In The Wake Of Terror: "This May Not Be Your NZ, But It Is Mine!" / Roxie Mohebbi

Stop calling him a ‘shooter’. He is a terrorist. This is terrorism.

STop saying "This isn’t NZ"

This IS New Zealand.

Does it take something like this for everyone to finally see that?

7 year old me remembers picking up the phone to white supremacist pieces of trash calling my family home telling me that they’re going to come "skin my family" for being "sand n**gas".

9 year old me remembers getting called a "terrorist" so much at school that I would hide in the toilet literally every moment I wasn’t in class to avoid being asked where I was "hiding my bombs" or if my "lunch was going to blow up".

10 year old me remembers these same rotten white supremacists standing outside my bedroom late at night smoking cigarettes, attempting to scare and intimidate us. These same people breaking into our humble little home taking literally everything my parents worked tirelessly for. Me being angry at my mum for being late to pick us up from school when she was rushing to United Video to hire a PlayStation1 so my little brother and I wouldn’t notice ours was missing and realise we had been burgled.

11 year old me remembers my dad having to leave job after job because he was mocked, ridiculed, humiliated and violated every day because he wasn’t "from here". Having people give him unfair references because he took 2 important holy days off work to fast and pray - when apparently celebrating the queens birthday was legit.

13 year old me remembers my mum having her persian food cart broken into, stolen from, vandalised. Multiple times.

16 year old me remembers having people comment on a Facebook photo of my brother and I saying we looked like "rodents" and "undercover mini terrorists", on a photo of us as KIDS.

Me today knows that this is bullshit and this IS New Zealand.

Starve these people of a voice. Report these videos. Don’t share his name, his face, his identity in anyway. Don’t give him / them fame or validation.

Muslim, refugee, migrant, POC whānau & friends.. THIS IS YOUR HOME. You BELONG here. You have a RIGHT to feel safe.

I am so so so sorry society couldn’t provide you with that basic right.

Please reach out if you need support. Be gentle with yourself & with people you love.

Aroha nui.

I’m so sorry.

Roxie Mohebbi