Tens of thousands of rose-waving Norwegians gathered in central Oslo Thursday to deride mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik by singing a song he hates, viewing it as Marxist indoctrination.
Some 40,000 people, according to police, massed in the rain at a square near the Oslo district courthouse where Breivik is on trial for his July 22 attacks that killed 77 people, to sing “Children of the Rainbow” by Norwegian folk singer Lillebjoern Nilsen. Inside the court, the 33-year-old accused right-wing extremist sat listening without showing emotion to powerful testimony from survivors of his bloodbath on the ninth day of his trial. Drawn by an Internet campaign, the protestors streamed into Youngstorget Square wearing colourful raincoats and carrying Norwegian flags and roses, which have come to represent Norway’s peaceful response to the horrifying attacks. The culture ministers of the Nordic countries were also at the square to participate, while other similar events were to take place across Norway. Nilsen led the chorus as the crowd, including many children who came with their nursery and elementary schools, sang along, waving roses in the air. Afterwards they walked slowly together, still singing the song, to the courthouse to add their roses to the piles of flowers already lining the security barriers outside in memory of Breivik’s victims. Breivik last Friday told the court that Nilsen was “a very good example of a Marxist” who had infiltrated the cultural scene and that his song was typical of the “brainwashing of Norwegian pupils.” In reaction to his comments, two Norwegians launched a Facebook campaign calling on the public to “reclaim the song” and sing it together near the courthouse. “I felt like he was trampling on a song I grew up with and that I sing to my child,” Lill Hjoennevaag, one of those who initiated the protest, told public television NRK. The song is an adaptation of US folk singer Pete Seeger’s “My Rainbow Race” and is very popular in the Scandinavian country. Its chorus goes: “Together, we will live, each sister and each brother, small children of the rainbow and a green earth.” Nilsen has rejected Breivik’s interpretation of the song. “In fact, it’s not about people, it’s about protecting the environment,” he told daily Aftenposten. On July 22, 2011, Breivik first set off a bomb near government offices in Oslo, killing eight people, before going to nearby Utoeya island where he killed 69 people, mostly teens, attending a Labour Party youth camp. While he has confessed to carrying out the twin attacks, he refuses to plead guilty, saying his attacks were “cruel but necessary” to stop the ruling Labour Party’s “multicultural experiment” and the “Muslim invasion” of Norway and Europe.On Thursday, he listened emotionlessly as survivors of his Oslo bombing told the court of their experience on July 22.
