PRESS RELEASE EUROPE NEEDS URGENT MEASURES AGAINST HATRED

Oslo´s massacre is a turning point in the fight against right wing extremism


Movement against Intolerance expresses maximum condemnation for the terrorist attack that took place on Friday 22 in Oslo and that has left at least 91 casualties. Also expresses its solidarity with the Norwegian people and condolence with victim’s families and the Labour Party for the damage that this killing has caused among its younger members. This attack is a direct result of hatred and extreme intolerance and confirms that Democracy needs to protect itself and its citizens from racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic speech, that promotes the right-wing fanaticism of terrorists as Behring Anders Breivik, which has perpetrated a brutal slaughter unprecedented in that country.

Europe can’t turn its head about the growing intolerance. Institutional indolence must finish and governments and institutions should review their action against hate crimes, which threaten to destroy intercultural coexistence. Penal Codes should be strengthened. Governments should gather a better intelligence on groups and individuals who promote hatred and establish an all out democratic struggle on all fronts against fanaticism, whose capacity for damage has been demonstrated in Oslo.

We are not in front of a madness individual, but against the action of a fanatical terrorist which makes the phobia about the different, in this case youth progressive people, reason for his killing. Inspired by modern neo-Nazi practice of "leaderless resistance", that encourage individual quasi-action, a kind of ultra fanatism with terrible precedents as the massacre of Oklahoma with 168 casualties, European governments have proved again that their prevention is still inefficient.

Movement against Intolerance asks Europe to prevent and legislate against hate crimes, and to be more proactive against its perpetrators. Education for tolerance and raise awareness on the problem must be promoted. In Spain we claim to reform the Penal Code, to create Prosecution Offices against Hate Crimes all around the country and to ban any organization that encourages and spread criminal racism and intolerance.