In India, we have seen hatred towards Muslims being fuelled and sustained by words and deeds.

Size does not matter. A small country can outshine big ones by moral clarity and strategic vision in the leadership stakes, as New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has shown.

Ms Ardern’s exemplary words and actions after a terrorist shot dead 50 Muslims in two mosques in Christchurch unequivocally signals that New Zealand, a country of about five million people, is pluralistic, and that it will ferociously push back against the ideological infrastructure which nourishes majoritarian visions. Ms Ardern could have chosen to express shock, horror and stop at condemning the terror attack. But she went way beyond. Her first response, even before all the details were known, leaped out to millions across the world. She said: “They have chosen to make this their home. They are us.”

By this simple statement, Ms Ardern had bridged the “us and them” divide that stalks natives and those of immigrant stock, and minority populations everywhere. What she said was to affirm a simple but much-needed message — the terrorist who had come from Australia killed Muslims who were not “they” but “us” New Zealanders.

Ms Ardern has been covering her head while meeting families of the victims — a mark of cultural sensitivity. She has also shown her astuteness by declaring that she would never take the name of the terrorist, thereby denying him, and people like him, the notoriety they seek. She asks people to remember the victims by name instead. This is not just symbolism. The conscious de-personalisation of the terrorist shows an astute way to deal with extremism and terrorism. Concretely, Ms Ardern has followed up with plans to overhaul New Zealand’s gun laws.

If Jacinda Ardern’s words and deeds were mealy-mouthed platitudes, they would not have resonated with so many people across the world. They resonate, including with this writer, and many others in India, because they are the powerful signals we are looking for in an increasingly polarised society where the “us and them” divide is leading to rising stigmatisation and violence.

It is as important to neutralise and counter the ideological infrastructure that pushes people to become terrorists as to catch the terrorists and their allies. At a time when anti-minority rhetoric threatens to rip apart social cohesion in democracies across the world, Ms Ardern matters, because she is explicitly telling people who are visibly or culturally different from the “majority” that they are part of the same family, not outsiders. This is intended to make them feel secure when they are at their most fragile. Crucially, Ms Ardern did not resort to what-aboutery in the hour of crisis.

This should make us in India introspect deeply. Our multi-cultural fabric is being ripped apart by an ideology that is gaining traction and that privileges the sentiments of the most bigoted members of the majority community. One of the most worrying trends on the social media, which is playing an increasingly important role in shaping public opinion in this country, is the tendency to conflate two very different things — radical Islamic terrorist groups and ordinary Muslims. It is dangerous what-aboutery to start talking about Islamic terrorist groups each time Muslims are targeted by terrorists simply because they are Muslims, though they have nothing to do with terrorism. The Christchurch attack was an act of terror by a white supremacist who unapologetically hates Muslims and every other minority group.

In India, we have seen hatred towards Muslims being fuelled and sustained by words and deeds. Take the most recent example of the attacks on Kashmiri students and shopkeepers in different parts of the country when an Islamist terrorist linked to Jaish-e-Mohammed attacked a CRPF bus in Pulwama, killing over 40 jawans.

What would have helped is an immediate, unambiguous signal, which went beyond just expressing grief, anguish or condemnation. Like an immediate, unequivocal statement from the Prime Minister that while terrorists and their minders will be dealt with severely, ordinary Kashmiris were “us” and attacks on them of any kind is an attack on us. He needed to make it very clear at once that the ideological infrastructure that equates every Kashmiri and every Muslim with all that is bad will not be tolerated.

These statements were made, but they were weak, and they came late. Nor was this identification with victims of terror demonstrably shown each time an ordinary Muslim was lynched, whether in the name of protecting the cow or anything else. Instead, what we have seen are immediate and provocative statements by other lawmakers. Take just one example: Bharatiya Janata Party MP Vinay Katiyar was quoted in the media as saying, while replying to questions on mob lynching: “When such incidents happen, people from the other community should also think about it. They shouldn’t touch cows when they know Hindus get aggressive over it. They shouldn’t kill cows.” This emboldens extremist peddlers of hate and leads to hate crimes.

