Australians are being urged to stay united following the horrific events in Sydney last week, reports the ABC’s Saturday Extra programme.

Five women and one man were killed in a mass stabbing at Bondi Junction last Saturday by a man with a history of mental illness, and a nine-month-old baby baby was among the eight people wounded.

The attacker was shot by a police officer and died at the scene.

Two days later at a church in Wakeley, a suburb in Western Sydney, controversial Assyrian Orthodox preacher Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel suffered lacerations to his head when he was attacked during a sermon that was being live-streamed. Nobody was killed.

Three other unrelated knife attacks took place in Sydney this week. Only the Wakely church attack was officially described as a “terror” attack although there had been widespread media speculation.

Those attacks coupled with anger and division caused by the war on Gaza as well as the polarising impact of the Voice referendum last year and Australians are seeing their sense of community and social cohesion challenged.

The ABC has spoken to a panel of analysts about the solutions to staying united and their comments were broadcast yesterday.

The panel included Khairiah A Rahman, an intercultural communications commentator from Auckland University of Technology who is also secretary of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) and a member of Muslim Media Watch.

The programme highlighted New Zealand’s experience in March 2019 when an Australian gunman entered two mosques in Christchurch and killed 51 people while they were praying.

Asked what her message had been to the New Zealand government through the Royal Commission established to look into the mass killing, Rahman replied:

“Overall, social cohesion when we think about it has got to do with the responsibility of all people and groups at all levels of society. So we can’t actually leave it to the government or the leaders, the Muslim leaders.

“At the end of the day, the media also had a hand in all of this and my research had to do with media representation of Islam and Muslims prior to the attack. One of the things I found was unfair reporting, so pretty much what you have experienced in your media reporting of Bondi.

“The route that extremists take from hate to mass murder is a proven one, and you need to report fairly and stay calm in a society.”

Interviewees:

Dr Jamal Rifi, Lebanese Muslim Community leader, Sydney

Tim Southphommasane, Australia’s former race discrimination officer

Khairiah A Rahman, intercultural communications researcher, Auckland University of Technology

Producer: Linda LoPresti

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Green Party co-leader James Shaw has compared the language of New Zealand First leader Winston Peters to former US president Donald Trump, saying it may be emboldening violence against candidates in Aotearoa NZ’s election campaign.

It comes after several candidates from different parties have spoken out about being targeted, including a home invasion on Te Pāti Māori’s youngest candidate, an assault on a Labour candidate, and another Labour candidate saying she has faced the “worst comments and vitriol” this campaign.

Te Pāti Māori candidate Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, whose home was ram raided and invaded, put the blame on what she called race-baiting from right-wing parties.

Peters told Newshub Nation that notion was wrong, and accused Te Pāti Māori of being a racist party.

But Shaw — who himself was assaulted in 2019 — suggested Peters could be empowering and emboldening extremists.

“It makes me really angry. Because political leaders, through the things we say create an air of permissiveness for that kind of extreme language and now physical violence to take place and it’s not too dissimilar to what we saw in the United States under Donald Trump,” he said.

“Half of the argument about Trump was whether he personally intervened to make those things happen and at one level it doesn’t matter, he created an atmosphere where these extremists felt empowered and emboldened to kind of enact their kind of crazy, racist, misogynist fantasies.

Lead to physical violence
“And that did lead to physical violence there and it’s leading to physical violence here too.”

However, Shaw told RNZ he was not surprised given the “misogynist and racist rhetoric”, which he said had been at least in part been given permission by political parties in this election campaign.

“[It] has created a situation where that kind of online hate and violent language is only one or two steps from actual acts of physical violence and now you’re starting to see those manifest. It is really worrying.

“I think all of us have a responsibility to try and create an atmosphere for democracy to take place, which is respectful, where people can have different opinions and for that to be okay.

“And I think that at the moment we’re seeing a rise in this kind of culture or language which is imported from overseas, that is not just unhelpful but downright dangerous.”

Te Pāti Māori said the break-in at Maipi-Clarke’s house was yet another example of political extremism in New Zealand.

Co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said some right-wing politicians were emboldening racist behaviour and needed to take responsibility.

‘Harmful inciting’
“We have seen a harmful inciting, a very harmful emboldening of extremism, this is an example of that.

“We’ve had it with our billboards – they’ve been so destroyed that we haven’t been able to afford to replace a lot of them now. It’s just been disgusting, the extent of racism.”

This year’s election had brought some of the worst abuse Te Pāti Māori had ever experienced, she said.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters claimed of Maipi-Clarke’s incident that “it couldn’t have been a home invasion” and he would answer more questions about the case when he knew all the facts.

“As for the first one [alleged assault on Labour’s Angela Roberts], violence of that sort is just not acceptable, full stop.”

He believed the time for candidates was worse was during the Rogernomics period of the 1980s.

“With respect, I can recall during the period of Rogernomics, there was a full scale fight going on inside the Labour Party convention.”

Minorities persecuted
Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins — who has vowed to call out racism — said a number of parties were deliberately trying to persecute minorities and it was reprehensible.

Assaulting candidates or threatening their safety “shows total contempt for the very principle of democracy”, he said.

He had made it clear to all Labour’s candidates that if they thought their physical safety might be at risk, they should not do that activity, Hipkins said.

“I think there has been more racism and misogyny in this election than we’ve seen in previous elections.”

Hipkins said he had respect for women and Māori who put themselves forward in elected office, but they should never have to put up with the level of abuse that they have had to in this campaign.

National Party leader Christopher Luxon told reporters his party had referred several incidents to the police too.

Luxon said he condemned threats and violence on political candidates, or their family and property, as well as all forms of racism.

Number of serious incidents
“It’s entirely wrong. We’ve had a number of serious incidents that we’ve referred to the police as well, over the course of this campaign.

“I think it’s important for all New Zealanders to understand that politicians are putting themselves forward, you may disagree with their politics, you may disagree with their policies, but we can disagree without being disagreeable in this country.”

He would not detail the complaints his party had made to police.

He said political leaders had a responsibility not to fearmonger during the campaign.

“Running fearmongering campaigns and negative campaigns just amps it up, and I think actually what we need to do is actually everyone needs to respect each other. We have differences of opinion about how to take the country forward, we are unique in New Zealand in that we can maintain our political civility, we don’t need to go down the pathway we’ve seen in other countries.

“It’s just about leadership, right, it’s about a leader modelling out the behaviour and treating people that they expect to treated.”

Asked if National had a hand in being responsible for fearmongering, he said it did not, and their campaign was positive and focused on what mattered most to New Zealanders.

Worry over online abuse
Shaw was worried for his candidates, having seen the online abuse they were subjected to.

“It’s vile, it is really extreme and it is stronger now than it has been in previous election campaigns and like I said I don’t think it takes much for a particularly unhinged individual from whacking their keyboard to whacking a person.”

But it was worse for female candidates and Māori, he said.

“Not just a little bit, not just an increment, but orders in magnitude, from what I’ve seen my colleagues be exposed to. It is just unhinged.”

There has been increased police participation in this campaign, Shaw said.

“Parliamentary security have got new protocols that we are observing. We have changed, for example, the way we campaign, the way we do public meetings, or when we’re out and about, we’re observing new security protocols that we haven’t had in previous years.”

Hipkins said where there might be additional risk, they have worked with Parliamentary Service on a cross-party basis to ensure there was additional support available for some MPs.

All parties have an interest in ensuring the election campaign was conducted safely, he said.

What has happened?
This week, Te Pāti Māori candidate Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke’s home was ram raided and invaded, with a threatening note left.

Police said they were investigating the burglary of a Huntly home, which was reported to them on Monday.

Te Pāti Māori issued a statement saying it was the third incident to take place at Maipi-Clarke’s home this week.

Also this week, Labour candidate for Taranaki-King Country Angela Roberts said she had laid a complaint with the police about being assaulted at an election debate in Inglewood.

Hipkins said he had great respect for Roberts, and he told her she could take any time off if she needed to, but she has chosen not to.

“She’s an incredibly staunch and energetic campaigner and I know it knocked the wind out of her sails a little bit, but I know that she’s bouncing back.”

On Thursday, Labour candidate for Northland Willow-Jean Prime told reporters she has faced the “worst comments and vitriol” in the seven campaigns she has been through – two in local government and five in central government.

“I was being shouted down every time I went to answer a question by supporters of other candidates primarily, there were not many of the general public in there,” she said of a Taxpayers Union debate in Kerikeri.

“Whenever I said a te reo Māori word, like puku, for full tummies, lunches in schools, I was shouted at.

“When I said Aotearoa, the crowd responded ‘It’s New Zealand!’. When I said rangatahi, ‘stop speaking that lanugage!’ that is racism coming from the audience, that’s not disagreeing with the gains I’m explaining that we’ve made in government.”

She said she noticed that type of “dog-whistling” in other candidate debates, but not whilst out and about with the general public.

“What is really worrying is that they feel so emboldened to be able to come out and say this stuff publicly, they don’t care that other people that might be in the audience, that might be listening or the impact that has on us as candidates.”

The New Zealand general election is on October 14, but early voting begins on October 2.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New Zealand’s Department of Corrections has revealed more details about the LynnMall terrorist’s violent behaviour while he was remanded in prison.

Thirty-two-year-old Ahamed Aathill Mohamed Samsudeen was shot dead by police after stabbing six people inside Countdown LynnMall in West Auckland.

He had spent almost three years on remand in prison and at the time of the attack had only been out for seven weeks.

He had been living at Masjid-e-Bilal in the Auckland suburb of Glen Eden.

The Department of Correction’s National Commissioner Rachel Leota said that while in prison Samsudeen was “non-compliant, with multiple incidents of threats and abuse toward staff”.

This included numerous times when he threw urine and faeces at staff as well as threatening violence and assaulting them.

In one instance at Mt Eden Prison, Corrections said he was unlocked for exercise but began arguing with staff and his behaviour escalated and he hit two officers.

Behaviour escalated again
“When being moved to the management unit his behaviour became escalated again, with threats made toward staff. He then assaulted staff again before force was used and he was secured in a cell in the management unit,” Leota said.

For his last year behind bars Samsudeen was moved to the maximum security Auckland Prison with oversight from the Persons of Extreme Risk Directorate.

This is the same unit set up to manage Christchurch mosque attacker Brenton Tarrant.

The directorate looks after offenders identified as presenting an extreme and ongoing risk of serious harm and/ or having the capability and intent to seriously threaten the safety of prisons and the community.

Because Corrections identified Samsudeen as having “potentially violent extremist views” it got advice from the Countering Violent Extremism forum as to how to best support and rehabilitate the prisoner.

“Attempts were made to provide him with mental health support while he was in prison, however, he refused to engage. He also refused to meet with a Corrections psychologist while in prison.”

The Countering Violent Extremism forum and Corrections then decided to contact the local Muslim community.

Did not engage
The department wanted him to meet with an imam and talk about his spiritual beliefs. This happened twice, but Corrections said he did not engage in a meaningful way.

Prior to Samsudeen’s release from prison the department, police and partner agencies created a plan to keep the community and staff safe from the extreme risk that his violent extremist ideology presented – this included where he might live on release.

The terrorist told Corrections he did not have family, friends or support people able to assist him and would require help, but that he had previously lived at a mosque, although was unwilling to consider it again.

Public housing was not available because of the current demand and Samsudeen eventually said he would consider a mosque.

Leota said Corrections met with police and the Masjid-e-Bilal manager who was told the context around his charges, his risk profile and the conditions he would have when released into the community.

The mosque’s manager told Corrections he would consider it, but wanted to meet Samsudeen first.

The pair met while he was in prison and the address was approved.

Regular communication
During the seven weeks Samsudeen was in the community, Corrections said it had regular communication with the manager at Masjid-e-Bilal and his lawyer.

The department had also started an application to the High Court for strengthened restrictions due to concerns about his escalating risk.

It also looked at charging him for the lack of engagement with both a private and Corrections psychologist, but was told it was not sufficient enough to be considered a breach of his conditions.

