Utoeya hosts first camp since Norway massacre of 69 students

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-33811197

It's a tiny place - no more than a few hundred square metres of forested hillside and scattered clearings. A tranquil place of wild flowers, birdsong and lapping water.

But for the last four years, the island of Utoeya has been associated with an act of almost unfathomable cruelty.

When Anders Behring Breivik shot dead 69 mostly teenage members of the Norwegian Labour Party's youth wing, on 22 July, 2011, Utoeya took its place alongside such cities as New York, London, Madrid and Mumbai as the scene of appalling, politically motivated violence.

Now the Worker's Youth League (AUF) wants to reclaim Utoeya as a place of youthful idealism and relaxed political discourse.

As more than 1,000 young activists descend on the island, just half an hour's drive west of the capital, Oslo, the clearings are once again full of rucksacks, guitars and tents.

Next to brand-new wooden buildings where participants will discuss - among other pressing issues - how to combat
extremism in Norwegian society, the haunted cafeteria where many of their former comrades died still bears the scars of Breivik's murderous rampage.

Ragnhild Kaski, 25, remembers hiding just nearby. She heard the shooting and the screams, but never actually saw Breivik.

"The memories of that day are mostly chaos," she recalls. "I don't think anyone really knew what was going on."