Here is some data. “The Observer Research Foundation in March 2018 released a study based on a statistical mapping of hate speech and counter-speech on the social media pages active in India. The study, a first of its kind, revealed that religion and ‘religio-cultural’ practices related to food and dress, were the most explicit basis for hate as expressed in Indian social media: they accounted for a rise from 19 to 30 per cent of the incidents over the one-year timeframe of the study,” points out Maya Mirchandani in a August 2018 paper titled “Digital hatred, real violence: Majoritarian radicalisation and social media in India”. She wrote: “The data was gathered from public pages in two separate month-long time periods spread over 12 months starting from July 2016. Most of the comments incited bodily harm or violence against people belonging to India’s Muslim community who comprise about 180 million of the country’s 1.2-billion-strong population… Subjects that evoked hate speech ranged from opposition to inter-faith marriage between Hindus and Muslims, positions on universal human rights, and the contentious issues of cow protection and beef consumption.”

There is a moral as well as a business case for social cohesion. No country or society can realise its potential if specific groups of people are made to feel they don’t belong and made to cower in fear of physical and psychological attacks. Jacinda Ardern understands this. India’s political leaders, from the top to the bottom, could learn a lot from her.

Agencies

Christchurch, March 18 Nasheman News :A court here on Monday refused to grant bail to an 18-year-old teenager accused of sharing a video of the March 15 Christchurch mosques shootings in which the gunman livestreamed his massacre of 50 people.

The teen faces two charges: one of sharing the video and a second for posting a photograph of one of the mosque’s attacked with the message “target acquired” along with other chat messages “inciting extreme violence”, The New Zealand Herald reported.

The teenager appeared at the Christchurch District Court today and was granted name suppression. However his request for bail was refused by Judge Stephen O’Driscoll.

The police has said that the teen was not involved in the shootings at the Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Avenue Masjid that also left 40 others injured.

He is due back in court next month.

The teen was initially charged with publishing insulting material with intent to excite hostility or ill will against a group of persons on the basis of race, ethnicity, or national origins. 

That charge was withdrawn on Monday and replaced by the two new charges.

The maximum sentence for each of the charges is 14 years in prison.

Wellington, Nasheman News : New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Monday vowed to unveil reforms to the country’s existing gun laws in the wake of the March 15 Christchurch mosques shootings that claimed the lives of 50 people.

At a news conference here, Ardern said her cabinet has agreed “in principle” on proposals to change the country’s gun laws in response to the terror attack, but she stopped short of revealing what those changes might be, CNN reported.

Ardern said more details will be released once her cabinet “has worked through the in-principle decision” taken on Monday.

“As a Cabinet we were absolutely clear, the terror attack on Friday (March 15) was the worst act of terrorism on our shores,” she said.

Echoing the Prime Minister’s remark, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, who also appeared beside Ardern, said: “This was a cabinet decision… The reality is after March 15, our world changed forever, and so will our laws,” Peters said.

New Zealand First is part of the ruling coalition along with Ardern’s Labour Party. It’s the third-largest political party in the country and leans to the right on many issues, including immigration.

Ardern also confirmed there would be a review of security agencies’ actions following the shootings at the Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Masjid that also left over 40 others injured, The New Zealand Herald reported.

The review will look at what the agencies knew, or should have known, and whether there were any blocks to information-sharing.

It will also probe accused gunman, the 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant’s travel and use of social media.

Regarding the injured persons, health authorities said on Monday that nine people were still in a critical condition.

David Meates, chief executive of Canterbury District Health Board, said in a statement that two others would be released from hospital on Monday.

“There is still a four-year-old girl in a critical condition in Starship Hospital in Auckland,” Meates said. “Her father has been transferred to Auckland and remains in a serious but stable condition.”