Leota said she was confident that Community Corrections staff were using every lawful avenue available to monitor, assess, mitigate, and manage his risk.

“He was a very, very difficult person to manage, and was increasingly openly hostile and abusive toward probation staff.

“Despite this, staff continued to work hard to engage him in his sentence, and attempt to have him participate in treatment and activities aimed at reducing his risk of violence, which he consistently refused.”

Leota said she believed Community Corrections’ contact with him exceeded the minimum level for someone subject to supervision and staff worked exceptionally hard to prevent the potential for serious harm to be caused by this person.

“They, and all of us, will always ask what more could have been done to prevent the horrific offending that occurred on Friday,” Leota said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

It took seven months for the New Zealand police to set up their first team for scanning the internet after the mosque attacks – but it was almost immediately in danger of being shut down.

An internal report released under the Official Information Act (OIA) said this was despite the team already proving its worth “many times over” in countering violent extremists.

The unit still does not have dedicated funding, despite a warning last July it risked being “turned off”.

This is revealed in 170 pages of OIA documents charting police intelligence shortcomings over the last decade, from pre-2011 extending through to mid-2020, and their attempts to overhaul the national system since 2018.

These show police had no dedicated team before 2019 to scan the internet for threats – what is called an OSINT team, for “Open Source Intelligence”.

“The OSINT team was stood up quickly last year with seconded staff to ensure… [an] appropriate emphasis on this new capability,” an internal report from July 2020 said.

In fact, police began the planning at the end of 2018, then “accelerated” it after the attacks, but it took till late October for the team to start, and training began in November 2019, a police statement to RNZ last week said.

This was all well after a January 2018 official assessment of the domestic terrorism threatscap said: “Open source reporting indicates the popularity of far right ideology has risen in the West since the early 2000s”.

When the police OSINT unit was finally set up, there was no guarantee it would last.

“This team is not permanent,” the July 2020 report said.

“This has meant uncertainty for staff and our intelligence customers.”

‘Seriously compromises’
The team had no dedicated budget, and lacked trained staff.

It also was still looking for tools to “quickly capture and categorise online intelligence elements”.

“The lack of a strong OSINT capability seriously compromises our intelligence collection posture, especially in major events,” said the report last July.

This is the sort of scanning that can pick up threats on 4chan or other extremist sites.

Despite the shortcomings, the internet team’s worth had already been proven “many times over in recent months, particularly in the counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism space”, the report said.

Three people have faced extremist charges in the last year or so.

‘Turned off’
An April 2019 report said police would begin recruiting for OSINT analytics and other specialists in April-May 2019.

Police had lacked a tool to search the dark web – where the truly egregious chat and trades take place on the internet – so bought one.

But last July’s report said “currently we run the risk” of OSINT “being turned off unless there is a dedicated budget”.

In a statement on Friday, police told RNZ: “The OSINT team has been funded as part of the overall allocation for intelligence since it was established.

“Maintaining this capability is a NZ Police priority, and dedicated funding is being sought as part of next year’s internal funding allocation process (note, this is funding from within Police’s existing baseline).

“Additional supplementary funding was also received in the last financial year to support the work of OSINT.”

They had known they needed the team, they said.

“Prior to March 15, New Zealand Police used some OSINT tools to support open source research of publicly available information and had identified the requirement to develop a dedicated capability.

“The development of this capability was accelerated by the events of March 15.”

‘9/11 moment’
The OIA documents show the OSINT intelligence weakness was not an isolated example.

These warned police needed to avoid “a ‘9/11’ moment” – a situation where police obtain information about a threat but do not understand it due to a failure to analyse how the dots join up, as happened to CIA and FBI before the terror attacks on New York in 2001.

The solution was to have “a complete intelligence picture”.

But the July 2020 report then laid out very clearly how police did not have this:

“Recent operational examples conclude there is no current ability to access all information in a timely and accurate manner,” it said.

“Currently there is no tool that can search across police holdings [databases] when undertaking analysis of investigations.

“We are still depending on manual searches.”

‘Locked down or invisible’
“Sources are either locked down or invisible to analysts. Our intelligence picture is consequently incomplete.”

The 31-page, July 2020 report detailed the police’s ‘Transforming Intelligence’ programme, dubbed TI21, that was begun in December 2018 and meant to be complete by this December.

It indicated the right technology would not be in place – or in some cases even identified – for 6-18 months.

As things stood, “there are many single points of failure in our intelligence system”, the report said.

Threat information was broken up into silos, without a centralised document management system or powerful enough analytic and geospatial software to connect the threats.

A section of the 2020 report detailing problems within the police’s High-Risk Targeting Teams has been mostly blanked out.

The OIA documents describe what is and is not working, especially when it comes to national security and counterterrorism, but also around intelligence on gang and drug crime, family violence, combating child sex offending, and the like, at a point many months after both the mosque attacks and the beginning of the system overhaul.

The Royal Commission of Inquiry into the mosque attacks in late 2020 called police national security intelligence capabilities “degraded” – not just once but six times.

It showed weaknesses elsewhere when it came to OSINT: The Security Intelligence Service had just one fulltime officer doing Open Source Internet searching, and the Government Communications Security Bureau had few resources for this, too. It was not till June 2019 that the Government’s Counter-Terrorism Coordination Committee suggested “leveraging open-source intelligence capability”.

Police, unlike SIS, did not do an internal review of how they had performed in the lead-up to March 15.

They did get a review done of how they did 48 hours after the attacks, which praised their efforts.

Tools missing

Among the key systems police have been lacking are:

• A national security portal “to search across police holdings”
• A national security person-of-interest tool
• A child sex offender management tool
• Cybercrime reporting systems – a “strategic demand” that “police intelligence is unable to effectively report on it”

Police in a statement said they had now “achieved a number of milestones”.

Key among them was introducing a National Security Portal to manage persons of interest.

Also, they now had standardised ways of improving quality and a National Intelligence Operating Model to ensure a consistent approach.

“The OSINT team, a new case management tool and “refined intelligence support to major events… has increased the capability, capacity and resilience of Police Intelligence to reduce and respond to counter-terrorism risks”.

The “Transforming Intelligence” documents refer repeatedly to having three new Target Development Centres set up in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

However, this was jettisoned last year, while the overhaul did stick with introducing Precision Targeting Teams in August 2018, police said.

These teams aim to target “our most prolific offenders” early on “to reduce crimes such as burglary, robbery and other violent and high-volume offending”.

Pressure on
Police are plugging the holes in national intelligence while under pressure.

The volume of leads coming in had increased “considerably” since March 2019, the July 2020 report said.

“This has put increased strain on our people to manage cases of concern.”

The intelligence weaknesses have persisted under four police commissioners since the national intelligence system was set up in 2008.

Intelligence staff have been quitting at three times the average rate in the public sector, and the documents laid out urgent plans to improve career pathways and value the likes of field officers and collections staff more.

The July 2020 report said demand on workers at the Integrated Targeting and Operations Centre was “unsustainable”.

Deep-seated cultural problems across the police were recently uncovered by RNZ’s Ben Strang, whose reporting triggered an official investigation that found 40 percent of officers had been bullied or harassed.

The Transforming Intelligence 2021 programme covers 10 areas: Intelligence Operating Model, National Security, Open Source, Child Protection Offender Register, Critical Command Information, Collections, Intelligence Systems, Performance, Training and Intelligence Support to major events.

There is a stark contrast between how the police leadership described their intelligence systems, and what other documents state.

Timeline

2003

– The Government Audit Office underscores the importance of national security planning

– Police attempt to develop a national security plan deferred due to other priorities

2006

– Police appoint first national manager of intelligence – before this it was led at district level

2008

– New national intelligence model introduced, that lasts till 2019

2011

– March: Police national security intelligence review finds many gaps and recommends a slew of fixes

2014

– Police assess rightwing extremist threat nationally, the last time this happens before the end of 2018

2015

– Sept: Police review finds 2011’s shortcomings remain, recommends changes

– Police liaison officers begin work with SIS and GCSB

2018

– August: Precision Targeting Teams begin

– Nov/Dec: Police launch Transforming Intelligence overhaul, while praising the old model

2019

– March: Mosque terrorism attacks

– April: A report ramping up the intelligence overhaul celebrates the old model’s effectiveness

– Sept: Police approve high-level operating model for intelligence

– Oct: Police set up dedicated internet scanning team for first time

– Internet scanning team identifies counterterrorism threats

– Dec: Aim to set up professional development structure to reduce Intelligence staff attrition by 15 percent

2020

– National Intelligence Centre leadership team appointed

– Feb: Intelligence training plan in place; national workshops

– July: Stocktake of Intelligence overhaul finds many gaps

– Dec 2020-Dec 2021: Aim to identify new intelligence gathering and analysing tech, including a police-wide system

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Every four years on January 20, the US exercises a key tenant of democratic government: the peaceful transfer of power. This year, the scene looks a bit different.

If the last US presidential inauguration in 2017 debuted the phrase “alternative facts”, the 2021 inauguration represents their deadly consequences.

After conspiracy-theory inspired violence laid siege to the Capitol Building where lawmakers met to confirm the election results, more than 20,000 troops now patrol the US Capitol to ensure the transition goes ahead smoothly against calls for insurrection.

The threat of disinformation and alternative facts has taken many forms over the past several years, from conspiracy theories about climate change to covid-19, culminating in a 2019 FBI memo warning about the threat of “conspiracy-theory driven domestic extremists”, particularly around elections.

It follows years of warnings from national security practitioners and scholars about the growing risk of domestic extremists. More recently, as reported by the FBI and ASIO, these groups have used the global pandemic to recruit and radicalise new members, seizing on the isolation and uncertainty to offer a sense of community and clarity of purpose.

The conspiracy theory that drove the violence at the Capitol Building has been building for the past four years. During this time, US President Donald Trump has decried any contest he does not win as fraudulent.

More recently, he has called his supporters to action, warning that there will be “no God” and “no country” without him as president. Though the attack only lasted a few hours, the consequences will linger for years.

As Joe Biden prepares to become the 46th president of the United States, managing the fallout from it will be one of his gravest challenges.

The long-standing threat of right-wing extremists
This threat appears to have been taken seriously by long-standing national security experts and scholars. But action against it was hindered under the Trump administration.

Starting in 2017, federal funding for tackling white nationalist and other far right extremist activity was cut, including university research and non-profit deradicalisation organisations such as Life After Hate

Last year, a whistleblower report from the Department of Homeland Security alleged senior intelligence officials were instructed to modify intelligence assessments to match Trump’s rhetoric and modify the section on White Supremacy in a manner that made the threat appear less severe.

During 2020, diverse groups stormed state legislative buildings to evade covid-19 mitigation efforts and intimidate lawmakers at the behest of Trump.

Despite these public signs of growing extremist violence, even some lawmakers appeared to be caught unaware by the Capitol insurrection. In an opinion piece just after the event, Republican Senator Susan Collins wrote she first assumed the attack was coming from Iran.

Trump has demonstrated that conspiracy theories can drive electoral and fundraising success. Having started his political campaign with the “birther” conspiracy theory, challenging the citizenship and eligibility of American-born Barack Obama, Trump also cast shadows over his Republican rivals, including Ted Cruz, by accusing Cruz’s father of being linked to the man who killed JFK.

Similarly, Trump will end his administration on a conspiracy theory, one that has already cost five lives. Despite recent backlash from business leaders in America, Trump fundraised more than $200 million after election night on the basis of his refusal to concede defeat.

Recent Congressional races have further demonstrated the success of Trump’s template. Holocaust-deniers in three states ran for office in 2018 (all as Republicans). Two of the newest members of Congress are members of QAnon, the inheritor of the “pizzagate” conspiracy theory, in which all who oppose Trump are deep state members of a international child sex trafficking cabal.

The challenge ahead for Biden
Where then, does this leave policy-making on national and global issues that require sober reflection and good judgement?

