Oslo Burning

Today I witnessed a demo.

I think it started with the pro-israel demonstration in front of the government, by the anti-Israelians who decided to make a counter-demo, only with firebombs and the likes.

Later in the evening there was a parade of people with lit torches. Now, that was an amazing sight. Simply a bunch of people demonstrating peacefully against the gaza-situation and for world peace in general. And by «a bunch» I mean somewhere around 10.000.

The demo I’m talking about was later.

After the thing with the torches, some people started moving towards the national theatre and the castle (maybe they were moving towards the Israeli embassy?). They came to the roundabout by the national theatre station, in the city centre. Me and my mate went around the police barricades and found some safe places to stand behind the police, but not directly in the aiming range of the angry mob.

We saw fireworks being thrown towards the police and the people (one even hit a policewoman in the leg), various rocks being thrown, pipes, stuff, small balls of some sort, smoke grenades, etc.

All while the police stood there in their SWAT-gear, trying to figure out what to do with the MANY people gathered in front of them.

A journalist nearly got hit by … something … and stood behind a police truck covering for quite a while before he managed to get into safety with me and my friend. «This is the worst fucking thing I’ve ever experienced!» was his words. I don’t suspect he was signing up for that, no.

Many journalists came prepared. I saw quite a few camerabearing people in «press»-vests and gasmasks. What a great idea that turned out to be when the police pulled out their teargas! In a few seconds, the whole area around the roundabout was filled with smoke (I was luckily standing behind the police with the wind at my back, which means no teargas in my face! Yay!). By the time the fog lifted, the area was a lot emptier. I could see a bunch of journalists running into this entrance to film and photograph something, which I later found out was some kids covering from the gas. It was slightly annoying not knowing that until later, realising I’d seen a bunch of photographers of both still and moving imaging running in there, getting their shot and run out. How about helping the poor kids getting away?

After this massive amount of gas, the riots spread. In front of the university, barricades were made by a bunch of trashbins and some fire, and someone made an attempt at burning down a tree. Que people throwing filled bottles at the police and trashing an empty policetruck (and then, some more gas). More barricades and riots were going on further down the Norwegian pride street Karl Johan. A lot of shops had their windows broken, all the way home to where I live.

In the middle of all this, the police brought dogs and horses into action. It seemed like every single person and animal in the force was on duty tonight.

It also seemed like every single idiot was out. This is an actual (translated) quote from a guy on the rioting side: «You call this a FREE NORWAY? HAH!»
- Yes, actually, I do. I call this a Norway where the freedom of speech is strong. I also call this a Norway who don’t agree with violence. If this wasn’t a free Norway, the police would have brought something way stronger than teargas. So, you disagree to having your face peppered after throwing objects at people? You disagree to having your face peppered when you’ve been involved in vandalising the centre of the capital of Norway? Well, I disagree with you, then.

On the way home, we even found a broken waterline. Don’t know if that has anything to do with this, but it sure was a bit funny to see the cafés and bars making bridges out of chairs.

Finally, just before we got home, we found a fountain full of candlelights, to «remember the fallen of Gaza». Now, that was a demonstration I could actually fancy seeing the police help out with. And how amazing wouldn’t it be to see a policeman in his SWAT-gear putting down a candle for that?

The violent demonstrations didn’t seem to be much other than a bunch of angry kids not really know what they were angry about, but attacking whoever just because. It was not a demonstration worthy of the Palestinian lives being lost. It was not a demonstration for peace, and it certainly was not a demonstration for the freedom of speech.

On the links below you can see pictures and videos of the event (all articles in Norwegian):

http://www.dagbladet.no/2009/01/08/nyheter/innenriks/demonstrasjon/oslo/4300558/

http://www.aftenposten.no/spesial/bildeserier/article2856510.ece

http://www.aftenposten.no/webtv/?id=12574 (video)

http://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/midtosten/artikkel.php?artid=545932 (video and some images)

http://atvs.vg.no/player/?id=20637 (video)

http://atvs.vg.no/player/?id=20635 (video)

http://www1.vg.no/bildespesial/show/spesial.php?id=6615 (image album)