They called him a mouse. A sheep. A coward. A loser. A farmer. A terrorist. A nothing. The last two allegations made against Brenton Tarrant in Christchurch’s entire court this week were the most factual; convicted of 51 counts of murder and an act of terrorism, his life sentence without release awarded him to the void. He will cease to exist.
I’m good. He was badly rumored, condemned with all the glorious and solemn efficiency of English law as practiced in New Zealand, but the thing that everyone will remember over the past few days is the testimony of those who survived the attack and the families of the victims.
They transformed the condemnation, won it back, made it their own story – again, Tarrant was removed, did nothing. The images of the murderer in his gray prison rags and his bald head will not burn themselves into the national consciousness. He was a forgetful kind of person.
And while no one will fall into a mad rush over themselves to attribute any kind of virtue to the man who executed defenseless men, women and children, at least he got out of the way at the high court.
For all the fears that he would use the condemnation to make a hate speech, he chose to remain silent. He did not laugh or stare or confront, or anything like that. Dignity probably goes too far, but he showed what looks like limitation.
Justice Mander asked him if he wanted to address the terms of his sentence. “No, thank you,” he said. And that was all he ever said, a polite little sign of an otherwise empty presence.
Tarrant’s conviction will act as a sort of purge. Justice was seen done.
“The damage to the survivors, the families of the victims, the Muslim community of Christchurch, and to the rest of New Zealand, is irreparable,” prosecutor Mark Zarifeh told the court.
That’s a pretty big claim to be made over the rest of New Zealand. It is true that we will continue to live with the knowledge and horror of Tarrant’s attack; even school children know what March 15 means. But the conviction took him out of sight.
We learned from a psychiatric report that: “He said he was terribly unhappy”. You do not say that. “The criminal described it [the attack] as impersonal, chaotic, and confusing ”.
The obscure terrorist, the bewildered perpetrator of the worst case of murder in the history of New Zealand. He regrets to the police that he did not kill any more people – he was on his way to Ashburton nearby to attack another mosque when officials rammed his car – and a new piece of information was revealed in court about a Fijian man who pulled Tarrant up next to his car, and tried to shoot, but the gun failed to fire.
Tarrant has been outspoken as a terrorist and the only man to have had life without parole – “whole life” they call it earlier in the English courts – since legislation was introduced in 2010. But a little different about him seems very interesting. He has gone from not much to nothing.
“New Zealanders,” wrote historian Michael King, “whatever their cultural backgrounds are, are benevolent, practical, commonsensical and tolerant. These qualities are part of the national cultural capital that has saved the country in the past. of the worst excesses of chauvinism and racism seen in other parts of the world. ‘
King’s sounding sentences conclude his great work The Penguin History of New Zealand, a book so massively popular that it was as if by mail to every household in New Zealand. It was published in 2003. You will note the words “in the past”.
The worst excesses of racism and pure hatred visited New Zealand on March 15, 2019. But the nobility displayed this week in the courts in Christchurch passed from one Islamic New Zealander to another, and the outflow of public sympathy and support, confirmed King’s assessment of a kind-hearted country.
Yesterday was a good day.
Steve Braunias is a journalist and author living in Auckland, New Zealand
