‘Shameful’: Govt binning mosque attack recommendations

The Muslim community is outraged at the government’s decision to wind up its work on the response to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch terror attack.

The Royal Commission made 44 recommendations in the wake of 51 worshippers being murdered in Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Islamic Centre on 15 March, 2019.

The government is binning eight of those, including strengthening hate speech laws, establishing a national intelligence and security agency and requiring health professionals to report firearms injuries to police.

In justifying the government’s decision, the minister leading the response, Judith Collins, said after five years, the time had come to wrap up the all-of-government effort.

There had been changes throughout government in response to the attack and work would continue within its agencies, she said.

But Abdur Razzaq Khan, from the Federation of Islamic Associations, said the government, and particularly Collins, had simply given up.

“It’s shameful that we have forgotten and devalued the 51 lives lost in New Zealand’s single biggest tragedy in recent history and the government and this minister have given up on this,” he said.

“It is shameful when people are still suffering from bullet wounds in their body … being asked to go back to work.”

While Collins claimed the five years made it the right time for the response to end, Khan said it had only been three-and-a-half years since the royal commission made its recommendations and Collins had not consulted with the community, but instead talked at them.

“What we now have is the government saying ‘Oh look, we will have a memorial’ – thank you so much, we appreciate that and ‘We will remember March 15th’, we want more than remembrance of March 15th – we want practical, tangible, lessons to be implemented,” he said.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told him, before the election, all recommendations apart from hate speech law reform would be implemented.

Khan could not believe the government would not implement mandatory reporting of firearms injuries by health professionals to police, considering the terrorist accidentally shot himself before the attack and went to Dunedin Hospital.

If reported, it could have been a red flag around his firearms ownership.

However, Collins was not even aware of that fact.

Khan said such reporting could have prevented the 15 March shootings.

“The terrorist went to a hospital … if that was reported to the police would we have this terrorism? No.

“This [binning the reporting recommendation] is the doing, I believe, of the arms lobby led by the arms lobbyist, Minister [Nicole] McKee, and they are running this country.”

Anjum Rahman, who was part of the commission’s Muslim Reference Group and presented evidence to the commission, said the government’s move was “gutting”.

“This is about people’s safety, people’s lives are at risk so I’m finding it … really difficult to deal with actually.”

She told Checkpoint the lack of consultation with the people most impacted by the terror attacks was not acceptable.

“The whole of community is concerned not just ourselves, but all of New Zealand, this impacts everyone, the threat extremism shifts and has been shifting.”

While there had been progress on the commission’s 36 recommendations, the ones which had been left out were critical, Rahman said.

“If you read the royal commission report and the failings they found, the systemic issues, the lack of co-ordination, the lack of oversight, these recommendations were going to deal with that, not to mention the hate speech recommendations.”

Aliya Danzeisen, of the Islamic Women’s Council, was also upset and angry at the government’s decision and the lack of consultation with the Muslim community.

“What I would ask the nation is when our community in Christchurch was devastated, the nation surrounded us – was it just to console us? Or was it to get it right? Was it to get New Zealand in the place where everybody is protected and safe? I’m confident that the vast majority of people wanted the nation to be safe.”

The country and the Muslim community was no safer today than it was in 2019, Danzeisen said.

However, the previous Labour Government also bore responsibility for failing to implement all the recommendations of the royal commission.

Khan called on Luxon to revisit his government’s decision to conclude its response to the royal commission.