Alternative facts have no place in good governance. Their purpose is only to destroy and divide. This is why disinformation has been pursued so aggressively by hostile foreign actors against the US, with Russian active measures detailed extensively by the Republican chaired Senate Intelligence Committee reports.

Voter fraud, one of the key narratives of Russian efforts in election interference in 2016, has now become mainstreamed in the Republican base, with nearly half of respondents expressing doubt about Biden’s win.

Public assurances by Republican secretaries of state have had limited impact, culminating in Trump’s taped conversation in which he asks the Georgia Secretary of state to “find” 11,000 votes for him (to win).

Joe Biden should focus on repairing Americans’ frayed trust in institutions and rehabilitate America’s battered reputation. At the same time, he should lead with science and fact, most immediately in tackling the nation’s covid crisis.

Where conspiracy theories go hand in hand with corruption (such as Trump soliciting an election official to tamper with results), state authorities should pursue charges. Where disinformation has proven lucrative, tools should be explored to remove financial rewards.

For instance, non-profit organisations that participated in or fundraised what the Joint Chiefs of Staff declared as “sedition and insurrection” could be stripped of protective tax status.

Some of these remedies lie firmly with Congress. Impeachment proceedings are already underway which could remove Trump’s ability to run in 2024. The 14th Amendment could be applied to expel or bar current office holders who participated in the insurrection from running for election again.

Trump has recently condemned the violence done in his name. But he has not disavowed the rationale for it. His supporters within the Republican base, media and elected ranks continue to repeat his conspiracy theories on Fox “entertainment” shows, on AM radio, and now the halls of Congress.

More than 100 US Representatives voted against certifying the ballots on which they themselves were elected.

The next few years will see investigations, commissions and reports detailing the failures that led up to the Capitol attacks. Any delay in accountability could see even more lives lost to conspiracy theories and those who profit from them.

By Dr Jennifer S. Hunt, lecturer in national security, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is winning praise for her campaign to clean up the internet, and in particular for her announcement of the “Christchurch Call” Summit to be held with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris next month. And if they can come up with some meaningful and effective ways to make the internet less available to terrorists and violent extremists then this will be a major accomplishment.

Regulating the internet is notoriously difficult, however. It might be one of the big issues of our time, but no one seems to have the answers for how to do it in a way that will be both effective and satisfactory. There’s a good chance the whole episode will amount to yet another talkfest of platitudes and politicking. This is certainly the view of Newstalk ZB’s Barry Soper, who forecasts an outcome of “full, frank and meaningless words” – see: Irony to New Zealand and France’s terrorism summit next month.

Not only this, Soper suggests that the motivations for the summit are opportunistic: “The idea no doubt came from the French President Emmanuel Macron who’s been haemorrhaging in the opinion polls at home… The international voice of reason and compassion Jacinda Ardern would have immediately come to mind and the pledge she’s now calling the Christchurch Call was born.”

The Herald’s political editor takes umbrage at such scepticism, declaring this type of view out of place: “They are the sort of critic who would never start anything unless success were guaranteed. The suggestion that Ardern do nothing after the murders of 50 people in New Zealand were live-streamed and shared on social media is to deny human nature and New Zealand’s own instincts” – see: Jacinda Ardern is knee-deep in planning joint initiative with France.

Audrey Young predicts real change will emerge from a difficult area of reform: “It won’t eliminate the evils that lurk within social media. But it won’t be nothing either.” She sees it as a positive sign that Ardern and Macron are being so inclusive in their approach: “Ardern’s natural instincts are to collaborate as broadly as possible… That factor alone makes it important to get co-operation from social media themselves, rather than using heavy-handed regulation or attempting to bully the corporates into participation.”

However, as with other international agreements, the more people you bring to the table, the greater the likelihood of a watered-down outcome. And this is the point made in Tom Pullar-Strecker’s article, The devil will be in the detail of the ‘Christchurch Call’. This reports Colin Gavaghan, director of the Centre for Law and Policy in Emerging Technologies at Otago University, as cautioning against going too broadly: “The risk, he argues, is you can end up with texts that are pitched at such a level that ‘no-one could disagree with them’ but which don’t tend to mean anything in practice.”

Pullar-Strecker’s article emphasises the uniqueness of this summit, as normally the outcomes are relatively pre-determined, with a text negotiated in advance for participants to sign up to. This won’t necessarily happen in this instance.

The success or otherwise of the initiative will be determined, it seems, by how ambitious the internet regulation campaign ends up being. Ardern, herself, is very keen to see a narrow focus for the regulations, which deal specifically with the online sharing of terrorist acts. Ardern says: “This is not about freedom of expression. This is about preventing violence and extremism and terrorism online”.

This approach is easier than going down the route of attempting to take on “hate speech” and extremist politics in general. And that is also the advice of Paul Brislen: “There are a number of things they should be looking at. The trick will be narrowing it down to something that is achievable because there are so many things that are getting out of control with the world of social media that need a regulator to step in… Trying to stay focused is going to be critical” – see Thomas Coughlan’s Speculation rife on value of ‘Christchurch Call’.

But even a focus just on violence and terrorism could be incredibly difficult. The same article makes this point: “Victoria University of Wellington media studies lecturer Peter Thompson said just defining what terrorism was presented difficulties. ‘It’s not a straightforward thing to decide what is and isn’t terrorism: live-streaming mass murder, well yes, but how do you decide which groups are considered terrorists or not?’ he said.”

Rick Shera from Netsafe and Internet NZ is also pleased that the Government is focused on dealing to the narrower and less contentious issue of terrorism: “I’m glad we are sticking to violent extremism and terrorism. Once you go into fake news, damage to democracy and other forms of online harm it becomes very difficult. Freedom of speech and the US position on that make it hard to make gains, so if the target is narrow it may be easier” – see Colin Peacock’s Does social media reform have the law on its side?

In this article by Peacock, the major issue of the United States is brought into the debate. After all, the US tech companies are based there, and benefit from that country’s very strong ethos and constitutional protections of political freedoms. This is lamented by some participants in the debate. For example, Internet NZ’s chief executive Jordan Carter is quoted, saying “The nature of their black and white constitutional protections on free speech in the US – and the current state of their politics – don’t leave me with any confidence that they will be able to drive change in this area”.

Clearly, the strong US resistance to censorship and over-regulation of speech means that Ardern’s “Christchurch Call” could run into problems. And it’s not just the US Constitution that might stymie reform, as explained by tech expert and journalist Bill Bennett, in Peacock’s article: “The problem with the US is they have two things that stop them from acting. One is the First Amendment which is all about free speech and not censoring people. The second thing is something called Section 230 that gives social media companies an out. They are not responsible for things posted on their site”.

There are, however, some major debates going on in the US about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. And the above article reports internet law academic Eric Goldman suggesting that any subsequent changes from that debate might be crucial: “He thinks cutbacks of Section 230’s scope do pose serious risks to free speech online. So is it the outcome of this behind-the-scenes legal argument playing out in the US right now – and not a headline-making political summit in France – which will really determine whether internet giants take responsibility for extreme content on their platforms?”

For the best discussion of these political freedom issues, see Gordon Campbell’s column, On Ardern and Macron’s campaign against violent social media content. In this, Campbell explains what might be coming after two decades of self-regulation of the internet, given the strong political appetite for serious regulation.

He worries that Ardern and co will end up going beyond just the clampdown on terrorist and extremist violence, and might produce something that impacts on general political activity: “Once you get beyond those low hanging fruit….it becomes difficult to censor online content without doing real damage to freedom of expression, and to genuine political dissent. It would be unfortunate if the best friends of the Ardern/Macron initiatives turn out to be the tyrants in countries that would (a) dearly love to see tech companies forced to hand over the keys to encryption, and (b) would readily embrace further restrictions being put on the online content their dissidents are allowed to post.”

He also believes regulation could ultimately prove unpopular, which is why Facebook and the like want it to be carried out by governments, “presumably, so that the politicians then get to wear the backlash once people realise the full implications of allowing the state to define and police the content deemed acceptable on the Net.”

Mostly likely, there will be simple progress made in Paris, such as tightening up of Facebook Live. The big question will be whether online providers end up having to do more vetting of content before it’s published, which would be of huge consequence, and what Campbell calls a “disastrous outcome”.

And he gives the example of his own media platform, Scoop: “Every year, Scoop also publishes close on a million New Zealand press releases issued by all and sundry. In that respect, Scoop functions as a national community noticeboard. It rejects press releases that contain libels and/or socially inflammatory hate speech. Imagine though, if Scoop was required to pre-check every one of those press releases for accuracy, balance and for whether or not they might hurt the feelings of people in public office. It would not be remotely practical or affordable for Scoop to do so – and its efforts would be gamed by those with malice in mind against the organisations issuing the press releases in question.”

Similarly, Internet NZ’s Jordan Carter suggests that relying on artificial intelligence to vet and remove content could be a problem: “Applying overly tight automated filtering would lead to very widespread overblocking. What if posting a Radio New Zealand story about the Sri Lanka attacks over the weekend on Facebook was automatically blocked? Imagine if a link to a donations site for the victims of the Christchurch attacks led to the same outcome? How about sharing a video of TV news reports on either story?”.

Carter has his own list of “six thoughts” about how to make the regulation of the internet work, including keeping the scope of the exercise narrow, and striking the right balance between “preventing the spread of such abhorrent material on the one hand, and maintaining free expression on the other” – see: How to stop the ‘Christchurch Call’ on social media and terrorism falling flat.

There really will be difficulties, no matter what approach is chosen. Claire Trevett points out: “As with climate change, making the right noises and getting the desired results are two very different things. It will be something akin to Hercules wrestling the Hydra. As soon as one head is chopped off, another two will appear” – see: PM Jacinda Ardern gathers allies to wrestle the social-media Hydra.

And it’s the politicians themselves who might have the most to lose, given their increasing preference to use Facebook and the like “to bypass the filter of the traditional media and speak directly to supporters and voters. This has some pluses for those politicians – but not necessarily for democracy. Over-reliance on social media over journalistic media allows them to escape questioning on issues they may not want to face. Macron has also come in for criticism for trying to stifle the ‘Yellow Vest’ protest use of social media. Ardern herself has been known to vote with her fingers when it comes to expressing her disapproval with certain social media platforms.”

Facebook and Instagram have been key parts of Ardern’s campaigning, and Trevett points out that “in the last election, Labour spent $475,000 on advertising on Facebook – four times as much as National – as it tried to appeal to younger voters.”

Finally, for the lighter side of the debate and some apparent irregularities in social media regulation, see Hamish McNeilly’s Gone in 20 minutes: Facebook strips student nude mag cover and Andrew Gunn’s We’re taking urgent steps to address this.

by Dr Bryce Edwards

Debates over regulating free speech, hate speech, and the treatment of hate crimes are now in full swing. The Government and a number of state institutions had already been keen to bolster laws around hate speech and hate crimes before the Christchurch terrorist attacks. Therefore, it’s hardly a surprise to see an announcement that the Ministry of Justice and the Human Rights Commission are fast-tracking their attempts to pursue reform in these areas. 

The announcement was covered by RNZ in a news report on Saturday, Little plans fast-track review of hate speech laws. Here’s the key part: “Justice Minister Andrew Little says he’s fast-tracking a law review which could see hate crimes made a new legal offence. He said the current law on hate speech was not thorough and strong enough and needed to change. Mr Little said the Christchurch shootings highlighted the need for a better mechanism to deal with incidents of hate speech and other hateful deeds. He has asked justice officials to look at the laws and he was also fast-tracking a scheduled Human Rights Act review.”

According to this report, Little believes that the current Harmful Digital Communications Act doesn’t properly deal with the “evil and hateful things that we’re seeing online”, and other laws that deal with hate speech and discrimination are also inadequate.

Little is reportedly sensitive to the needs of free speech to be balanced against harms: “There will be important issues to debate. There will be issues about what limit should be put on freedom of expression and freedom of speech… We should reflect on where the lines need to be drawn and therefore, whether the laws should be struck so that they’re effective and provide some protection to people who’re otherwise vulnerable.”

