Friday 24 August 2012

On the conviction against Anders Behring Breivik

Today the conviction against Anders Behring Breivik will be known. I don't wish to have opinions on what the court decides, in this they know much more than me. I just wish that the conviction, whatever it will be, will be just. Well founded, correct. And, as a dad to a survivor from Utøya just said on the radio: "not coloured by all these emotions that we are in right now". He wished that the conviction would stand as fair, also 50 years from now, and that is what I wish too.

But if I still were to hope for something, of what this just and correct conviction will be... mental treatment or prison... then I hope for prison. Only because that would make it harder for the establishment to dismiss Mr Anders as just a lone lunatic. Because a lone lunatic we will of course never be able to fully protect ourselves from! In that case there isn't so much more to do, except going over our security routines.

This might further delay the necessary awakening. To see that what we are doing isn't leading in the right direction, and that there is a sky-rocket price to be paid. To realise that we must once more engage all our efforts to start living together in peace! With all that that entails of tolerance, respect, knowledge, understanding and solidarity with each other in times of hardship, perhaps with people who flee to us for their lives. That whatever it costs to do so, the price for not doing it is so much higher.

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Read the follow-up: Afterthought on Breivik's prison sentence, 2012-08-31

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