New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has called for a global fight to root out racist right-wing ideology following last week’s deadly attack on two mosques in Christchurch.
In one of her first interviews since then, she told the BBC that she rejected the idea that a rise in immigration was fuelling racism.
Fifty people were killed and dozens more wounded in Friday’s gun attacks.
The first funerals, of a father and son from Syria, took place on Wednesday.
Hundreds of mourners gathered at a cemetery near the Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, one of two places of worship targeted.
Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, has been charged with murder. Fifty people died in the attack.
Asked about the rise of right-wing nationalism she said: “This was an Australian citizen but that is not to say that we do not have an ideology in New Zealand that would be an affront to the majority of New Zealanders.”
She said there was a responsibility “to weed it out where it exists and make sure that we never create an environment where it can flourish”.
“But I would make that a global call,” she added. “What New Zealand experienced here was violence brought against us by someone who grew up and learned their ideology somewhere else. If we want make sure globally that we are a safe and tolerant and inclusive world we cannot think about this in terms of boundaries.”
She defended New Zealand’s record on accepting refugees, saying: “We are a welcoming country. I utterly reject the idea that in any way in trying to ensure that we have a system that looks after those who choose to call New Zealand home, that we have perpetuated an environment where this kind of ideology can exist.”
New Zealand is likely to reform its gun laws after 50 people were killed in a mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch.
In 2016 New Zealand Police estimated that there were 1.2 million legal firearms owned by civilians – that equates to around one for every four people.
So, what does the law say now?
The minimum legal age to own a gun in New Zealand is 16, or 18 for military-style semi-automatic weapons. Anyone over those ages who is considered by police to be “fit and proper” can possess a firearm.
All gun-owners must have a licence, but most individual weapons don’t have to be registered. New Zealand is one of the few countries where this is the case.
In order to own a gun legally, applicants for a firearm licence must pass a background check of criminal and medical records. Factors like mental health, addiction and domestic violence should be considered.
While most guns don’t have to be registered, a special application does have to be made to police to own military-style semi-automatic weapons, pistols, or other restricted firearms.
Because of this, police say they can’t be sure how many legally owned firearms there are in the country as there is “no record of the majority of firearms”.
As of June 2018, there were 246,952 active firearms licences including dealers and individual owners.
The year before, of the 43,509 who people applied for firearms licences, 43,321 were granted them.
Until the mosque attacks, New Zealand’s worst mass shooting was in 1990 in the small seaside town of Aramoana on the South Island, in which 13 people were killed.
That shooting prompted an amendment to the the Arms Act (1983), the main law governing gun use and ownership, restricting the ownership of military-style semi-automatic weapons. But parliament stopped short of a total ban.
The law was further amended in 2012 to clarify which weapons are restricted.
In a response to an official request for information last year, New Zealand Police published figures showing that 859 restricted-category firearms were seized by police between 2008 and 2017.
During the same period, 12,688 firearms of all types were seized.
Police figures show that in the decade to 2017-18, there were 28 homicides involving a firearm where the offender had a current firearms licence, and 126 homicides where the offender had never held a firearms licence.
