Sana Hafeez was quiet as she lit more than 100 candles on Turlington Plaza on Monday night to honor those killed in Lahore, Pakistan.
About 120 students lit candles and listened as Hafeez, who helped organize the event, spoke about a suicide bombing in Pakistan on Easter Sunday. It killed 72 people and injured 341 others in a public park, according to CNN.
A subgroup of the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which they said targeted Pakistani Christians celebrating Easter.
Hafeez, a UF microbiology and cell science freshman, said the vigil allowed students of all religions and nationalities to stand together against terrorism.
“We are so much stronger together than we are apart, and they know that,” the 19-year-old said to the silent crowd. “That’s why they try to divide us.”
A group of 18 students also said a janazah prayer, a Muslim funeral prayer to honor the dead, Hafeez said.
She said the attack in Lahore and recent terrorist attacks in Libya, Baghdad, Yemen and other countries should gather as much attention as the Brussels bombing that took place March 22.
“All these victims matter,” she said. “The lives lost here were equally important to the lives lost in Brussels.”
She said she organized the vigil after seeing there were no events to honor Pakistan’s victims. She reached out to the Pakistani Students’ Association to help her organize it.
She said more people showed up than she expected.
“It just exploded from nothing,” she said. “I think people cared because they were so surprised.”
Some of her family was in Lahore the day of the attack for a wedding, she said.
The bomb went off as they drove to dinner a mile away from the park.
Although her family was uninjured, she watched CNN for about 12 hours trying to hear news from Lahore.
“They saw the ambulances and all the carnage of it,” she said. “In the U.S. there was nothing, there was absolutely nothing.”
Shumaila Asad’s friend was a block away from the attack.
He was uninjured, but she said she feared for family and friends in the country she grew up in.
“It’s like my people; it’s my family,” said Asad, who graduated from UF in 2015. “Even though they were attacking Christians, it’s still my people.”
She wore a green and white hat embroidered with “PAK,” which stands for both Pakistan and purity.
She said she came out to the vigil to pray for the victims.
“It just brings tears to my eyes when I think about all the kids,” the 24-year-old said. “You feel for the families and the mothers. Part of my family was taken away.”
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Zubin Kapadia, a 21 year-old UF history senior, leads a group of Muslim UF community members in prayer honoring those killed during the terrorist attack in Pakistan on March 28. About 40 people attended the Monday night candlelight vigil on Turlington Plaza.
