I’ve been keeping late hours baking but as I was getting ready to turn in, the news began breaking about the extent of the awfulness in Norway. As I write, 80 are confirmed dead at a summer camp for youth members of Norway’s ruling Labour party.
It’s terrible, terrible news, all the more vivid for me for the thought that this meeting must have been a similar sort of thing to the dozens run by our own party over the years. None of us would ever have considered Activate, or a Liberal Youth meeting a target for such an atrocity. A swathe cut through an entire generation of young political activists.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those who have lost children today.
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One Comment
This statement on the Norweigan Labour Party website deserves wider circulation:
This is an evening that will demand a great deal of us all.
The next days may be more demanding still.
We are prepared to face them. Norway stands together in times of crisis.
We mourn our dead.
We share the sufferings of those who are wounded.
And we feel with the families and friends of those affected.
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This is an attack on innocent civilians. On young people at a summer camp. On us.
I have a message for those who attacked us. And for those who are behind them.
It is a message from the whole of Norway:
You will not destroy us.
You will not destroy our democracy or our commitment to bringing about a better world.
We are a small nation, but we are a proud nation.
No one is going to bomb us into silence.
No one is going to shoot us into silence.
No one is ever going to frighten us away from being Norway.
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This evening and tonight we will take care of one another.
Comfort one another, talk, and stand together.
Tomorrow we will show the world that the Norwegian democracy grows stronger when it is under pressure.
We will find the perpetrators and bring them to justice.
The most important task this evening is to save lives and take care of all who have been hurt and their families.
I pay tribute to the police, health workers and others who have put in a formidable effort over the last few hours to help people and prevent more harm being done.
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We must never give up our values.
We must show that our open society can pass this test too.
That the answer to violence is even more democracy.
Even more humanity.
But never naivity.
That is something we owe the victims and their families.
http://arbeiderpartiet.no/Aktuelt/Nyhetsarkiv/Partiet/Shocking-and-cowardly