Bonus: Forgiving a killer - from Lives Less Ordinary
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Tuli pulkkamäkiä, polttareita tai puutarhajuhlia. Löydät nyt yli tuhat pysyvästi edullista tuotetta K-ruokakaupoista.
Hello and welcome to this bonus episode of the documentary from the BBC World Service. Lives Less Ordinary is our go-to podcast for extraordinary stories from around the world. We bring you episodes here whenever we can but you can search for Lives Less Ordinary wherever you get your BBC podcasts and follow us to keep up to date with our latest stories. This interview takes us to Norway. The man at the centre of this story is an expert in preventing extremism, having survived the country's worst terror attack in recent history. It's a remarkable story about how you can turn the worst thing that ever happened to you into a force for good.
You have to acknowledge that the people who hate you are also people. And I think that's the starting point for conversation.
Have you ever been hated to the point where someone wants you dead? Actually go so far as to point a gun at you and open fire. Do you think if that happened to you, you could say what we've just heard?
Like you have to acknowledge that we're all complex human beings and we're all on these weird journeys of life in some way, shape or form and we're all sort of in it together as well.
What happened to Bjorn on Utøya during Norway’s 22 July 2011 attacks?
It's an extraordinary thing about Bjorn Eyla that he really lives by that mantra that we're all in it together no matter who we are, where we come from or even what we've done. Believing that is what nearly got him killed. It's also the reason why he doesn't hate the man who pulled the trigger. There's a lot to unpack there. Let's do it. From the BBC World Service, this is Lives Less Ordinary. I'm Jo Fidgen. Bjorn is from Norway. He's a respected counter-extremism expert and he takes the view that the way to deal with violent extremists isn't to ostracise them, but to try to understand them, to care for them even. He's always been political. He joined Norway's Labour Youth Group when he was still at school because when he looked around the neighbourhood where he was growing up in Oslo, which was changing as more immigrants moved in, he felt very strongly that everyone is equal and should have the same opportunities.
I think part of it is just exposure. Growing up in that neighborhood and having friends and peers from all around the world of all sorts of different faiths, most of whom had mothers who cooked better food than what we get at home. Don't let your mother hear that. She'll be fine, I think. To me, there was beauty and strength in that.
You used the word beauty, which really stands out because that's kind of... More about poetry, isn't it, than politics?
To some extent. I mean, like, I am to some extent an artist, right? Like, I studied music, I studied theatre, etc. And for me, that's become... like a very important lens through which to view the world. And I find that in people coming together and people sharing their experiences and contributing in different ways to kind of shaping each other's lives and perspectives. And I think, you know, there's immense beauty in that.
But not all Norwegians felt the same way about immigration. And one of them, Anders Breivik, was working himself into a fury. He adopted an extremist far-right position and wrote a manifesto calling for armed struggle against multiculturalism. Fifteen years ago, in July 2011, both Bjorn and Breivik travelled to Utoya Island in a lake a short drive out of Oslo. Bjorn was 20 at the time and studying performing arts in England. He was heading to a summer camp of labour youth activists.
It's very classic southern Norwegian countryside, I would say. It's a massive lake and it has these small islands, one of which is Utøya Island, which has been owned by the Labour Youth Party since forever. It's really a magnificent place in many ways.
And lots of trees.
There's always lots of trees.
It's a beautiful place.
Yeah.
It was unthinkable that someone would seek to destroy that peace. Until that point, a Breivik was unthinkable.
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