Vandalism
The monument to Karl Gustav Mannerheim in the Finnish city of Tampere is periodically desecrated.
In winter 2012, a wave of vandalism hit upon properties owned by Russian citizens as well as those of Russian ethnic background holding non-Russian citizenship. All of the incidents were of the same nature: offenders broke into houses and flats, destroyed any valuables found, smeared red paint or ketchup on the walls. None of the nationalist organisations claimed responsibility for this.
About ten enterprises belonging to natives of Thailand were attacked one night in Lahti in early August of 2013. Most commonly, vandals smashed windows of premises, including massage parlours and restaurants.
On September 4th the Living Word Pentecostal Church in the eastern part of Helsinki was vandalized. Window panes of the church meetings hall were covered by Islamic inscriptions.
In November 2013 in Tampere, a monument to the leader of Finland of the Second World War, Marshal K. Mannerheim, was vandalized by unknown people.
In February 2019, a mosque in the city of Oulu in northern Finland was vandalized. The attacker threw a smoke bomb at the mosque window, shattering it. Abdul Mannan, the imam of the mosque, said the attack on the mosque is the ninth since September 2017.
In March 2019, vandals desecrated a mosque in the Mellunmäki district of Helsinki. Vandal inscriptions were painted on the walls of the mosque. This was not the first time that the walls of this mosque were painted with hate speech; Hateful graffiti has already been painted on the walls several times.
In July 2019, the Israeli embassy in Helsinki, Finland, was vandalized. The glass door was smashed, and around the entrance to the building were hung Finnish stickers of the neo-Nazi Northern Resistance Movement (NRM), already banned by that time, and a banner with a swastika. This incident was the latest in a string of at least 15 acts of vandalism against the embassy since the beginning of 2018, despite the fact that the administrative action to ban NRM in Finland began in March 2017.
November 9-10, 2019, on the anniversary of the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom, coordinated attacks on property took place in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. "Yellow Star of David" stickers were posted in various places; swastikas were sprayed on the walls of synagogues; and at the Jewish cemetery in Randers, Denmark, 84 tombstones were spray-painted or tipped over. NRM leader Simon Lindberg ordered his activists in Scandinavia to "attack Jewish targets anonymously."
On the Jewish religious holiday of Yom Kippur, in September 2020, the NRM carried out a similar coordinated anti-Semitic campaign, this time mainly with posters throughout Scandinavia, including Finland, to "draw the attention of Scandinavian peoples" to "thousands of years of structural Jewish racism and plans for world domination through the letters of the Talmud, the Bible and the various interpretations of them by the rabbis. NRM members also held a rally with anti-Semitic signs outside a synagogue in Norrköping, Sweden.
A constant problem is acts of vandalism against the property of the organizers of the pride - activists of the LGBT movement in Finland. Nearly all Finnish Pride organizers who took part in a survey by the news agency STT said they had experienced some form of harassment. The survey looked at possible forms of harassment and violence against people involved in organizing a sexual and gender rights event in Finland. This experience was reported by 22 out of 25 respondents. The most common types of messages were inappropriate and offensive language, as well as vandalism and theft of pride flags.
In some areas, vandalism of rainbow symbols and theft of Pride flags has become the norm, according to Annie Rannikko, coordinator for Seta North Karelia, Finland's main LGBTI rights group. Just last year, flags were stolen in Lahti, Joensuu, Oulu and Riihimäki. The pride organizer says that in Joensuu, the theft of pride flags has become more and more common since flags began to be flown about six years ago. This year, the city of Joensuu has displayed its rainbow flag on the flagpole of the city hall tower in an attempt to prevent its theft. Some criminals go so far as to burn rainbow flags. Examples include cases in Helsinki in 2020, Kouvola in 2019 and Tornio in 2017.
