The youth camp massacre in Norway has left reeling a former Masterton man who was to have met camp delegates at a festival in Austria.
Self-styled Christian crusader Anders Behring Breivik has admitted detonating a car bomb in central Oslo on July 22 that killed eight people. He then went to
the youth camp on Utoya Island, where he shot at least 68 people.
James Sleep, spokesman for the youth wing of the Council of Trade Unions in New Zealand, said he arrived in Salzberg for the World Festival of the International Union of Social Democratic Youth that started two days after the attacks.
A "very large" delegation from Norway that included some survivors from the massacre were to have arrived in Austria at the same time, he said.
He was due to speak on a panel this week alongside the president of AUF (Norway Worker's Youth League), the organisation targeted by the gunman.
"I know a few people who were at the camp and all of us here at the festival are still in complete shock at the attacks. It's extremely traumatising - very sad.
"We're not immune to this in New Zealand. What has happened in Norway really needs to empower us to help strengthen our own democracy and ensure young people growing up in areas like Wairarapa and across the rest of New Zealand are tolerant of different points of view and of diversity.
"These were young people standing up for a cause ... it's unacceptable that they should die at the hands of somebody who holds different views."
Mr Sleep is set to return to New Zealand this weekend.