Another news report explains that under current laws, crimes involving hate and discrimination are already factored into the judicial process as “hate-motivated hostility can be considered an ‘aggravating factor’ in sentencing, and staff can note when a crime was motivated by a ‘common characteristic’ such as race, gender identity, sexual orientation, or religion” – see Michelle Duff’s Hate crime law review fast-tracked following Christchurch mosque shootings.

But these processes are, according to Little, “woefully inadequate” and “Since the events of March 15, we are more conscious of the impact of what we are seeing and we need to do better”. Therefore, according to the article, a decision needs to be made about whether “hate crime should be established as its own separate offence, as it is in the United Kingdom.”

The article also raises the issue of whether Police collect enough data about the victims of crime, which might allow analysis to be made about the extent to which hate crimes are a problem. According to Duff, “Police have also told Stuff they will review their policy on the collection of ethnicity data. This is currently collected for all alleged perpetrators, but not routinely collected for victims.” And Little has responded to this prior lack of information gathering with surprise, saying “I would have thought it would be useful data to have.”

Calls for new hate laws have been supported by many. One Muslim leader has spoken out recently about the need for such laws – see 1News’ report about Canterbury University Muslim Students Association president Bariz Shah’s argument for new laws: “Ideally I’d love for the Prime Minister to say that they’re inacting a new law which basically charges anyone who says any hate speech to anybody, whether it be Muslim or non-Muslim… anything along those lines would be very reassuring” – see: Calls for new anti-hate speech law from Christchurch Muslim student leader.

Shah does however point to limitations with such laws and suggests other solutions are needed: “Obviously this is not a long term solution because people who have these types of ideologies they’ll just go in hiding and they won’t express themselves. So the long term solution would be to provide people with knowledge.”

Academic expert on ethnicity and extremist politics, Massey University’s Paul Spoonley, is also very supportive of the introduction of specific laws to outlaw hate. Talking to Newstalk ZB, he said, “I don’t think we can delay, because if you delay, then the changes of something else occurring like the events of last week might be a possibility” – see: Govt urged to introduce separate hate speech laws.

Spoonley has been very active in the debate on hate speech, and in another article is cited explaining that hate speech “provides an enabling environment which green lights racial and religious vilification”. He says it’s a problem because it “provides unfiltered ideas and arguments for those who are pliable and interested. And it tells others what you have done and got away with” – see Michael Andrew’s Online hate speech ‘gives green light’ to attacks.

In the same article, another academic, Camille Nakhid of AUT, is also quoted discussing what she sees as hate speech, which includes the concept that hate is intrinsic to our everyday life, saying “This country was founded on hate speech… I suppose they didn’t call it hate speech at the time, but the taking of Māori land, the denigration of people considered worthless, the marginalisation of their customs through laws and media, I’m still struggling to think why New Zealanders cannot see the correlation.”

In contrast, the article reports fellow AUT academic Paul Moon arguing that “while a desire for censorship was an instinctive response to hate-based events, it would not address the root cause of the problem”. He agrees that there is a need “to re-evaluate the limits of free speech in New Zealand”, but believes that “stifling speech could often create a dangerous climate of isolation” which could make things worse.

Moon says: “Censorship would be fruitless as a means of prevention because it addresses only a small part of the symptom, rather than the underlying cause.”

Opposition politicians are reacting with similar caution. Both the National and Act party leaders have been vocal this morning in pointing out that the problems of hate in society require a sophisticated response. Simon Bridges is backing Andrew Little’s plans to review the laws, saying “I think he is doing the right thing having a review” but emphasising that laws around speech and hate are “so fundamental to society that it can’t be rushed or fast-tracked” – see Jason Walls’ National Leader Simon Bridges backs hate speech review but warns against limiting free speech.

Bridges advocates that the Government “treads lightly on this”, because “Freedom of speech is so incredibly important to us as a society”, and “Where that line between free speech into that hateful and incitement of violence and the like is, is not easy”.

The same article quotes David Seymour on RNZ’s Morning Report, being even more alarmed by the Government’s plans, saying “When the Government makes it its role to start working out which opinions are right and which are wrong and which ones should be punished, that’s when you get into real difficulty”. Furthermore, according to Walls, Seymour argued that “a new hate crime law would exacerbate divisions and fail to stamp out prejudice in New Zealand”.

For more on Seymour’s views on hate crimes and hate speech regulation, as well as some background on the earlier debates on these matters in 2017, see Albert Redmore’s Act leader David Seymour says any possible hate crime laws would be divisive and ineffective.

Possibly the single best media item discussing the issue of hate speech and hate crimes is Sam Hurley’s Christchurch mosque shootings: Does New Zealand need hate speech laws after terror attacks? – which was published in the Herald prior to Andrew Little’s announcement.

The article is important because it provides detail on how the current laws work, and their inadequacies. Current legislation, such as the Human Rights Act, does in fact allow prosecutions – but the article points out that although it prohibits material that is “likely to excite hostility against or bring into contempt” against “people based on their colour, race, or ethnic or national origins”, “the law does not specifically mention discrimination based on religion, sexual orientation, gender or disability.”

Various cases are cited – such as the conviction in the 1970s of a man for “distributing a brochure around Auckland with a photo of Adolf Hitler and a quote from the Bible”, and then the failed High Court case against newspaper cartoons taken recently by Labour MP Louisa Wall.

Again, Paul Spoonley is quoted on the need for new hate crime laws to be balanced against political freedoms: “We need a severity test and of course that severity test shouldn’t be too low, we don’t want to infringe on free speech.”

University of Canterbury Law professor Ursula Cheer, who specialises in media, censorship, and political freedoms is also quoted, warning against a “knee-jerk reaction” of new laws, saying “I would rather the Government looked at what’s already there and decide whether any of that can be improved and made to work properly.” She’s against “over-criminalising society”, arguing that “You can’t reduce everyone in society to a child-like state.”

Cheer also points out that restrictions on speech in order to combat racism and hate, can actually have unintended consequences for politics: “You think [with hate speech laws] that you are getting people who might be an anti-Islamist … but you might also take in valid protest and discussion elsewhere.”

Finally, blogger David Farrar is also opposed to the establishment of specific hate crime laws that attempt to suppress hate speech, and points to a long list of disturbing outcomes from such laws in the UK, saying they are “a great example of how well intentioned laws end up criminalising many different types of speech” – see: Government looking to introduce hate speech laws.

by Dr Bryce Edwards

As a political commentator, I’ve never experienced anything like it – the phone calls and email requests for interviews from international media have been constant. Broadcasters and journalists all want to discuss the Christchurch terrorist attack and the aftermath. But mostly they want to discuss Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

There is a huge fascination with who she is, what she is about, and how she has managed the events following the attacks on Muslims in Christchurch two weeks ago. For example, yesterday, I spent two hours talking to a German journalist who had flown over here specifically to write a major profile on Ardern for readers in that country.

The strong consensus – both here and abroad – is that Ardern has demonstrated extraordinarily impressive leadership since the terrorist atrocities. Numerous commentaries have celebrated her emotional and empathetic response, combined with her strength and “steeliness” in taking decisive action on matters such as gun control and victim support, her correctness in labelling the murders as “terrorism”, and her ability to project and foster unity (when there is a tendency towards division, even from many of her own supporters).

Below are some of the more interesting articles published in response to Ardern’s handling of the terrorist attacks.

One of the first important international articles praising Ardern’s performance was by academic and Washington Post foreign affairs writer, Ishaan Tharoor – see: The world is watching New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern. In this, he outlined the Prime Minister’s previous progressive credentials, which had “burnished her image as a global feminist icon”, and painted her handling of the Christchurch situation as a continuation of this trend.

Also in the Washington Post, Anna Fifield has written a good overall account of the global reaction – see: New Zealand’s prime minister receives worldwide praise for her response to the mosque shootings.

Writing in India, Ahamad Fuwad puts together a list of seven reasons Ardern’s leadership since the atrocity has been a success – see: How to deal with tragedy: New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern sets an example for world leaders, emerges as liberal mascot.

Writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, Nick O’Malley and Deborah Snow labelled Ardern’s leadership as: A masterclass from New Zealand in responding to terror. They asserted Ardern’s achievements: “If there had been quiet criticism in some circles that she was an inexperienced leader with as much stardust as substance, that has now been put to rest. Ardern has been a commanding figure of poise, compassion and strength, a textbook example to other world leaders about how to respond in the face of mass casualty terrorist attacks.”

I’m quoted in this article, on the strategic nature of Ardern’s careful leadership: “Firstly, she seeks to ensure that the division the gunman sought to sow between New Zealand Muslims and the greater community does not take hold. Secondly, she wants to head off the potential for a culture war inside her country, with elements of the left seeking to identify racism in New Zealand society as the cause of the attack and sections of the right using it to impugn immigration or the Islamic community itself. Thirdly Ardern – no doubt on the advice of police and intelligence agencies – has security implications in mind… By positioning New Zealand itself as the victim of the attack as well as its Muslim community, and by demonstrating unity with that community, Ardern is intent on reducing the potential for revenge attacks.”

Writing on this last point, the Guardian’s Jonathan Powell praises Ardern, saying she has “almost single-handedly managed to avoid the attacks becoming a cause of further tit-for-tat violence around the world” – see: If Jacinda Ardern was in No 10, imagine how different Brexit would be.

Powell’s column compares Ardern and Theresa May, saying both are having “to lead as their countries confront one of the greatest man-made crises they have ever faced.” He imagines a scenario in which the countries have swapped leaders: “If the United Kingdom had been led by Ardern we might still have had Brexit, but we would not have ended up with this national humiliation, a divided society and an imperilled economy. If May had been prime minister of New Zealand at her robotic worst, God knows what would have happened after the massacres.”

Ardern’s very high level of emotional intelligence is cited by Powell as the key strength that has allowed her to triumph. And he explains the importance of this quality for leaders dealing with national tragedies: “That is the sort of intelligence a leader needs. They must be able to understand what people feel and channel it, as Blair did at the time of Princess Diana’s death. Ardern managed that brilliantly in the way she expressed the grief of the people of New Zealand about the mass-murder in the mosques.”

Jamila Rizvi, the editor of Future Women magazine discusses whether Ardern’s “typically feminine behaviour” has served her and New Zealand so well – see: Jacinda Ardern just proved typically ‘feminine’ behaviour is powerful.

Rizvi suggests that Ardern is leading in a very different way to her counterparts, throwing away the “traditional script for a world leader reacting to a terrorist attack on home soil”, which is normally about “power and retribution”. As well as pointing out that Ardern has focused on the victims instead of the perpetrator, and put her energy into fostering unity rather than division, she says Ardern is outwardly-focused, rather than trying to get people to concentrate on her: “Instead, she listens. She comforts not by instruction but by making space for the thoughts and feelings of others.”

And politicians everywhere, male and female, could learn from this: “Authenticity and compassion go beyond gender, or race, or religion, or next week’s polling numbers. Authenticity is an atheist leader donning hijab without thinking about the ‘optics’, but simply because it’s the right and respectful thing to do.”

This leads onto perhaps one of the best international pieces about Ardern’s leadership – Rosa Silverman’s Ardern shows the leadership the world has been missing.

First, Silverman outlines how she sees Ardern’s leadership over this period: “infused with emotional intelligence and warmth, she has thrown her arms around a grieving nation and is visibly striving, with every fibre of her being, to heal its still open wounds. This is what leadership looks like. Sometimes you have to see it up close to understand what it is you have been missing. Ardern has walked hand-in-hand with those affected by the horror – literally, but also figuratively. She has pressed her face against theirs, presenting to the world the most powerful image of unity we could hope a politician might give.”

