'I am worried for my son's soul': How the Christchurch massacre changed New Zealand

For three days they spoke. Victims, silent no more.

Widows, the wheelchair-bound, sons and daughters, lining up one by one to look Brenton Tarrant in the eye and share their grief with a still-grieving nation.

About 65 people had been due to speak but in the end, encouraged by the bravery of others, 90 people delivered victim impact statements in the High Court in Christchurch before the perpetrator of the bloody massacre was sentenced to life in jail.

Sara Qasem gives her victim impact statement during the sentencing hearing for Australian Brenton Tarrant.Credit: AP

Tarrant, 29, will never be eligible for parole - the first time such a sentence has ever been handed down in New Zealand - after pleading guilty to 51 counts of murder, 40 counts of attempted murder and one count of committing an act of terrorism for his attacks on Al Noor mosque [where 44 people died in less than six minutes] and then Linwood mosque [where seven people died 10 minutes later] on March 15, 2019.

The man who chose to livestream a massacre on Facebook did not speak in the courtroom, despite having the opportunity to do so, sitting stony-faced as victim after victim spoke.

Some abused him, telling him he should be buried in landfill; survivor Feroz Ditta told him "there is a special place in hell for you".

Sara Qasem, whose father Abdelfattah Qasem was killed, wept as she told Tarrant: "I want to hear my Dad's voice, my Baba's voice.

"I urge you to take a look around this courtroom and ask yourself who exactly is the 'other' here right now – is it us, or is it you? I think the answer is pretty clear."

Rahimi Ahmad, still unable to walk 17 months after being shot multiple times, his spine riddled with shrapnel, spoke of the impact on his 10-year-old son.

"I am worried for my son’s soul. He has nightmares often now. At first he held his emotions in, but the flashbacks of seeing me getting shot and others dying around me, [it] makes me cry thinking about it."

But after the court case, the conviction and the cataclysmic events of March 15, New Zealand confronts an existential question: how does a nation move on?

Distinguished Professor Paul Spoonley, from New Zealand's Massey University, says a theme emerged during the victim impact statements - an acknowledgment that New Zealand did not have the death penalty, and that therefore the maximum penalty of life without parole was warranted.

"So the sentence met the expectation of those in court," he says, "and I'm certain that is echoed by the majority of New Zealanders."

More broadly, Spoonley says, "this has really been a huge shock to New Zealand's collective sense of how we see our country – in particular with regard to respect for minority ethnic and religious groups and to the indigenous Maori".

"New Zealand is like Australia and Canada in many respects, a settler colonial country, but beginning in the 1970s with the introduction of biculturalism and the recognition of indigenous rights, it meant that our public spaces, our policy and political spaces give priority to indigenous rights. Australia and Canada adopted multiculturalism in the 1970s. New Zealand went down a different route in a sense.

"March 15 was a moment when we failed in our duty of care to religious and ethnic minorities and I think the origins of that are in biculturalism."

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern set a course designed to bring the nation back together - and to try and ensure such a calamity never happened again - almost immediately.

Jacinda Ardern visits members of Christchurch's Muslim community after the attack.Credit: AP

She announced a gun buyback scheme much like that announced by John Howard after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 (the New Zealand scheme bought back more than 56,000 weapons and banned semi-automatic weapons, though some have questioned the efficacy), promised new hate speech laws and wore hijab as she visited victims in Christchurch's Muslim community in the days after the attack.

She vowed never to utter Tarrant's name, to deny him the notoriety he sought, and kept to her promise as the Australian was sentenced on Thursday.

"Nothing will take the pain away but I hope you [the Muslim community] felt the arms of New Zealand around you through this whole process, and I hope you continue to feel that through all the days that follow," she said.

"The trauma of March 15 is not easily healed but today, I hope, is the last where we have any cause to hear or utter the name of the terrorist behind it. His deserves to be a lifetime of complete and utter silence."

Charles Crothers, an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Auckland's University of Technology, says Ardern did a "fantastic job of framing it as 'the Muslims who were attacked and killed were part of our society, so we were all attacked'.

"And the second thing was the way the New Zealand media respected the call to not sensationalise the reporting. There was a little criticism of New Zealand media for being a bit too complicit but it did help frame it, it meant that the message [Tarrant's extreme views and far-right manifesto] didn’t get pushed out or amplified."

Coverage of the trial has been subject to an unprecedented level of control.

Eleven New Zealand news organisations and 18 overseas media organisations applied to report on the sentencing, but live reporting was forbidden and news from the hearings was carefully controlled, with embargoes until lunchtime and the end of the day.

The consequence of this was that victim impact statements were front and centre in the last week, though Judge Cameron Mander's damning judgement of Tarrant - that a lifetime in jail could not begin to atone for the murders - was released.

"Your actions were inhuman ... you deliberately killed a three-year-old infant as he clung to the leg of his father."

Looking back at newspaper front pages from the day of the attack is akin to travelling back in time to an earlier, more innocent and pre-coronavirus age.

The front page of The Press, Christchurch's paper, on the Friday the massacre occurred featured news of a local surfing competition and a city council fight over water rights.

The headline on Saturday, the day after Tarrant arrived at Al Noor mosque at 1.40pm, was "End of Innocence", with a photo of bloodstained and bedraggled survivors.

It would be weeks before the massacre left front pages in Christchurch - and around the world - as the small city of nearly 400,000 people, still rebuilding from the devastating February 2011 earthquake, grappled with a second sickening blow to its foundations.

With the trial wrapped up and Tarrant set to commence his life sentence, New Zealand's Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters - who leads the NZ First Party and governs in coalition with Ardern's Labour - called for Tarrant to be repatriated to Australia to serve his time.

While Peters' call will undoubtedly be popular in some sections of the community, it's unclear whether this will happen given that the legal agreements to facilitate such a transfer are not in place. Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison indicated on Friday such a move was possible.

With Kiwis due to go to the polls on October 17 and the country's largest city, Auckland, due to remain in COVID-19 lockdown until midnight on Sunday, Ardern - who remains very popular with the electorate - will probably be focused on other short-term challenges in the weeks ahead.

Asked how the attacks changed New Zealand, Spoonley says they did three things.

First, the mosque attacks highlighted that government agencies were not paying adequate attention to the threat to minority communities: "It shocked New Zealanders out of our complacency in terms of how exceptional we thought we were, that we wouldn't have white supremacist terrorists in New Zealand."

Second, gun laws banning automatic weapons were passed in the parliament, though Spoonley adds that "there is unfinished business because we still don't have the promised hate speech legislation".

Third, "New Zealand's Muslim community is a little over 50,000 people, about 1 per cent of the population. What this has done is encouraged non-Muslim New Zealanders to be much more aware of that Muslim community and the threats that they face".

Abdul Aziz Wahabzadah gestures to Brenton Tarrant as he gives his victim impact statement.Credit: AP

Abdul Aziz Wahabzadah, the hero of Linwood mosque, was another of the victims to address Tarrant in court. Armed only with a small EFTPOS machine, which he threw at Tarrant as the terrorist sat in his vehicle, Wahabzadah had been fired upon repeatedly.

Then, when Tarrant dropped one of his guns, Wahabzadah picked it up and smashed the side window of the terorrist's car. Tarrant fled the scene.

"I see the fear in his eyes when he was running for his life, Your Honour," Wahabzadah told the court.

It was a coward's ending for a cowardly murderer.

In time, hopefully, fear will leave the hearts of New Zealanders.

with Stuff.co.nz