The Christchurch Muslim community are feeling sidelined by the government inquiry into the terror attack. Their side of the story has been told by the New York Times in an article with the headline New Zealand Vowed to Listen to Muslims After Christchurch. It’s Failing, They Say.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Ten days after a gunman killed dozens of people at two Christchurch mosques, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern promised answers.
Her government, she said, would commission an investigation to delve into the concern haunting every New Zealander, but especially the country’s Muslims: Could the terrorist attack have been prevented?
The inquiry, she said, would make a priority of consulting with the Muslim community, a group long overlooked and now desperate for assurances about their safety.
But halfway through what is expected to be an eight-month investigation, members of a panel of influential Muslims appointed to advise the inquiry say they have been sidelined by the officials conducting it.
They describe a process flawed from the start. The parameters of the inquiry were set by government officials with no input from Muslims. They said they had no way to request that the inquiry look into certain issues, like their treatment by law enforcement agencies in the years before the attacks.
Several of the Muslims on the panel say the inquiry has prioritized evidence from government officials who they say were negligent in the lead-up to the massacre over the testimony of Muslims. The investigators were more than two months into their work before they convened the first meeting of the Muslim advisory panel. And participants said that meeting was virtually devoid of substance and left them unsure of what they were expected to contribute.
I have been amazed that the media in New Zealand has been so quiet on the subject of blame. Clearly we need to learn what our agencies did wrong and where they need to change in order to better protect New Zealanders from terror attacks in the future. Is this inquiry going to sweep all the mistakes under the rug?
These perceived missteps, combined with a rush to finish the inquiry by year’s end in an almost entirely closed-door process, has led Muslims on the panel and in the broader community to fear that they will be denied justice and that the government will sidestep full scrutiny.
“Not only has this man attacked and killed our people, it’s also making us feel like we have no power, no control over the outcome of this process,” said Sahra Ahmed, a member of the advisory panel who is a nurse in Christchurch.
Shayma’a Arif, a refugee advocate and lawyer who is also a member of the panel, described a deficit of trust. “It’s not very transparent, and people don’t know if they can trust the system, they don’t know if they can trust the process,” she said. “It seems like a very whitewashed and tokenistic process.”
One of the challenges that the inquiry faces is communication as officials are trying to talk to people who “speak more than half a dozen languages and come from dozens of cultural backgrounds.”
[…] a spokeswoman for the inquiry, Sia Aston, said the inquiry, known as a royal commission, wanted to hear from any member of the Muslim community who wished to offer input.
[…] Memos released by the commission show that the inquiry has heard from few Muslim organizations. The list of those interviewed is otherwise made up almost entirely of government officials, security figures and academics.
[…] “I’ve been to neighborhood meetings that were better organized,” said Ms. Ahmed, the nurse. “The day was a shambles.”
By that time, the inquiry’s framework — known as the terms of reference — had long been set, including the exclusion of any examination of the police response to the attacks. […]
“The only people spoken to about the terms of reference were the government agencies responsible for the neglect that led to March the 15th,” Ms. Qur’aan said. That neglect, some critics say, includes apparent inaction on the part of intelligence agencies after Muslim leaders warned of a rising tide of white supremacist threats.
I would be very interested to learn where those threats that they warned about were coming from. Were they warning of an overseas threat or a local one? Was the threat vague and general or were there specific threats from individuals or groups towards their Christchurch community?
[…] Ms. Ahmed, Ms. Qur’aan and Ms. Arif all said that despite their misgivings, they wanted to remain in the group because they felt a responsibility to other Muslims. But a fourth member, Guled Mire, a refugee advocate, was so dismayed by the first meeting that he resigned.
“This isn’t an inquiry that was created to seek justice for us,” Mr. Mire said. The fact that the terms of the investigation were not considered for public consultation, as they had been in past inquiries, was particularly galling, he added.
[…] Because the commission will be reticent to say anything that could prejudice a fair trial, Mr. Allan said it was “challenging” to know what information the December report could even include.
Many Muslims say they are especially disappointed that the police response to the shootings was not included in the scope of the commission’s investigation.
Questions about officers’ actions — including about a timeline of events laid out by the police detailing a rapid response, as well as concerns that emergency workers were not allowed to tend to badly injured victims quickly enough — remain major points of discussion at the Christchurch mosques.
The police said in a statement that their response to the attacks would be assessed in a separate, independent investigation.
Ms. Qur’aan, a member of Al Noor mosque, the first the gunman struck, said the authorities were not taking advice from Muslims, even though they did not have the skills needed to deal with the issues on their own.
“It feels like they’re not 100 percent sure what they’ve gotten themselves into and they don’t really know how to move forward,” […]
nytimes.com/2019/08/28/world/asia/christchurch-mosque-shootings-inquiry.
