channel in light of his then-ongoing rivalry with Indian channel T-Series. PewDiePie, real name Felix Kjellberg, has been accused of using far-right content in his videos. Kjellberg tweeted his condolences in reaction, saying he "felt absolutely sickened" to be mentioned by Tarrant. Kjellberg later called for the "subscribe to PewDiePie" movement to be discontinued, citing the attacks; "to have my name associated with something so unspeakably vile has affected me in more ways than I've let show."

During the attacks, Tarrant played the song "Fire" by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. In a Facebook post, singer Arthur Brown expressed "horror and sadness" at the use of his song during the attacks, and cancelled a planned instore appearance at Waterloo Records shortly after the shootings out of respect for the victims.

In China, internet users expressed outrage and anger at the shooter praising their country's government.

Links

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• https://web.archive.org/https://pomf2.lain.la/f/20hwo7my.mp4
• https://archive.ph/2022.12.22-123335/https://pomf2.lain.la/f/20hwo7my.mp4
• https://ghostarchive.org/search?term=https%3A//pomf2.lain.la/f/20hwo7my.mp4