Ten years of the Utöya attack: “Hate still exists”

Even a decade after the right-wing extremist Breivik’s attacks in Oslo and on the island of Utöya, the country has not yet come to terms with the incredible attack. The secret service, meanwhile, warns of new terror.

At noon, church bells rang all over Norway. In the capital, Oslo, the memorial service in the cathedral had just ended. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg spoke there. Back then, on that dark July 22nd, 2011, he was Norway’s head of government.

The bomb exploded directly in front of the skyscraper with his office, killing eight people before the “terrorist”, as Anders Breivik is usually only called in Norway, another 69 mainly young people in the summer camp of the social democratic youth organization on the island of Utöya brutally shot.

Stoltenberg was one of the key figures in trying to cope with the hitherto completely unimaginable. The Norwegians didn’t really make it. “Ten years ago we met hatred with love. But hate still exists. We see it when survivors are threatened and people are afraid to express their opinions freely,” said Stoltenberg. “Again and again we are reminded that you don’t have to fight for democracy just once.”

Ali Esbati survived Utöya and is now a member of the Left in the Reichstag. According to him, every third survivor has received threats and hate messages. “It’s really scary that so many have faced this,” says Esbati. “At the same time, it is one of the reasons that I talk as much as possible about the fact that these thoughts live on out there and are a danger for everyone, even on days when they do not lead to mass murder.”

Utöya is not over. That is the continuous theme on this day of remembrance, which only ends late in the evening with a large celebration broadcast on radio and television, with a speech by King Harald.

It is not over, says Jonas Gahr-Støre, chairman of the Norwegian Social Democrats: “One of the challenges was to talk about such cruel experiences. For years we could not talk about how a man was radicalized. How he was one Designed a worldview that moved him to such actions. ” Now we are more mature to have this discussion and that is also necessary, because the threat persists, “said Gahr-Støre.

Time is running out. A new Utöya could not be ruled out, said Siv Sørensen from the Norwegian Domestic Intelligence Service: “We believe that right-wing extremists may try to carry out terrorist attacks again. Unfortunately, we have to see that they are still relevant.”

At the time, they had all sworn to themselves: “Never again a July 22nd”. Never again dead terrorists like those in Oslo and Utöya, whose names have been read out several times today, so that at least the memory of them does not die.