Silverman also contrasts the New Zealand Prime Minister with Theresa May: “When Britain’s Prime Minister, Theresa May, was confronted with a moment like this – the death of 72 people in the Grenfell Tower fire of June 2017 – her response was precisely the opposite: cold, stilted, detached. She projected none of Ardern’s conviction. She did not even meet with survivors the first time she visited the site. Here was a situation crying out for leadership, which our leader was ill-equipped to offer.”

Other world leaders are also being unfavourably compared to Ardern. The Guardian’s Suzanne Moore said “We have seen the qualities that define leadership in such a way that it is clear she is a lioness and that to call so many of our current leaders donkeys is a disservice to hardworking donkeys the world over” – see: Jacinda Ardern is showing the world what real leadership is: sympathy, love and integrity.

As with many such international pieces, this article seized on Ardern’s smackdown of US President Donald Trump: “Asked directly whether she agreed with Donald Trump that rightwing terrorism was not growing, she answered clearly: ‘No.’ How could the US help? ‘Sympathy and love for all Muslim communities.’ Sympathy and love, what kind of leader talks like that in a world where to be tough is to build walls and imprison children or, on our own shores, elevate intransigence and prevarication to new heights?”

In the international media, Ardern is once again being positioned as the “anti-Trump”, and the Financial Times’ Jamie Smyth elaborates on this saying her recent leadership has “cemented her reputation globally as a standard bearer for progressive politics” – see: Jacinda Ardern’s ‘solace and steel’ seen uniting New Zealand.

This article also emphasises that she “confounded domestic critics by displaying a toughness that some doubted she had, publicly criticising Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan for attempting to exploit the attacks ahead of the country’s upcoming election.”

All of these actions and words have led to many suggestions that Ardern should receive the Nobel Peace Prize. For the best discussion of this, see Stephanie Mitchell’s International petition pushes for Jacinda Ardern to get the Nobel Peace Prize.

There’s no doubt that Ardern’s moral mandate and authority has been enhanced in the last two weeks. Even critics and opponents have been full of praise for her. See, for example, 1News’ Judith Collins praises Jacinda Ardern’s handling of Christchurch attack, showing respect by wearing headscarf.

Rightwing political commentator Matthew Hooton has expressed his huge admiration for Ardern’s performance and has even compared her to his own political heroes: “For the Prime Minister, it is as if all her past life has been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial. In the last week Jacinda Ardern has demonstrated the empathy of Ronald Reagan after the Challenger disaster and the steely resolve of Margaret Thatcher after the Brighton hotel bombing. Consequently, New Zealand will heal faster than it may have otherwise” – see: After Christchurch, Ardern’s moment has come.

As a result, he says, “the political context has changed. The Prime Minister has an opportunity to use her new-found ascendancy to act decisively across a range of issues. If she really believes in a CGT, for example, she can now be more assertive in demanding Winston Peters fall into line. Similarly, she need no longer defend failing programmes like KiwiBuild but has more freedom to replace them.”

This doesn’t mean that there are no criticisms of Ardern at all, and some are now starting to emerge, as reported by Tracy Watkins in her column, Will Jacinda Ardern keep her ‘halo’ once domestic realities resume?

This mainly covers a column this week in The Australian newspaper, in which economist Judith Sloan criticises the “deification” of the New Zealand prime minister while “selectively” ignoring failures of leadership – such as allowing only a relatively small increase in refugees, and very little progress on the flagship KiwiBuild housing programme. You can see Sloan’s critique of Ardern here: Remove the halo and Ardern is ordinary.

Watkins herself notes that such questions “will only get louder” and politics will return to usual for Ardern: “Once the realities of domestic politics intrude – and they have already, after a week-long political truce – those expectations may run far ahead of what Ardern can realistically deliver.”

Finally, there has been one particular photograph of Jacinda Ardern that has stood out in the aftermath of the Christchurch atrocities – a poignant image of a sorrowful leader in mourning behind coloured-glass. The story behind the image is also very interesting – see Glen McConnell’s Face of empathy: Jacinda Ardern photo resonates with the world after terror attack.

by Dr Bryce Edwards

As the Christchurch terrorist debate has unfolded, there has been astonishment that New Zealand’s gun laws are so lax. Loopholes and liberal gun laws have been highlighted as a key factor in allowing the alleged gunman to murder 50 people.

Helen Clark has been at the forefront of this concern, complaining with incredulity that the laws could possibly be so bad. She asked: “How can people like these killers be able to have five guns, to legally have five guns? Why do we allow semi-automatics? What is sporting, hunting or recreational about semi-automatics?”

When challenged about her own role in allowing these laws to remain unreformed in the nine years that she was prime minister, she responded by claiming that it wasn’t an issue when she was in power: “I was Prime Minister for nine years, and it never came to the top of the pile… It’s a pity that it wasn’t top of the priority list” – see Vita Molyneux’s Helen Clark reveals why she didn’t change gun laws as Prime Minister.

When it comes to making gun law reform a priority, Clark says “unfortunately someone has to put them there” and “then there has to be the votes for it.” And even if it had been a priority, she claims that the numbers weren’t there to support it while she was prime minister: “With these coalition governments and confidence and supply agreements, sometimes you just don’t have the numbers”.

Clark’s former government colleague, Alliance Cabinet Minister Matt Robson, also says the numbers were a problem under the Clark-led administration, but he remembers things very differently. Robson says he had reform legislation ready for the Clark-led Government to implement, but the Labour caucus decided to block it. This is all recorded in Derek Cheng’s article, Past gun law reform attempts by Labour and National have failed.

This article explains how Robson had been pushing strongly for law reform while in opposition, primarily with a private members’ bill in 1999, and: “When Labour won the election later that year, Robson thought the new Labour-Alliance Coalition would strengthen the bill with the provisions that Labour had previously supported in his own member’s bill. He said he was shocked when he was told that wouldn’t happen because Labour MPs feared losing rural votes.”

According to Robson, “It was our policy. It was their policy. I was very shocked we couldn’t get it through. We had the opportunity. We were the Government. There’s no excuse for not doing it.” The article notes that two Labour ministers from that time – Phil Goff and George Hawkins – dispute Robson’s account.

Cheng’s article also details how other political parties and politicians – especially “Labour, National and NZ First” – have thwarted gun law reform over recent years, “likely in part due to a fear of losing rural votes”.

According to Tracy Watkins, this has all amounted to “years of shameful political self-interest of successive Governments over gun controls”, which the current Government is finally having to clean up after – see: Jacinda Ardern’s gun reforms needed to strike a delicate balance – and they do.

She writes about the shocking fact that it has taken politicians so long to act, when they knew about the problems: “There have been countless warnings sounded about our lax gun laws, including successive inquiries, select committee reports and police investigations.”

There is now a drive to understand why and how gun law reform has been stymied by the politicians for so long. As Michelle Duff and Tom Hunt state: “For almost three decades, successive Governments have missed opportunities to tighten gun control. New Zealand’s gun laws haven’t changed substantially since 1992. But why have we been so relaxed about semi-automatic weapons, and what’s halted change?” – see: Australia took action with its gun laws. Why didn’t New Zealand?

They put forward an answer: “Sustained pressure from gun lobbyists and the reluctance of politicians to push through tougher measures that were not considered a priority – despite a high-powered enquiry and multiple warnings – has meant the status quo has remained.”

Also writing on this question, Laura Walters points out that reform only occurs when public pressure makes it hard for politicians to ignore: “New Zealand has made numerous attempts to change gun laws in recent years. Ardern cited attempts in 2005, 2012 and 2017. There has not been a significant change in more than 26 years. The issue of guns is constantly bubbling away under the surface, with debates rising to the top every time there’s a high-profile incident involving a firearm” – see: Why changing gun laws isn’t that simple.

Walters has also written about this in another important article, saying “It always takes a tragedy. Like many countries, New Zealand has tried on numerous occasions to implement meaningful gun law reform. The Arms Act was introduced in 1983. Changes in the past 26 years were more like tweaks. Since the attack last Friday, politicians – on both sides of the House – had faced hard questions on why it had taken the death of 50 people to get change” – see: Time for full overhaul of gun laws.

She cites law professor Alexander Gillespie arguing that this is by-and-large how law and reforms are made: “Legislative change was usually reactionary, rather than precautionary”.

Hence, it was the 1990 Aramoana shootings that led to the last serious gun law reforms. And the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Australia led to major change over there, and it influenced an important inquiry here – the Thorp Inquiry. This resulted in major recommendations for reform, which were then largely ignored by subsequent governments.

According to Duff and Hunt, “Thorp’s 1997 report made 60 recommendations to improve gun control, including a ban on military style semi-automatics, controls on handguns, registration of all firearms, and improved security and vetting.”

The then National-led Government decided against implementing the recommendations. Derek Cheng reports: “in response to the Thorp inquiry, then-Police Minister Jack Elder declined to ban MSSAs [military-style semi-automatics] because he wanted to keep gun owners ‘on board’, rather than ‘waving a big stick’ by threatening to seize their guns.”

One of those involved in the Thorp inquiry, Queen’s Counsel Simon Mount, now says: “Tragically, I believe if the Thorp recommendations had been implemented in 1997, the Christchurch attacker would not have been able to obtain the semi-automatic weapons he used in this country.”

The most recent example of a government ignoring recommendations for reform came less than two years ago, after the law and order select committee held a year-long study of firearms rules. According to Duff and Hunt, “The committee came up with 20 recommendations, which were supported by the Police Association. But in June 2017 police minister Paula Bennett accepted only seven recommendations, rejecting 12.”

The National Government’s dismissal of the reforms was, according to Cheng, “applauded by Federated Farmers. One of the dropped recommendations was to investigate a new category of restricted semi-automatic rifle and shotgun. Bennett said many of the recommendations would unduly affect legal firearm users.”

According to Cheng, “Labour’s police spokesman Stuart Nash supported Bennett’s decision ‘100 per cent’, even though he was on the committee that endorsed all the recommendations.”

Laura Walters writes that Bennett “is understood to be a keen hunter”, and that the “Police Association President Chris Cahill said the minister had given into the pressure of a lobby which he believed represented fewer than 10,000 of the then-240,000 licensed gun owners”.

New Zealand First is also often identified as an ongoing impediment to reform. According to Cheng, writing about the 2016 select committee recommendations, “The only dissenting voice was NZ First MP Ron Mark, who said the recommendations would restrict ‘legitimate ownership of legally-held firearms’ and would do nothing to stop criminals from committing offences with illicit firearms.”

That party is said to have a long-standing close relationship with pro-gun lobby groups. Richard Harman wrote on this a few days ago, saying “It has close connections to the gun lobby. During the last election campaign, the Kiwi Gun Blog, a popular gun owners site, rated the NZ First firearms policy: ‘We will just say that the NZ First party has been supporting us – it would be good if a lot of shooters supported them – Even with a tactical party vote’, the blog said during the last election” – see: The gun control compromise.

But politicians and their parties are changing fast. Former Police Minister Judith Collins was hardly a staunch advocate for gun control when she was in government, but has come out this week to say that she is deleting all the lobbying communications that gun groups are sending her – see Nick O’Malley’s Judith Collins tells US lobby group NRA to ‘bugger off’ over New Zealand gun reform.

Finally, in terms of individual responses by politicians to the current gun reform campaign, it’s worth reading Lucy Bennett’s Former minister Rick Barker targeted by gunman backs register, and Jason Walls’ Deputy Labour Leader Kelvin Davis has handed one semi-automatic rifle over to police.

AL JAZEERA – A three-year undercover operation by Al Jazeera has shown Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party lobbying the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) for millions of dollars to roll back Australia’s strict gun control laws.

* Australia’s One Nation Party Lobbying the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) for Millions of Dollars
* One Nation’s Chief of Staff, James Ashby, hoped to secure $US20 million political donations to “own the lower house and the upper house”.

The party vows to reverse laws banning automatic and semi-automatic weapons in Australia as it sought up to $US20 million in funding from members of the U.S. gun lobby.

The meetings between a delegation from One Nation with officials from the NRA and other pro-gun groups in America were covertly recorded by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit as it followed One Nation on a visit to Washington, DC, in September 2018.

