Wellington - "Let's get this party started" are the opening
words in a distressing video circulating online on Friday showing the
first of two Christchurch mosque shootings that left at least 49
people dead.
New Zealand police said they were working to have the "footage
removed" as they urged people not to share it, while Facebook said
that they "quickly removed both the shooter's Facebook and Instagram
accounts and the video" after being alerted by police.
Later on Friday New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern echoed the
police's call, saying that citizens "should not be perpetuating,
sharing, giving any oxygen to this act of violence and the message
that is sitting behind it."
The video, almost 17 minutes long, shows a white man in camouflage
and black clothing driving to what appears to be the Al Noor mosque
on Deans Avenue in Christchurch.
There is nationalist Serbian music playing in the car and multiple
rapid-fire weapons can be seen in the passenger's seat. The guns have
writing on them including one featuring the name "Ebba Akerlund," an
11-year-old girl who was killed in a 2017 terrorist attack in Sweden.
After entering the mosque, the man appears to shoot at least two
dozen men in the building as well as at least two people in the
street. The video is filmed in the style of a first-person shooter
computer game.
He returns to the car to retrieve more weapons and then re-enters the
mosque. The video ends with the shooter driving away from the crime
scene at full speed and shooting out of the window of his car.
The proliferation of this footage online is dangerous due to the risk
of copycat killings, according to Alexander Gillespie, a professor of
International Law at University of Waikato.