Norwegian youths reclaim Utoya island

UTOYA: Four years after Anders Behring Breivik shot dead 69 people on Utoya island in Norway, about 1,000 Labour Party youths gathered Friday for the first summer camp to be held there since the massacre.
The right-wing extremist killed mainly teenagers in his rampage on July 22, 2011, hunting down participants at a camp of the Labour Party’s youth wing (AUF) on the tiny heart-shaped island in the middle of a lake.
Determined to reclaim possession of the site, the youngsters — including a handful of survivors — are holding their annual camp from Friday to Sunday.
The atmosphere was relaxed as AUF head Mani Hussaini told the delegates in his opening speech: “It’s good to be back home.”
In his only direct reference to the carnage of four years ago, Hussaini said: “July 22 will forever be part of Utoya’s history... but this day is also going to go down in Utoya’s history.”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who was prime minister at the time of the attack, was attending the camp and tweeted: “Great to wake up at Utoya, and to be together with so many engaged young people.”
Many of the teenagers arrived on Utoya on Thursday, with many pitching their tents near the cafeteria, a poignant symbol of the massacre as Breivik killed 13 youths there. Bullet holes can still be seen in the building.
Before the seminars and speeches began on Friday, the teenagers held high-spirited games of football or volleyball, although armed police guards kept a careful watch.
Two police boats are guarding the waters around Utoya.
Many of the delegates wore T-shirts bearing the party slogan “Working Class Hero.”
Hussaini told reporters taken to visit the island earlier this week that Utoya was “a meeting place for young activists, a political workshop, a place for culture, sport, friendship, and not least, love.”
“Utoya is also the site of the darkest day in Norway’s peacetime history,” he added.