During that visit, Steve Dickson, the leader of the One Nation party in the Australian state of Queensland, told the NRA:

“If we don’t change things, people are going to be looking at Australia and go, ‘Well, it’s okay for them to go down the path of not having guns, it’s ok for them to go down that politically-correct path’. And it’s like a poison. It will poison us all unless we stop it.”

Laws banning automatic and semi-automatic weapons were introduced in Australia following a massacre there in the town of Port Arthur in 1996. The NRA has said it opposes the Australian gun laws.

New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern announced the introduction a similar ban on all military-style assault rifles last week, following the attack on mosques in Christchurch that left 50 dead.

Dickson was accompanied on the U.S. visit by One Nation’s Chief of Staff, James Ashby, who was covertly recorded saying he hoped the trip would lead to him securing the $US20 million in political donations from pro-gun groups there.

“If you had 20, you would own the lower house and the upper house,” Ashby said, referring to Australia’s House of Representatives and Senate. Australia is expected to hold a federal election in May of this year. Dickson added: “You’d have the whole government by the balls.”

Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit infiltrated the U.S. gun lobby to find out how it operates. The unit engaged an Australian undercover reporter, Rodger Muller, to pose as the president of a pro-gun organisation, Gun Rights Australia.

Muller attended the U.S. gun lobby group meetings with Ashby and Dickson and was warned by Ashby to keep their discussions secret.

“We wouldn’t put it in writing. We keep everything out of writing,” Ashby said. “If this gets out, it will f**king rock the boat.”

by Dr Bryce Edwards

Although important questions remain about the Government’s firearms law reform programme, at this stage there is a broad consensus that Jacinda Ardern and her colleagues have successfully navigated the first tranche of change.

 
Praise is coming in from all quarters, including internationally. And when praise for gun law reform also comes from farmers’ groups, hunters, the police, and a variety of political commentators, then you can be sure that the Government has dealt with this major response to the Christchurch terrorist attacks in a highly adept fashion.

What the Government announced on Thursday was definitely a compromise, which is perhaps why it’s been politically successful. Instead of announcing a complete ban on all semi-automatic guns, the Government chose to make a number of exemptions, which makes the ban less radical than that implemented by John Howard in Australia following the Port Arthur massacre.

This is explained best by the Herald’s Jared Savage: “Exempted from the ban in New Zealand are semi-automatic .22 rifles (with a magazine which holds no more than 10 rounds), as well as semi-automatic or pump action shotguns with internal magazines (holding no more than five rounds)” – see: Why the gun ban was a smart compromise but needs to go further.

He explains the logic and political sense in this: “This is also a sensible move. These firearms are regularly used by farmers for pest control, as well as hunters. Banning them would cause great unrest in rural communities in particular, so politically speaking, the exemption makes it hard for critics to argue legitimate firearms owners are being unfairly targeted. I suspect most won’t complain.”

Savage argues that “banning dangerous weapons while reaching out to those who will be most affected – will go a long way to unite most people behind the changes.”

Stuff’s political editor, Tracy Watkins, agrees that a politically adept balance has been struck in what she calls “one deft move” by the Prime Minister to avoid either being too radical or moderate in reform – see: Jacinda Ardern’s gun reforms needed to strike a delicate balance – and they do.

She says it means Ardern will “be criticised by those at the opposite ends of the gun debate as not going far enough by some, and too far by others.” But Watkins argues that the Government needed to find a compromise that would keep some of the gun lobby on side: “Ardern’s challenge was in striking a balance between the more lethal and MSSA weapons, and the types of shotguns popular among duckshooters and hunters, which the tide of public opinion could have easily swept into the list of guns that should be banned.”

This wasn’t just about electoral calculations, but also ensuring that the reforms would actually result in compliance from gun owners: “the risks of a backlash and black market from non-compliance are also factors that have to be weighed up.”

It’s therefore of great interest that groups such as Federated Farmers, the Police Association, Rural Security, Fish and Game and Trade Me have come out in support of the changes. For example, Police Association president Chris Cahill has said: “It’s a good mix of reforms that balance the practical requirements of firearm owners in New Zealand with the need to protect society, we’re very pleased” – see RNZ’s Wide support for government’s move to tighten gun laws.

For detail from a hunter about why this is the right decision, see Lew Stoddart’s Gun law reform strikes a fair balance. He is full of praise for the Government’s decision: “The government’s gun law reform package is notable because it balances three factors that in previous reforms have proven irreconcilable: it removes the most dangerous firearms from legal circulation immediately; it does so without being a knee-jerk overreaction; and it does so quickly, without extravagant cost, and without much legal vulnerability.”

For Stoddart, the key is that changes to the legislation are “based on power, action type, and magazine capacity”, thereby allowing for some less-dangerous semi-automatics to be exempted from the ban. For example, guns that only have a calibre barrel of 0.22 or less, and which can only hold up to 10 rounds, are still allowed. And Stoddart says: “The object of the reforms is to get the largest number of most-dangerous firearms out of circulation in the shortest possible time with the least hassle, and the only way that works is with the consent of firearms owners.”

For more on the technical details of the ban, see Stuff’s Q&A: A closer look at New Zealand’s new weapons ban.

Inside the Government, this appears to have been a carefully designed compromise to keep both politicians and gun owners on side. This is explained well by Richard Harman: “The decision to ban military-style semi-automatic firearms yesterday does not go as far as Australia did in 1996 after the Port Arthur massacre and was not the first preference of the Greens. Instead, it is a political compromise designed to get the vote of NZ First and National when it is presented to Parliament in a fortnight. What the Prime Minister clearly wanted to avoid was provoking a full-on fight with the rural community and the gun lobby” – see: The gun control compromise.

Harman says that he “understands the Greens wanted all semi-automatic firearms banned. That would have been consistent with their manifesto for the last election”. But this more radical ban would have been opposed by both New Zealand First and the National Party. Therefore “Ardern knew that if she wanted bipartisan support for a ban, she would have to reject the Greens policy”.

The international news media has reported surprise at the “lightning speed” and ease with which the New Zealand Government has been able to achieve this initial reform. The contrast with fights over gun control in the United States has been particularly highlighted. For the best item explaining to an international audience why New Zealand was able to push this through, see Rick Noack and Shibani Mahtani’s Washington Post story, New Zealand just banned military-style firearms. Here’s why the US can’t.

Similarly, see Matt Kwong’s Canadian report, New Zealand promised and delivered a gun ban. Here’s why the US can’t do the same.

All of the congratulations and hailing of the Government’s success doesn’t mean that there are no criticisms at all. Most importantly, the various gun exemptions still have some people worried. And there’s continued questioning about how much farmers really need these types of guns anyhow – especially when farmers cite “animal welfare” justifications. One answer is that it’s about the slaughter of bobby calves.

One writer, from a family of gun-owners, says: “The whole issue is so obnoxious to me that I can hardly write about it, but unfortunately it’s a regular part of the dairy farming process. A year or so ago dairy farmers were banned from ending their bobby (male) calves lives with hammers or bits of wood. Essentially the calves would be clubbed to death. Thankfully semi-automatic guns are now the accepted method. Firearms make this abhorrent job easier for both the calf and the farmer” – see: I’m from a farming family: Owning a gun isn’t a right.

And how well will the buy-back scheme even work? The Government is projecting that the scheme will cost up to $200 million. Lobby groups, say it could be much more, based on the fact that “Military style semi-automatics can cost from $200 to more than $10,000 and there are at least 15,000 registered in New Zealand” – see Maiki Sherman’s Firearm buyback scheme could cost $500m, twice the Government’s estimate, lobbyist group says.

Already some gun-owners are apparently indicating that they won’t hand over their now-illegal guns. According to one news report, “The Gunshack owner Peter Watson said while he was not personally affected by the ban, he had spoken to at least 10 recreational shooters who said they would refuse to hand over their weapons” – see Jennifer Eder’sGun shop owner warns recreational shooters won’t buy in to buy-back gun control legislation.

One gun lobbyist, Mike Loder, has even written an “open letter” questioning whether the government should really compel “shooters, in a supposedly free nation, to hand in private property on the promise of later compensation” – see Tom Pullar-Strecker’s NRA calls for stop to NZ’s ‘socialist disarmament’ alongside appeal for donations.

Another gun lobbyist, Bill O’Leary of the Deerstalkers Association, is campaigning to have compensation amounts determined by negotiation on a one-by-one basis: “It would mean every firearm would have to sit on a table, and on one side would be the person from the government and on the other would be the owner” – see Rob Stock’s The ban of military-style semi-automatics will cost millions – here is how the Australians did it.

Similarly, another gun-owner is reported today saying “If we hand in our firearms without assurances that compensation will be appropriate, what cost $20,000 will suddenly turn into $5000 of compensation” – see Cecile Meier’s Gun owner happy to hand in rifle for free, others say law change is causing anxiety.

Although there are obviously a variety of responses from gun-owners, another one says: “With the stroke of a pen, the Government has made some of my firearms illegal… I am anxious that the police may turn up at my house and seize my property in front of my whole neighbourhood. I am losing sleep.”

There are also a number of criticisms about the legislative process that the Government is attempting to take. The best arguments against this have been put by the Otago Daily Times’ Mike Houlahan, who says that haste in lawmaking can lead to bad law, which might even include loopholes, making the new rules less effective – see: Composure needed before creating new laws.

Finally, regardless of laws, are you personally complicit in helping the arms industry and the production of guns? Rob Stock explains, How to go weapons-free in your KiwiSaver portfolio.

by Dr Bryce Edwards

Jacinda Ardern has led the way in how she’s responded to the Christchurch terrorist atrocity. The prime minister has emphasised the need to come together and to not allow the actions of a terrorist to divide New Zealand any further. She has laid the blame for Friday’s massacre firmly at the feet of the perpetrator, rejecting the idea that his beliefs are representative of New Zealanders (while at the same time signalling to people in this country that as a society we must question and challenge attitudes and structures that contribute to intolerance and hatred).

Ardern has won praise from across the political spectrum for her measured, compassionate approach. Others have not been so conciliatory, and the search for answers as to why the attack took place will be a difficult process, with many causes being singled out for blame.

My column on Tuesday dealt with the question of whether our political leaders have, in some part, played a role in increasing hate or intolerance – see: Politicians’ words under scrutiny after Christchurch terror attacks. Similarly, Hamish Rutherford addressed this issue in his article, Mainstream political policy may offer a home for racist views. And in Parliament yesterday Green MP Golriz Ghahraman challenged her fellow parliamentarians over having “fanned the flames of division” in the past.

There is a danger in going too carelessly down this path, however. In fact, caution is advisable. If the blame-game becomes too toxic then, not only will it become counterproductive to the search for answers, but it will poison New Zealand politics and society (something the terrorist seemed very keen to do). Knee-jerk levelling of blame has the potential to be divisive, precisely at a time when unity and harmony is required (and mostly being achieved).

In two now notorious examples of finger-pointing internationally, Australian senator Fraser Anning blamed the terrorist attacks on Muslims themselves, while in the US Chelsea Clinton copped the blame due to a recent statement she made opposing antisemitism.

At home, targets for blame have ranged from politicians, intelligence services, rightwing and leftwing commentators (everyone from Mike Hosking to Chris Trotter), free-speech advocates, firearm sellers, social media and the prejudice of the New Zealand public, but rarely is evidence offered to support the contention of culpability for this atrocity.

Debates over all of these issues, and many more, need to be had. We need answers for why this attack took place. And we must address the fact that racism and religious intolerance is a daily reality in New Zealand.

But caution is also needed. It’s worth taking heed of the warning issued by Kenan Malik, one of Britain’s leading leftwing public intellectuals, who wrote immediately in the wake of the Christchurch attacks that “the dead deserve better” than a rush into “name-calling and invective” – see his short Guardian column, Do not let raw anger cloud our judgment after Christchurch.

