Norway soul-searches on crime after rampage
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China Daily via Agencies, August 3, 2011
Sentencing and surveillance
Hanne Marthe Narud, a political scientist at the University of Oslo, said Norway's parliament was likely to stand against immediate public calls for harsher sentencing and more surveillance.
"A lot of these attitudes we see now are reflections of the terror event," she told Reuters, referring to the VG poll.
"I don't think the politicians will change legislation on this point as a spontaneous reaction. It may be considered, but there will be a broad debate first."
She said Norway was unlikely to see tougher security laws along the lines of the U.S. Patriot Act, which the U.S. Congress passed after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
"In 2001 it was as though someone had declared war against the United States, which al Qaeda and other groups had actually done," she said.
"This by contrast appears to be the act of one person who is sick or has his mind in a bubble. You can't really do legislation based on events like we have had in Norway."
She said public opinion has long favoured stricter punishment for violent crimes while parliament has resisted cracking down.
The country's politicians agreed on Monday that campaigning ahead of municipal elections due on September 12 should start on August 13.
Per Sandberg, chairman of the parliament's Justice Committee, said stiffer sentencing would be on the agenda when party leaders resumed debate later this month.
"I am sure ... the political discussion will be about sentences, searches by the police and everything else around this case," Sandberg told Reuters.
"My party has always wanted that. I believe there will be new measures."
Sandberg's right-wing Progress Party is an anti-immigration, anti-tax party that favours stricter prison terms for violent crimes.
In an "expression of solidarity", Turkey's foreign minister and a deputy prime minister attended the funeral of Gizem Dogan, a 17-year-old Turkish-born girl who lived in Norway for a decade before dying in Breivik's rampage.
The ceremony in Trondheim in central Norway was held in a soccer field to accommodate a crowd estimated at several thousand mourners.
"With its spirit of multiculturalism Norway is the best example for the future of humanity," Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in a news conference in Oslo later in the day.
"I call on all Muslims in Norway from tomorrow to give one flower to their Norwegian neighbours showing that this is not an issue of religion or ethnicity but of being human."
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