Several thousand people showed up at Rådhusplassen in Oslo on Monday night. It to show support after the tragic shooting in Oslo on Saturday night, where two people lost their lives. The support marking was actually canceled by the pride organizers, but still it flowed on with people on the Town Hall Square. – I understand the need to meet and mark. It is also not a criminal offense not to follow advice from the police, but I must say that it was some intense hours last night, says police director Benedicte Bjørnland to news on Tuesday morning. The event at Rådhusplassen was officially canceled, but thousands still showed up. Photo: Håkon Benjaminsen / news – We are rightly concerned in a situation that PST has described as an extraordinary threat situation, she continues. – Is it dangerous to be queer in Norway now? – No, as a general rule it is not. We are a police force that will do everything we can to secure the queers in Norway, but here we have a hypothesis that maybe the queers were the target of the action we saw, unfortunately, Bjørnland answers. Working around the clock in the Oslo police district had a lot of resources on site. Both in uniform and not. Behind the scenes, work is also in full swing to get an overview of what the police themselves describe as an “unresolved situation”. – Now PST works around the clock to clarify the situation, to gather information and make an ongoing assessment. There is no desired situation to be in what the PST chief described as an extraordinary threat situation, says Bjørnland. Two policemen in the crowd on Rådhusplassen. Photo: Erlend Dalhaug Daae / news – How long can we expect to be in such a situation? – I hope we talk soon. Maybe a few weeks, and at best a few days. I do not have that detailed information. I know that PST does everything they can – they work around the clock, repeats Bjørnland, who was previously PST manager. She says that the police work systematically and knowledge-based, but says that they will never be able to have complete control. – There is no 100 percent overview in Norway, which is a liberal democracy. Does not deploy the Armed Forces Following the recommendation to cancel, the police have received criticism from several quarters. On his Facebook page, Hallstein Bjercke, group leader for the Liberal Party in Oslo City Council, writes that he expects the police and the Minister of Justice to do what is necessary for the people of Oslo to gather and speak out in a safe environment. – If the police can not protect freedom of expression and the right of assembly in Oslo, they must ask for assistance from the Armed Forces, he writes. Hallstein Bjercke believes that the police must deploy the Armed Forces if they cannot protect freedom of expression. Photo: Else Karine Archer / news It will not happen, according to the police director. – It is not in good Norwegian, liberal tradition to deploy the Armed Forces. Now the event went well yesterday, the police had a large presence, and we will also have that at future events. We want to secure the queer after what has happened, but to deploy the Armed Forces now I would consider completely irrelevant.
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– We are rightly concerned – news Norway – Overview of news from different parts of the country