Malik argues that debate and examination is absolutely necessary: “The issues raised by the barbarous terror are many and urgent – the rise of the far right and how to combat it; how mainstream commentators talk of Muslims and immigration and whiteness; the boundaries of free speech; the regulation of social media. And so on. I will no doubt have my say on these issues in the coming days.”

However, this does not seem to be occurring in a healthy, productive manner: “What has been depressing, though, has been the way that much of the discussion has degenerated into name-calling and invective. The dead of Christchurch have seemingly become a stage on which every contemporary debate from Brexit to the politics of identity is played out. The rawness of anger inevitably clouds judgment.”

He concludes by saying, “To say that the dead deserve better is to say that we should be better in the way we engage with the living, with each other. And we should.”

Another British commentator, Maajid Nawaz, who is a Muslim and a former parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Democrats, writes in even stronger terms that “Radical Islamists and radical leftists have seized on the Christchurch tragedy to push their own hateful agendas” – see his column from The Times newspaper: The New Zealand mosque massacre blame game is out of control.

Nawaz argues that this type of politicisation risks falling into the “trap” that the terrorist set to create division, chaos, and to pit the political left against the political right. He also fears the blame-game will lead to a shutting down of debate.

Nawaz is worth reading at length: “In my youth, as an angry 15-year-old Muslim witnessing the Bosnia genocide, I once succumbed to this temptation and promoted extreme Islamism myself for a few years. I know what giving in to hate feels like, and I know the lasting damage it can cause. But that is exactly the reaction that extremists want, and exactly why it must be resisted with all our might. So it is with no surprise that I noticed, a mere day after 50 of my fellow Muslims were so publicly and tragically killed, while the blood was still wet and the bodies remained unburied, that the ideologues had circled like vultures. Opportunistic Islamist and far-left extremists began calling for a purge of people whose politics they disagree with, and started publishing McCarthyite lists of personae non grata to target.”

In another column, Nawaz argues, “Now is not the time to settle political scores. Now is the time to reflect, reach out and respond with mercy from a position of moral authority” – see: New Zealand shootings: Muslims are fearful and hurting but we must not give in to hate.

Also in Britain, Claire Fox has written that “One of the most distasteful aspects of this was the casual way that within hours of the outrage, various conservative commentators were being openly named as indirectly responsible for the New Zealand massacre” – see her column in The Telegraph: Why I am so disturbed by how the Christchurch massacre is being used for political point-scoring (paywalled).

Fox says that there’s nothing wrong with debate and analysis, but this should not be motivated by pre-existing political agendas: “Don’t get me wrong: I don’t expect a moratorium on politics as we mourn. I am political and appreciate that we want to make sense of what seems such a senseless act, especially as the killer himself framed his actions in a rambling ‘political manifesto’. But a rush to use the event to push one’s own political agenda surely displays bad faith.”

After condemning the “white supremacism” behind the terrorism as well as “scaremongering about refugees” and other xenophobic ills, Fox implores that our responses don’t just lead to the suppression of debate and ideas: “I also hate the tendency to use a massacre to slander opponents or demand particular opinions are censored. Whatever comes from the New Zealand atrocity, we should be better than that. After all, the underlying message of the terrorist was that he intended to fracture political debate and divide opinion to cause a toxic virus of hostility. Let’s make sure he doesn’t succeed.”

Similar points are made by Brendan O’Neill at the Spiked-Online website. He himself points the finger at various political commentators and activists: “The blame game they’ve been playing in the aftermath of the racist mass murder in New Zealand has been ghoulish and deeply disturbing. The bodies of the 50 murdered Muslims were barely cold before various observers, activists and leftists were naming and shaming those people who they think ‘laid the ground’ for this atrocity. And it apparently includes everyone from alt-right agitators to any mainstream newspaper columnist who has raised so much as a peep of criticism about radical Islam” – see: New Zealand’s ghoulish opportunists.

Writing for The Australian, columnist Janet Albrechtsen suggested that Fraser Anning was far from the only political actor exploiting the tragedy for their own “narrow-minded, illiberal political agendas” – see: Be wary of blame and let’s not shut down debate (paywalled).

Albrechtsen argued that rightwing voices were being unfairly targeted, and political freedoms threatened: “Those playing blame games with politics are trying to paint as mainstream what happens on the fringes of politics. That attempt to tar the centre-Right with the lunacy of the far-Right is wicked, politically driven and wrong in fact. Working in reverse, the blame-gamers are also trying to present entirely legitimate debates about immigration, integration, the self-evident clash of cultures and the rise of political Islam as fringe discussions that must be shut down. The day after terrorist attacks in Christchurch, an editor at The Saturday Paper called for laws to ‘penalise media outlets, and figures that consistently promote fear and hatred’ and ‘robust laws against the spread of hate speech’.”

Here in New Zealand, Herald columnist Jon Stokes also observes that in the wake of the terrorist atrocity, “There is a move to shut down the voices and ideas of others, to try to homogenise ideas and perspectives” – see: Ideas should be challenged not shut down.

Stokes argues against suppressing too much of the information about the terrorist event and even the terrorist himself, and he also says that we need wider and healthier political debate in general: “The evil unleashed on Friday, March 15 showed me that those silenced or suppressed voices will always find a home, and an outlet to ensure they are heard. The way forward is light, not darkness, it is away with anonymity and facelessness. It is a time of ownership of our ideas and views, and embracing tolerance and understanding.”

Writing today, Karl du Fresne finds it difficult to reconcile two very different narratives that have emerged about New Zealand and the terrorist attacks. On the one hand “New Zealand reacted with a genuine and overwhelming outpouring of shock, grief and anguish”, but according to an “alternative narrative, we are a hateful nation of racists, white supremacists and Islamophobes” – see: Some would paint us as a nation of hateful racists – that’s not the real NZ.

Certainly, there are politicians and activists elsewhere who will attempt to paint a picture of hate in New Zealand for their own ends – something we are seeing in Turkey at the moment.

In this regard, it’s worth reading the views of Massey University’s Rouben Azizian, who is a professor in the Centre of Defence and Security Study: “It is very dangerous when they use this rhetoric of us against them and them against us. They have to be very careful because they can indeed incite the feelings of a clash of civilisations, when this is a clash involving one idiot, a crazy, brainwashed person against innocent Muslim people” – see Rob Mitchell’s Christchurch shooting: Erdogan comments endanger bond built on blood and battle.

Finally, there’s a case to be made that finger-pointing is almost entirely redundant given that there was a sole terrorist involved, and he was “not one of us”, echoing Jacinda Ardern’s “This is not us” refrain. The case is put by Chris Trotter, who says “What happened at the Linwood and Al Noor mosques was horrific, but it wasn’t our doing. As we begin the long journey towards recovery, it is vitally important that we keep that fact squarely before us. New Zealand is a good place. New Zealanders are good people. We are not responsible for Brenton Tarrant’s dreadful crime. This is not us” – see: What Happened Here?

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was written for, and first published by, German magazine Cicero.de (ref. Attentat in Christchurch – Willkommen in der Hölle). Thanks also to Prof David Robie, Pacific Media Centre AsiaPacificReport.nz for providing the featured image for this article.

OUT OF THE BLUE:

It was 1:39pm, Friday March 15. As was usual for a Friday hundreds of people had turned up to pray at the Al Noor Mosque in Riccarton, Christchurch. All was peaceful, women, children, men, people of all ages young and old, both Sunni and Shia, were in contemplative repose free of worry. It was a mild, late summer, 20 degrees celsius day. Earlier, the touring Bangladesh Cricket Team had briefly visited the mosque, but left early to attend a press conference. By 1:39pm, they had returned and were outside exiting a bus, intending to continue with their prayers inside the mosque.

At 1:40pm, ahead of the team, a man entered the mosque walking quickly up the front steps. He was carrying an assault rifle and dressed in combat uniform. He immediately began shooting people who were kneeling in prayer. The shots rang out and the Bangladesh team members realising they were witnesses to an attack, retreated, and fled on foot to nearby Hagley Park.

Back inside the Al Noor Mosque scores of worshipers were being gunned down, some killed instantly, others bleeding to death. The victims included little Mucaad Ibrahim who was three years of age.

Mucaad was known by his loved ones as a wise “old soul” and possessed an “intelligence beyond his years”.

Eye witnesses said that once the killer began shooting people, little Mucaad became separated from his family. In the chaos, his family could not find him. The next day Police confirmed he too had been shot dead by the killer.

The murders continued at the Al Noor Mosque until the killer’s firearms ran out of bullets. Then, he simply walked out of the mosque, got in his car, and drove six kilometres to the Linwood Mosque. There too were people who had gathered for their regular Friday afternoon prayers.

Mr Aziz picked up an EFTPOS (electronic funds transaction) machine from a table inside the mosque. He ran outside. He saw a man he describes as looking like a soldier. He said to the man: “Who are you”. Mr Aziz then saw three people lying on the ground dead from shotgun blasts. He realised the man was the killer. He approached the attacker, threw the EFTPOS machine hitting the killer, who in turn took from his vehicle a second firearm (a military style semi-automatic assault rifle) and fired four to five shots at Abdul Aziz, missing him. Then, in an attempt to lure the killer away from other people, Mr Aziz shouted at the killer from behind a car: “Come, I’m here. Come I’m here!”

Mr Aziz said he didn’t want the killer to go inside the mosque and kill more people. But the killer remained focussed. He walked directly to the entrance, once inside the mosque he continued his killing spree. Survivors speak of the killer wearing “army clothes”, dressed in “SWAT combat clothing”, helmeted, wearing a vest and a balaclava.

Inside the Linwood Mosque, another witness, Shoaib Gani, was kneeling in prayer. He heard a noise like fireworks but he and others weren’t too concerned and continued with their prayers. Then, as he and his fellow worshipers were kneeling speaking verses from the Koran, the man next to him fell forward with blood pouring from his head. He had been shot and killed instantly, Mr Gani said. Then others too began falling to the floor dead.

Mr Gani crawled under a table. He saw the killer and his firearm. “Written on the rifle were the words, ‘Welcome to hell’,” he said.

Victims, who were wounded and bleeding, were pleading with Mr Gani to help them. But he was frozen to a spot under a table knowing that the killer was walking around the mosque killing as many people as he could. Mr Gani believed he too would also soon be dead, so he reached for his cellphone, he called his parent’s back home in India. But no one answered. He tried to call his father’s number, but the phone kept ringing. He saw people around him bleeding to death. Others with fatal head-wounds “their brains were hanging out. I just couldn’t do anything. I didn’t know what to do.” Mr Gani phoned 111 (the New Zealand emergency number) and told the authorities people were dead and injured: “The lady on the phone asked me to stay on the line as long as I could.”

Outside, Abdul Aziz picked up one of the killer’s discarded shotguns. Inside the mosque, the killer’s assault rifle ran out of bullets. The killer then “dropped his firearm” and ran back to his vehicle. He got in the driver’s seat. Mr Aziz then ran toward the car. He threw a discarded shotgun at the killer’s vehicle: “I threw it like an arrow. It shattered his window.” Mr Aziz thinks the killer thought someone had shot at him with a loaded gun. The killer turned. He swore at Mr Aziz. When the window burst it covered the inside of the car with glass. Mr Aziz said the killer “then took off” driving in his car. He then turn right away from the mosque driving through a red traffic light and out into Christchurch suburban streets.

Some minutes later, Police and ambulance officers arrived at Linwood Mosque. Anti-Terrorist armed Police entered the mosque. Inside, Mr Gani said the survivors were ordered to put their hands up above their heads. The mass murder scene was covered in blood. The Police then secured the area. Some victims survived because they were under the bodies of the dead. Police told survivors to gather near a grassed area outside. There, people began weeping for their husbands, wives, parents, children, friends.

THE ARREST:

Seventeen minutes later, two Police officers identified the killer, apparently driving his car. They drove the police car into the killer’s vehicle, ramming it against a curb. Immediately, they disarmed the killer, cuffed him, noticed home made bombs in the vehicle – IEDs (improvised explosive devices). They arrested the man and secured the scene.

