OSLO, norway — Norway’s commitment to face xenophobia with tolerance on the first anniversary of bomb and gun attacks by a confessed right-wing killer is being put to the test by hostile reactions to an influx of Gypsies from Eastern Europe.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said he has been disturbed by the tone of the debate over the small camps of makeshift huts set up by Gypsies in Oslo and other Norwegian cities.
After neighbors complained of unsanitary conditions, noise and illegal construction, anti-immigration politicians called for the Gypsies, also known as Roma, to be rounded up and bussed out of Norway. Online, the debate has been raw, sometimes outright racist.
“Some of what we have seen is frightening,” Stoltenberg told Norwegian broadcaster TV2 this week. “Nobody shall be judged because they belong to a certain ethnic group.”
The anti-Gypsy sentiment has been no worse than elsewhere in Europe. In fact, many of the Roma say they are treated better in Norway than in their home countries, including Romania and Bulgaria.
But the discussion comes at an uncomfortable time for Norway, as it prepares to honor the 77 victims of the country’s worst peacetime massacre in memorial services across the country Sunday.
Confessed killer Anders Behring Breivik, facing sentencing next month, has said his July 22, 2011, bombing of a government high-rise and shooting spree at a left-wing party’s youth camp were the opening shots in a war against multiculturalism.
Virtually all of Norway condemned the attacks — even far-right groups — and Stoltenberg moved the nation with his call for more openness, democracy and inclusiveness in response to the tragedy.
The debate over immigration, more civil in Norway than in many parts of Europe, was muted for months. But a harsher tone returned as authorities received complaints over the Roma camps.
“Enough is enough. Arrange a bus, send them out,” Siv Jensen, the leader of the anti-immigration Progress Party, told public broadcaster NRK.
Although not a European Union member, Norway is a close partner of the 27-nation bloc and allows citizens of EU nations to enter freely and stay for up to three months.
The government doesn’t keep count of EU nationals, including Roma, entering the country.
The life of a gypsy
At a camp of about 100 people hidden in a forest on public land on the outskirts of Oslo, Cristian Florian Tudescu, above, a 31-year-old from Romania, said he had lived in Turkey and Greece for years before coming to Norway.
In Oslo, he said, he earns about $30 on a good day collecting and returning bottles for deposit. He also earns money selling a magazine set up by a nonprofit organization that supports Roma in Norway.
“It’s king here,” Tudescu said in broken English, adding that Norwegian people had been good to him, though he recalled isolated incidents of being spat on and called a thief.
