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Today was the first anniversary of last year's massacres in Oslo and at Utoya island in Lake Tyrifjorden in Norway. 77 people lost their lives that day.
I easily understand why the Labour Party youth organization, AUF, once bought this small island for their summer camps. Even as far up north as here, you can find spots worth being called heaven on earth. This is indeed one of them, and it is hard to imagine the horrors there of last year's killings.
When I took this picture in June, the place was empty and quiet. Today, however, it was once more buzzing with life, a large number of the hundreds of people present being survivors of last year's killings. They were there to remember and honour their friends who lost their lives, and to defy the killer and his project. His aim had been to deal a fatal blow to our flavour of democratic society, and to the Labour Party and its youth movement in particular. Today's seremonies at Utoya and in Oslo demonstrated that he had failed.
The Labour Party has been a strong supporter of gay rights, and some of the victims of last year's massacre were rising stars within the party's youth organization, and also proudly gay. Fortunately, an increasing number of gay young people are being encouraged to occupy prime positions in Norwegian politics, and many of them are ready to do so.
Sadly, some gay people seem to believe that the struggle for equal rights is not an important one, and that the gay movement is irrelevant to them, unless it can provide parties galore and cheap drinks. They could not be more wrong, and even in our country, a liberal and secular western democracy, right wing populists seem to have wind in their sails, and their anti gay and anti minorities retorics gather a disturbing number of followers, despite the fact that we are hit neither by economic deprivation nor rising unemployment.
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