The rest of Christchurch was in lock-down, children were kept safe inside their classrooms, hospitals began to prepare for casualties, the city’s streets became eerily quiet, people were locked in to libraries, shops, their homes. Police and armed forces helicopters networked the skies. No one knew if the terrorist attacks were committed by a group of people or a lone gunman.

But back inside and entrances to the two mosques, 50 people were dead – one of the dead was discovered the next day by Police, the body was laying beneath others who had been killed. Scores of others were in hospital fighting for their lives, at least another ten were in a critical condition in intensive care. Pathologists from all over New Zealand and Australia were heading to Christchurch to help with documenting the method of murder of the dead.

Within hours of the killings, Australian media named the alleged killer as an Australian born citizen named Brenton Tarrant, 28 years of age. On Saturday morning The Australian newspaper’s front page read “Australia’s evil export”.

Other media in New Zealand followed with details of the man’s background. Brenton Harrison Tarrant appeared in court the next day charged with one single count of murder. Other charges will follow. His duty lawyer did not seek name suppression nor bail, the lawyer told the judge: “I’m simply seeking remand and a high court next-available-hearing date.” Tarrant stood cuffed, smiling at those in the courtroom, at one point signaling with his fingers a ‘white supremacist’ sign. He will next appear in the Christchurch High Court on April 5.

THE AFTERMATH:

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern later told media: “It was absolutely his [the offender’s) intention to continue with his attack.” PM Ardern said: “Police are working to build a picture of this tragic event. A complex and comprehensive investigation is (now) underway.” To balance the requirement of investigation with the customs of Muslim burials, PM Ardern said liaison officers are with the victims’ loved ones to help “in a way that is consistent with Muslim faith while taking into account these unprecedented circumstances and the obligations to the coroner.”

PM Ardern said, survivors of the massacre had indicated that this attack was not “of the New Zealand that they know”.

One day later, Survivor Shoaib Gani (mentioned above) told media he still could not sleep or eat. The sounds and sights were still vivid in his head: “I still can feel myself lying on the floor waiting for the bullets to hit me.” He said, he will travel back to India to visit family, but he will return to Christchurch: “It’s just a few people, you know. You can’t blame the whole of New Zealand for this… It’s a good country, people are peaceful. Everybody has helped me here. One right wing (person) doesn’t mean everyone is bad. So I can come back here and live and hope nothing like this happens in the future.”

In the hours after the attacks, all around New Zealand, in the cities and in small country areas, Police were stationed and were ready in case others were involved and were preparing further crimes.

Beside the Police officers, people, of all races and religions, began laying flowers at the steps to their local mosques. Messages included read: “Salam Alaikum, Peace be unto you”, and, Aroha nui”, “Peace and love”, “You are one of us”. The outpouring of grief swept the South Pacific nation, and as this piece was written, a mood of support, comfort, reassurance and solidarity with those of Muslim faith was in evidence.

In Australia, Sydney’s landmark Opera House was like a beacon in the night; coloured blue, red, and white – the colours of the New Zealand flag embossed with the silver fern (Ponga) an emblem of Aotearoa New Zealand. Australia’s peoples, like in New Zealand, began laying flowers at the steps of its mosques in a gesture of inclusiveness.

In the aftermath, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has committed to ongoing financial assistance to dependents of those who have died or are injured, and assistance, she said, will be ongoing.

Questions are being leveled as to how a person with hate can enter, live, and purchase weapons in New Zealand while expressing hate toward other cultures and harbouring an intent to kill others.

PM Ardern said: “The guns used in this case appear to have been modified. That is a challenge Police have been facing, and that is a challenge that we will look to address in changing our laws… We need to include the fact that modification of guns which can lead them to become essentially the kinds of weapons we have seen used in this terrorist act.”

When asked how she was coping personally with the tragedy, she said: “I am feeling the exact same emotions that every New Zealander is facing. Yes, I have the additional responsibility and weight of expressing the grief of all New Zealanders and I certainly feel that.”

That responsibility includes ensuring New Zealand’s Police, the nation’s intelligence and security services and “the process around watch-lists, including whether or not our border protections are currently in a status that they should be, and, including our gun laws.”

THE BACKSTORY:

Indeed, New Zealand is part of the so-called ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence network that includes the USA, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Global surveillance is coordinated and prioritised among the Five Eyes member states. While significant resource, technology and sophistication is committed to the Five Eyes intelligence agencies, New Zealanders fear that those who find themselves as targets, or within the scope of intelligence officers, are predominantly of the Muslim faith.

In contrast, the accused killer who allegedly committed the horrific Christchurch mosque attacks, has been active both on social media and the dark web expressing, with an intensifying degree, his ideology of hate and intolerance. It does appear of the highest public interest, certainly from an open source intelligence point of view, to ask questions of why New Zealand’s (and indeed the Five Eyes intelligence network’s) surveillance experts did not detect the expressed evil that had radicalised the heart and mind of the perpetrator of this massacre.

It is also fact, that New Zealand is a comparatively safe and peaceful nation. But within its midst are people and groups fermenting on racially-based hate ideas. Whether it be in isolation or among organised groupings, the threat of racially driven terror crimes exists.

The alleged killer, Brenton Tarrant, has lived among those of New Zealand’s southern city Dunedin for at least two years. It appears he was radicalised around 2010 after his father died and he toured Europe. He wrote about becoming “increasingly disgusted” at immigrant communities. In early 2018, Tarrant joined a Dunedin gun club and began practicing his shooting skills and allegedly planned his attacks.

Regarding Christchurch, while it has a history of overt white racist gangs, at this juncture, it does not appear they were directly involved in this series of crimes.

But this leads to many unanswered questions, including:

• Was the killer a lone mass murderer, a sleeper in a cell of one?
• Were those with whom he communicated and engaged with on the web in extreme white racist ideologies aware of his plans?
• Was Christchurch chosen by the killer for logistical reasons?
• Was it because the city is easier to drive around than Dunedin, Wellington or Auckland?
• Was it because Christchurch has at least two mosques within easy driving distance?
• Were the Bangladesh Cricket team in his scope of attacks?
• Was the killer attempting to incite a violent response from Christchurch’s burgeoning Muslim community, or, expecting a response from the Alt-Right, from white racist groups such as the Right Wing Resistance (RWR), the Fourth Reich, and Christchurch’s skinhead community?

THE FUTURE:

Survivors of Friday 15th’s terrorist attack say they have complained of an increase in racism and expressed hate in recent times. They say, their concerns have not been taken seriously. These are the concerns that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has committed to listen to, has committed to represent, and, as the prime advocate for her country’s peoples, to act on to ensure cracks in New Zealand’s border, security and intelligence apparatus are corrected.

And, what of New Zealand’s social culture? How will it be affected? That will be determined by the actions of each individual person, each community, town and city and how as a nation New Zealand redefines “The Kiwi Way”.

Members of New Zealand’s media will also need to act responsibly. It is fair to say some have a reputation for argument that verges on alt-right intolerance, for example, on Twitter only two days after the mass murders, a prominent radio journalist, who is employed by one of New Zealand’s largest networks, tweeted: “28 years on an [sic] we still haven’t stopped madmen getting guns. #ChChMosque… [Replying to @Politikwebsite] And the neo nationalist right are the result of the virtue signaling exclusionary left.”

Perhaps such examples are out of step with New Zealand’s population. But such attitudes do create a dialogue of justification for those who harbour intolerance. However, if the outpouring of love and compassion continues to bind rather than divide, then perhaps New Zealand has received, as they say, ‘a wake-up call’, where racial intolerance and extreme ideologies have no place among peoples of all kinds, Maori and Pakeha, of all religions, political persuasions and creeds.

One thing is certain; to stamp out the evil of hate extremism, New Zealanders will pay a price that will be charged against the Kiwi lifestyle. Personal liberties of freedom, of expression and privacy will certainly be eroded further as this nation of the South Pacific grapples with how to keep its peoples safe. The means of how to achieve relative safety will be hotly debated, but it is a necessary juncture in this nation’s history, a moment when we all must confront and challenge ourselves so that people of innocence, people like little three year old Mucaad Ibrahim, can go about their days in trust, in peace, in joyful purpose and achieve their deserved potential. Anything less is a second killing for the victims of Friday 15, New Zealand’s darkest hour.

By RNZ

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says she was advised that the primary perpetrator of the terror attacks in Christchurch yesterday had used five guns

Forty-nine people died at Al Noor Mosque next to Hagley Park and the Linwood Mosque.

Ardern told media this morning there were two semi-automatic weapons and two shotguns. A lever action firearm was also found.

READ MORE: Polyfest, Bangladesh cricket test and street parades cancelled around grieving nation

The New Zealand Herald’s “darkest day” front page today after the Christchurch massacres. Image: PMC Screenshot

She said the accused man was in possession of a gun licence that was acquired in November 2017.

The man began purchasing weapons in December 2017, the month after obtaining a Category A gun licence, she said.

“My advice currently is that under that gun licence he was able to acquire the guns that he held. That will give you an indication of why we need to change our gun laws.”

The government will respond swiftly, she said.

“I can tell you right now our gun laws will change.

Safety biggest priority
“The mere fact that when people of course hear that this individual acquired a gun licence and acquired weapons of that range, then obviously I think people will be seeking change, and I’m committing to that.”

She said police were trying to establish at what level the other two people, who have been arrested, may have been involved.

Ardern said the safety of New Zealanders was the biggest priority.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern … a rhetoric of racism, division and extremism should have no place in New Zealand. Image: Image: Rebekah Parsons-King/RNZ

She said rhetoric of racism, division and extremism should not have a place in New Zealand or in society as a whole.

“Given the rise of extremist views, by those who hold ideology that I can only describe as violent and extreme, our agencies here in New Zealand have stepped up the work that was being done in that area but again, that did not result in this individual being on any kind of watchlist.

“If there is any suggestion that these individuals should have been known, we are looking into that.”

After being briefed by intelligence officials she confirmed there were 49 people dead and more than 40 being treated in hospital, two of them in critical condition.

Child transferred
She also confirmed a five-year-old child was transferred to Starship Childrens Hospital – the only transfer that had taken place.

Ardern said work was under way to confirm the identities of those who have died but that all those who were injured had been identified and their families told.

She said Christchurch Hospital is well equipped and coping well and that pathologists had made themselves available, and a number were coming in from Australia.

Ardern said three people have been arrested in relation to the attacks and an Australian man would appear in court today.

“This individual has travelled around the world, with sporadic periods of time spent in New Zealand. They were not a resident of Christchurch, in fact they were currently based in Dunedin at the time of this event,” she said.

Inquiries are ongoing to establish whether the other two arrested were directly involved.

A fourth person was a member of the public who was armed but had the intention of assisting the police. The person had been released.

‘No prior criminal history’
The prime minister said police were working to build a picture of those in custody.

“None of those apprehended had a prior criminal history either here or in Australia,” she said. “They were not on any watchlists here or in Australia.”

Agencies have been asked to work swiftly to assess whether there were any posts on social media that should have triggered a response.

“Today as the country grieves, we are seeking answers,” Ardern said.

Christchurch residents have been asked to remain at home.

Armed police remain at a cordon near the Linwood mosque this morning. The corner of Hereford Street and Linwood Avenue remains closed to the public with closed signs, emergency tape and orange cones blocking access.

Ardern said 45 additional police staff had flown to Christchurch with more than 80 flying in today. Detectives, public safety teams and intelligence support are among the police staff.

Distress call
Ardern urged anyone in New Zealand to call or text 1737 if they were feeling distressed.

She reiterated calls from the police not to distribute material, like videos, related to the attack and stated that it was an offence to do so.

Yesterday police immediately secured the area, arrests were made swiftly and Defence quickly made improvised explosive devices safe, Ardern said.

Mosques around the country have received advice from police about staying safe and have been told to stay closed.

Ardern said the threat level remains at high and as such triggers increased aviation and border security.

This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz