London Remembered Christchurch with Tears and Anger
Credit to Author: Simon Childs| Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2019 13:27:51 +0000
“Ashraf Ali is a native of Fiji. He was known to be quiet, but he had a loud and infectious laugh and was known for his sneaky sense of humour.”
“Arif couldn’t wait to visit his son Ramiz in New Zealand. Arif and his wife left India as soon as they knew Ramiz was having a baby girl. They prayed together on Friday, and minutes later left the earth together.”
“Husna Ahmed, the 44-year-old from Bangladesh, was killed when she returned to Al Noor mosque to check on her husband Farid, who was bound to a wheelchair. She also had secured several children from harm.”
The names of all 51 victims of the massacre in Christchurch were read out in a vigil last night, held next to the headquarters of Rupert Murdoch’s News UK. To each victim was attached a little biography, or some details about their personality, ensuring that they were remembered as people with rich lives, rather than as statistics, or by the nature of their deaths.
It was turning dark as the names were read out. Candles were lit, and people wrote messages on a big white sheet. There was a prayer led by the Inclusive Mosque Initiative, followed by speeches. The massacre was situated in “a wider pattern of global and systemic anti-Muslim racism”, rather than being seen as an aberration, or something completely out of the blue.
They had come to remember, the organisers said, “but also to express our anger at the institutions conveying this vile anti-Muslim rhetoric in our society, from the mainstream media to incumbent political parties. Hateful speech whether in terrorist manifestos or media outlets cost lives.”
“Racism grows from seeds planted in the Sun,” read one banner at the vigil, adding in smaller print a list of other news outlets, ending in “etc”.
Since the terror attack in New Zealand, there have been calls for the media to have a look at itself. An employee of Sky News Australia even quit her job in the wake of the massacre after accusing its late night programming of giving airtime to people who peddle “misinformation which bordered on conspiracies”.
From the Mirror running the front-page headline “Angelic boy who grew into an evil far-right mass killer” (before changing it to “Little boy…”) and the Daily Mail speculating that the killer turned bad because he was bullied at school for being “chubby”, to BBC Newsnight choosing the day after the attack to interview the leader of the UK chapter of ethno-nationalist group Generation Identity, it’s clear that a period of introspection is needed before more harm is done.
@SimonChilds13 / @CBethell_Photo
This article originally appeared on VICE UK.