Two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch have been terrorised on Friday when bullets were sprayed on worshippers attending Friday prayers. Witnesses told media that a man dressed in a military-style, camouflage outfit, and carrying an automatic rifle had entered Masjid Al Noor at about 1:45 p.m. and started randomly shooting people in the mosque.
The second shooting happened at a nearby mosque – Masjid Linwood. So far, police had four people – three men and one woman – in custody and several bombs were found following the shootings. The gunman is one of the four people arrested. All Christchurch schools and government buildings have been placed into lockdown.
At least 49 people had been killed – 41 at the Al Noor mosque, and 7 at Linwood mosque. At least 48 were wounded. The gunman broadcast live as he shot the victims, and posted the shocking killing spree on Facebook. The dreadful footage which was filmed with a GoPro shows people lying on the floor as the gunman shoots them with an automatic weapon – indiscriminately.
The situation has become so panicked that national carrier Air New Zealand cancelled at least 17 flights in and out of Christchurch, saying it couldn’t properly screen customers and their baggage following the shootings. The country’s security threat has also been raised from low to high – the second-highest level – as the 5-million populations were shocked by the bloody shooting.
Seen wearing helmet and bulletproof vest, the gunman retrieved two of at least six guns stored in his car and stormed into the mosque and began firing. Like video games, he stood over wounded men, calmly reloaded his gun, then shot them multiple times to make sure they were dead. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are struggling to halt the spread of the 17-minute horrific video.
After spending more than 2-minute inside the mosque pumping bullets at worshippers, the gunman then walks outside to the street. He continued shooting at people on the sidewalk. Thereafter he walked back into the mosque, before going back outside and shoots a woman. He then drove away, with the speakers blasting the song “Fire” by English rock band “The Crazy World of Arthur Brown”.
The gunman is believed to be Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year-old man born in Australia who had written a 74-page anti-immigrant manifesto published on his Facebook account, explaining his intentions. He wrote – “It is a terrorist attack.” Apparently, the white-supremacist claimed he wanted to take revenge for the “thousands of European lives lost to terror attacks”.
He reportedly came from a happy family, and became extreme after travelling to Pakistan and North Korea. Tarrant, who attended Grafton High School, New South Wales, Australia, before working as a personal trainer at a local gym. His former boss, gym manager Tracey Gray, said – “He was a very dedicated personal trainer. I think something must have changed in him during the years he spent travelling overseas.”
The terrorist justified his massacre – “To most of all show the invaders that our lands will never be their land, our homelands are our own and that, as long as a white man still lives, they will NEVER conquer our lands and they will never replace our people. To take revenge on the invaders for the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by foreign invaders in European lands throughout history.”
Based on the shooter’s manifesto shared on Twitter, he reveals of being inspired by other shooters, including Anders Breivik who killed 77 people in Oslo, Norway in 2011. And he was motivated by the death of Swedish schoolgirl Ebba Aker, who was killed in a terrorist attack in Stockholm in April 2017. He “disliked” Muslims and hated those who had converted to the religion, calling them “blood traitors”.
Describing himself as an “ordinary white man born in Australia to a working class, low income family”, the terrorist said he has no remorse over the attack and wished he could have killed more invaders and more traitors, clearly referring to Muslims in the country. The terrorist also revealed that he came to New Zealand only to plan and train for the attack.
In a brief press conference, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said “there is no place in New Zealand” for this kind of violence, noting that the country is home to the people who were targeted at the mosques. “This is one of New Zealand’s darkest days,” she said. She suggested that anti-immigrant sentiment as the possible motive for the attacks.
Only about 1% of New Zealand’s population are Muslim. However, according to Victoria University of Wellington research – “Muslims are the most rapidly growing religious group in New Zealand with the population increasing six-fold between 1991 and 2006.” Last year, PM Ardern announced the country would boost its annual refugee quota from 1,000 to 1,500 starting in 2020.
Mass shootings in New Zealand are incredibly rare. The deadliest in modern history occurred in the small town of Aramoana in 1990, when gunman David Gray shot and killed 13 people following a dispute with a neighbor. But according to the gunman, he deliberately chose New Zealand because of its location, to show that even the most remote parts of the world were not free of “mass immigration.”
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March 15th, 2019 by financetwitter
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