Meanwhile, TradeMe, one of New Zealand’s biggest internet auction websites, said in a statement that it will pull all semi-automatic weapons from its platform, following their use in the attacks.

The site said that it would halt the sale of semi-automatic weapons while it waited “for more clarity from the government”.

Kuala Lumpur, Nasheman News : AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes has deleted his Facebook account over the circulation of a video of the Christchurch mosques carnage that claimed the lives of 50 people, saying the social media giant needed to “clean up and not just think of financials”.

Fernandes, who had 670,000 followers, announced his decision in a series of tweets on Sunday, reports CNN.

“The amount of hate that goes on in social media sometimes outweighs the good,” he said in a tweet. 

“Facebook could have done more to stop some of this.”

For at least 17 minutes on March 15, the suspected gunman livestreamed his massacre at one of the two mosques.

New Zealand police alerted Facebook about the livestream, and Facebook said it quickly removed the shooter’s account and the video. 

But that was not enough for Fernandes. Although the CEO said he was a “social media fan”, the livestream caused him to leave Facebook.

“It is a great platform to communicate,” he tweeted. “Strong engagement and very useful but New Zealand was too much for me to take along with all the other issues.”

On Saturday, Facebook said that it removed 1.5 million videos of the attack.

[Nasheman news] Hyderabad  More than 24 hour after the terror attack at two mosques in New Zealand’s Christchurch city, a man from Hyderabad remains missing while another who was shot at is recovering.

Mohammed Sayeeduddin was still waiting for information about his son Farhaj Ahsan, 31, who remained missing.

“We are still waiting for information. He is still listed as missing,” an anxious Sayeeduddin told IANS on Saturday.

Farhaj’s wife and her uncle, who rushed from Australia, were at a hospital in Christchurch, waiting for the authorities to provide some information. 

Farhaj, a software engineer, was at Al Noor mosque for Friday prayers when the terrorists opened indiscriminate fire on worshippers.

He used to regularly offer Friday prayers at Al Noor as he lives in a nearby neighbourhood with his wife and two children. 

Like every day, Sayeeduddin rang up his son, unaware of what was going on at the mosque. “We speak to him over phone every day around afternoon and today being Friday I rang him around 8 a.m. but he did not respond,” the father had told IANS hours after the mass killing.

He then called his daughter-in-law, who informed that there has been an attack at the mosque and she has failed to reach Farhaj over his mobile phone.

She later went to hospitals with a picture of her husband and after a long wait, the authorities told her that he is among 19 people missing.

Farhaj, who did his MS from Auckland University, worked for various companies.

Ahmed Iqbal Jehangir, another man from Hyderabad who was also at the same mosque, was injured. He received a bullet on his chest.

“Alhamdulillah (grateful to Allah). He is out of danger and recovering,” his brother Mohammed Khursheed Jehangir told IANS in Hyderabad on Saturday.

According to information received by Khursheed, a surgery was performed on Ahmed at a hospital in Christchurch and it was successful.

Ahmed, settled in New Zealand for 15 years, stay in the same neighbourhood where the tragedy struck and runs a Hyderabadi food restaurant near Al Noor mosque. His wife and children were safe. 

Khursheed plans to leave for New Zealand to see his brother.

Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi has tweeted to Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj, urging her to provide immediate assistance to the two families to facilitate their travel to New Zealand.

The Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) chief later tweeted again to thank Sushma Swaraj for personally updating him about the efforts of the Foreign Ministry in assisting Ahmed and Ahsan’s families.

[Nasheman news] Christchurch A day after 49 people were killed in the horrific Christchurch mosques shootings, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Saturday showed solidarity to the Muslim community, saying “this is not the New Zealand people know”.

She made the remark during her 40-minute address at the Christchurch Canterbury Refugee Centre, where she delivered a message of unity to the country’s Islamic community, the worst affected by the bloody massacre of Friday, when gunmen opened fire at two mosques.

“You were quick to mention this is not the New Zealand that you know. I want to reaffirm that today. This is not New Zealand,” Arden, draped in a black pant-suit with a dupatta covering her head, told the Muslim leaders and the media in attendance.

“Bodies are still being removed from mosque. Emergency services are still removing bodies from the Deans Avenue mosque where 41 people were killed on Friday,” she said.

The Prime Minister hoped that all the bodies would be cleared on Saturday. 

Ardern announced that families who lost their loved ones in the two shootings would be entitled to compensation.

She said police security at mosques across New Zealand would continue until “it is deemed there is no longer a threat”.

More charges would also be laid against the Australian accused of the Christchurch attacks. The 28-year-old faced court on Saturday morning and was charged with one count of murder.

“It absolutely was his intention to continue with his attack,” she said at the Centre.

Ardern has already announced that there will be changes to the country’s gun laws in the aftermath of the massacre, New Zealand Herald reported.

According to TVNZ, Ardern visited the Centre with Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and opposition National Party leader Simon Bridges.

New Zealand’s iconic silver fern will adorn the Sydney Opera House, one of Australia’s most recognisable landmarks, on Saturday night

New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced the show of respect on her official Twitter account, saying it was a “symbol of solidarity, support and respect”.

New Zealanders have been leaving tributes to the victims near the Christchurch Botanical gardens, close to the Al Noor mosque where 41 people died, The New Zealand Herald reported.

Some have left flowers, while other have written on the pavement in coloured chalk. “From the depths of our hearts, we are sorry,” one message said.

Friday’s killing was a terrorist attack that appeared orchestrated for the social media. The brutal shootings were previewed on an infamous Internet message board and then graphically live-streamed on Facebook.

An 87-page manifesto, found by authorities after it was posted online, was filled with anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim ideas.

Bangladesh team manager Khaled Mashud said that the team was just “about 50 yards from the mosque”, which was the site of a terror attack in Christchurch on Friday. Following the attack, the third and final Test between New Zealand and Bangladesh was cancelled and Mashud told reporters that the incident they witnessed was “straight out of a movie scene”.

As the attack on the Masjid Al Noor mosque in Hagley Park took place, the team were initially barred from leaving bus but eventually made their way to the team hotel.

Speaking to reporters at the team hotel, Mashud said: “This was a kind of accident that we would never expect nor want in any part of the world. We are very lucky because we had a number of us, about 17 of us, in the bus. Soumya Sarkar was also there, and we were all heading to the mosque for prayers.

“Only two of the players had stayed back in the hotel, and rest of the squad had gone there. We were very close to the mosque, and we could see from the bus. We must have been about 50 yards from the mosque.”

Mashud narrated what took place as the team was heading to the mosque and admitted that they were “really lucky” to not be caught in the crossfire.

“I would say we were really lucky. Had we reached even three or four minutes earlier, we probably would have been inside the mosque. This could then have been a massive incident. We are very thankful that we weren’t caught in the crossfire, but what we saw was straight out of a movie scene.

“We could see bloodstained people staggering out of the mosque. Maybe in about eight-ten minutes, we were all inside the bus and were sitting with our heads bowed, just in case someone fires at us.”

Then the team escaped through the back gate to the ground and in the dressing room before they safely managed to get to the team hotel. He also confirmed that the entire team and support staff are healthy and at the hotel and that their plans to return home are being worked out.

“They have told us and will send an official mail by 6:30 in the evening. Our plan to return has also been chalked out with the people in charge of logistics,” he added.

Mashud also appreciated the New Zealand cricket board for their efforts and admitted that it was unfortunate that the third Test had to be cancelled.

Agencies

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday said India cannot have dialogue with Pakistan unless the neighbouring country acted against terror outfits on its soil, asserting that “talks and terror cannot go together”.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday said India cannot have dialogue with Pakistan unless the neighbouring country acted against terror outfits on its soil, asserting that “talks and terror cannot go together”. Talking on ‘India’s World: Modi Government’s Foreign Policy’, she stated that Pakistan needs to control the ISI and its army who are bent on destroying the bilateral relations time and again.

