enru
×
×

Internet platform for studying Xenophobia, Radicalism and Problems of Intercultural communication.

Attacks

Attacks A Finnish rap artist of Tanzanian origin James Nikander became a victim of national radicals.

Despite the generally peaceful conduct of Finnish far-right organisations, there have been cases of xenophobic violence. On July 19, participants of debate on the status of sexual minorities suffered from a poisonous gas attack where one person was hospitalised with an eye injury.

On November 8, representatives of the Finnish Jewish community security called upon the members to refrain from wearing kippahs for security reasons. The number of attacks orchestrated on the grounds of anti-Semitism increased in the observation period with around ten incidents of this type of occurring each month.

On January 31, 2013, three neo-Nazis tried to interrupt the presentation of the book about the a Finnish far-right movement in the city library of Jyväskylä. They tried to enter the hall, where the authors Lee Andersson and Mikael Brunila spoke to an audience of about 100 people. They were stopped by a security guard, whom they wounded. On March 1st Finnish police informed the Jewish community that one of the men arrested in Jyvaskyla was gathering information about Finnish Jews . On April 18th Romanian Roma beggars were attacked in Helsinki.

There have been cases of threats against antifascist activists. On November 18 Johan Beckman, the leader of the Finnish Anti-Fascist Committee discussed a letter in which an anonymous person had threatened to kill him. The letter also revealed the date of when his apparent murder would take place as December 6, the Independence Day of Finland. Beckman’s family was forced to leave their home in October because “unknown cars had been driving about” and the neighbours reported receiving calls from anonymous people inquiring about Beckman’s private life. His wife even received a bullet in the mail.

In March 2013, “Helsingin Sanomat” published an article on the threats, which are systematically received by specialists and researchers concerned with the rights and interests of immigrants.

A Finnish rapper of African descent, known as “Black Barbarian” became a target of libellous comments and racist threats on Twitter. In response, he reposted all comments as examples of casual racism in Finland.

Since 2016, Finland has been regularly reporting hate crimes to the OSCE/ODIHR. So, in 2016, according to official data, 1311 such crimes were committed, in 2017 - 1497, in 2019 - 880, in 2019 - 900, and in 2020 - 1177. Such forms of intolerance as defamation and criminal discrimination were not included in the statistics. More than half of the crime milestones were physical assaults. Roma, Muslims, Jews and then representatives of the LGBT community most often became their targets.

Back to list

© 2017 Civic Nation
Created by – NBS-Media