New Zealand on Friday witnessed a gruesome massacre believed to be carried out by one Australian immigrant. He shot dead 50 people and wounded about 40 others in two mosques in Christchurch. The question is not clear for an answer how a non-citizen could so easily buy weapons to engage in such acts of sick terrorism destroying lives and damaging the reputation of a unique country for peace and friendship.
Amazingly friendly people of New Zealand are now wrestling with the tragic crisis in a most kindly way. The possibility of such a human tragedy in peaceful New Zealand was unthinkable.
NZ has been a most sympathetic refuge for Muslims. Its people are most friendly and peaceful. The calm and compassion shown by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in response to the killing of 50 Muslims by a suspected white supremacist has burnished her claims to be a national leader. In the hours after the carnage in Christchurch on Friday left New Zealanders reeling, the 38-year-old Ardern struck all the right notes. She promptly labelled the worst peacetime mass killing in New Zealand as terrorism, and set about reassuring a nation that New Zealand will remain a friendly and welcoming country as before. A day after the attack, Ardern led a multi-party group to visit grieving families and Muslim community members. Wearing a black head scarf, she hugged relatives and let them set the pace and agenda as she listened and offered comfort. Ardern also promptly made promises for tightening gun laws, which may prove politically difficult, a priority for her government.
Not only the government, including police, was kind and sympathetic towards the families who lost the dear ones, the neighbours and the people in general were also helpful. They even offered their churches to use as mosques for now.
A Sydney-based think tank in its Global Terrorism Index 2018 said the “threat of far-right political terrorism was on the rise”. It cited statistics showing a significant increase in the number of attacks and fatalities over the preceding years.
“There were 66 deaths from terrorism caused by far-right groups and individuals from 113 attacks for the years from 2013 to 2017,” the report said. Of those, 17 deaths and 59 attacks occurred in 2017 alone. In Western Europe, there were 12 attacks in the UK, six in Sweden, and two each in Greece and France. In the US, there were 30 attacks in 2017 which resulted in 16 deaths.
The majority of the attacks were carried out by lone actors with “far-right, white nationalist or anti-Muslim beliefs”. Anti-Defamation League, a New York-based organisation which monitors anti-Semitism and other hate crimes, found that every terrorist murder in the USA last year was linked to far-right extremism.
At least 50 people were killed by an attacker connected to right-wing extremism last year, an increase of 35 percent from the previous year. It also reported that 71 percent of the extremist-related fatalities in the USA between 2008 and 2017 were committed by members of the far-right or white-supremacist movements. Islamist extremists were responsible for just 26 percent.
Data compiled by Global Terrorism Database, that has tabulated terrorist events around the world since 1970, showed that almost two-thirds of terror attacks in the US in 2017 were tied to racist, anti-Muslim, homophobic, anti-Semitic, fascist, anti-government, or xenophobic motivations.
But what can be a possible reason for these attacks? These have many streams. Many global leaders in their speeches have criticised the chilling tragedy by one belonging to white supremacy terrorist group. The reaction of the US President Trump was different. He did not condemn the act of terrorism because he himself is a supporter of white supremacy.
The roots of such terrorist activities go back many years to the times when any race or religion other than white or Christian was looked upon with disdain.
Groups like ISIS are used to further the centuries old bogeyman theory that all Muslims are bad-although they represent 0.0018 percent of all Muslims worldwide. But all terrorism practised in the name of whatever by whoever is anti-humanity committed by deranged ones not fit for civilised world and deserve our hateful condemnation.
We express our deep appreciation for the humanity of the government and the people of New Zealand. It is reassuring that, as a good example before the world, the people of New Zealand will not make their country who are terrorists but determined to preserve as a friendly country for which it has been enjoying high regard world-over. But we have to suggest that cross-border terrorism is a painful reality and New Zealand has to be more conscious of this truism.
