Left-Green leader questions young Icelanders’ protest silence

Rósa Björk Brynjólfsdóttir, chair of Iceland’s Left-Green Movement, says it is striking how little young people in Iceland protest about their own circumstances, including rising unemployment and difficulties entering the housing market, mbl.is reports.

Rósa is in France and watched large demonstrations in the city of Angers on Saturday, walking with protesters for a time. She said France has a much stronger tradition of protest than Iceland, where young people have been less vocal about issues affecting their future.

“In France, there is a strong cultural tradition of taking to the streets to demand reforms and change,” she said, adding that the tradition dates back to the French Revolution.

Icelanders have also taken to the streets over issues they consider important, she said, citing protests over Iceland’s membership in NATO, the Pots and Pans Revolution, sea-cage fish farming and Palestine.

Rósa pointed to the difficulties young people face in finding work and housing. Statistics Iceland recorded unemployment of 17.3 per cent among people aged 16 to 24 in the second quarter of this year, compared with 7.6 per cent in the same period last year.

She also noted that French students had stopped attending classes and taken to the streets to protest conditions and pressure in the education system, winning broad public support. But she stressed that she was not encouraging violence or vandalism, which she said had gone too far in France and harmed the cause of peaceful protesters.

She said it was worth considering why French students had staged such large protests over their circumstances while students in Iceland had not spoken out as strongly about their own interests.