“That could have been me. That could have been my brother. That could have been my own family,” Farida Moustafa told the hundreds of people gathered outside Cambridge City Hall this evening for a “Candlelight Vigil for Victims of the New Zealand Mosque Attacks.”
The 16-year-old Cambridge Rindge and Latin School student urged the crowd to remember some 50 people murdered at two mosques in Christchurch by a white supremacist gunman during Friday prayer on March 15. “Once you forget them,” she said, “you forget me.”
Brian Corr of the Cambridge Peace Commission opened the vigil by quoting New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern: “Speak the names of those who were lost rather than the name of the man who took them.”
“We will not rest until everyone is safe,” Cambridge Mayor Marc McGovern said.
The victims, Cambridge City Councilor Sumbul Siddiqui told the crowd, “they are the ones who deserve remembrance.” She warned, “This happened on the other side of the world, but hateful rhetoric and white supremecist ideology know no borders.”
On the lawn in front of City Hall, Imam Ismail Fenni of Islamic Society of Boston lead men and women in Maghrib (evening) prayer. More speeches followed.
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