“We do not want talk on terror, we want action on it. Terror and talks cannot go together,” she said.

Swaraj also questioned Pakistan’s retaliation to the Indian air strikes in Balakot when, she said, India had specifically targeted the terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).

“Why did the Pakistani military attack us on behalf of JeM? You not only keep JeM on your soil, but fund them and when the victim country retaliates, you attack it on the terror outfit’s behalf. “If Imran Khan (Pakistan prime minister) is so generous and a statesman, he should give us Masood Azhar,” she said.

The external affairs minister said India can have a good relationship with Pakistan, provided the neighbouring country “takes action against terror groups on its soil”.

On her invitation to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meeting, she said India avenged the humilation meted out to it 50 years ago by becoming the ‘guest of honour’ at the OIC meet this year. “In 1969, India was humiliated when it was not allowed to participate in the meeting even after reaching the venue after Pakistan protested against India’s then foreign minister’s participation. But now, 50 years later, it was India that was on the seat of the guest of honour, while Pakistan’s seat was empty,” she said.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had expressed reservations about the invitation to Swaraj for the OIC meeting, and later decided to boycott the meeting of the 57-member Muslim grouping held earlier this month. Talking about the foreign policy of the current government, Swaraj said it was based upon the two principles of “national interest supreme” and “world is our family”.

“People often ask us what we get by our frequent travel to countries. I want to tell them we do not travel to have fun, we travel to build our relationship with other countries and it is because of our ties with these countries that we were able to rescue 7,000 people from Yemen. The strength of our bilateral ties was also reflected in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) elections,” she said.

“I have seen the strength of this relationship time and again,” the senior BJP leader said, adding that at the ministerial level, Indian leaders have visited 189 out of 193 countries.

Swaraj added that the country’s global profile has improved in the last five years.

Nasheman News : Officials from India and Pakistan on Thursday held “detailed and constructive” discussions on the Kartarpur corridor which will enable pilgrims from India to travel to the Sikh shrine inside Pakistan through a dedicated corridor.

“Both sides held detailed and constructive discussions on various aspects and provisions of the proposed agreement and agreed to work towards expeditiously operationalizing the Kartapur Sahib Corridor,” a joint press statement issued after the meeting on Thursday said.

The United States and India on Wednesday agreed to strengthen security and civil nuclear cooperation, including building six U.S. nuclear power plants in India, the two countries said in a joint statement.

The agreement came after two days of talks in Washington. The United States under President Donald Trump has been looking to sell more energy products to India, the world’s third-biggest buyer of oil.

The talks involved Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale and Andrea Thompson, the U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.

“They committed to strengthen bilateral security and civil nuclear cooperation, including the establishment of six U.S. nuclear power plants in India,” the joint statement said.

It gave no further details of the nuclear plant project.

The two countries have been discussing the supply of U.S. nuclear reactors to energy-hungry India for more than a decade, but a longstanding obstacle has been the need to bring Indian liability rules in-line with international norms, which require the costs of any accident to be channelled to the operator rather than the maker of a nuclear power station.

Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse has been negotiating to build reactors in India for years, but progress has been slow, partly because of India’s nuclear liability legislation, and the project was thrown into doubt when Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy in 2017 after cost overruns on U.S. reactors.

Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management bought Westinghouse from Toshiba in August 2018. Last April Westinghouse received strong support from U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry for its India project, which envisaged the building of six AP1000 reactors in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

The agreement to build the reactors, announced in 2016, followed on from a U.S.-India civil nuclear agreement signed in 2008.

India plans to triple its nuclear capacity by 2024 to wean Asia’s third-largest economy off polluting fossil fuels.

Last October, India and Russia signed a pact to build six more nuclear reactors at a new site in India following summit talks between their leaders in New Delhi.

Agencies