Finnish government condemns racist attack on refugees

Between 30 and 40 protesters, one wearing a white robe like those worn by the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan in the U.S., waved the Finnish flag and shouted abuse at the bus in the southern town of Lahti late on Thursday.

“The protesters were young people from Lahti…”

Prime Minister Juha Sipila condemned the attack Friday on Twitter, saying that “threats and violence against asylum-seekers and migrants are absolutely unacceptable”.

The asylum seekers that were mostly families with children were aboard a bus when a racist protest in which the demonstrators attacked the said vehicle by using burning torches and throwing fireworks at it, wherein the refugees were received in the southern city of Lahti, according to Telegraph. “Violence and threatening behavior is always indefensible”, a government statement said. The crowd also threw stones at Red Cross volunteers, though there were no injuries.

The police held two protesters after the incident and said they were likely to face fines.

He added that Finland’s government condemned the racist protesters–of about 40 of them altogether–on Friday’s action against the refugees.

On Friday morning three more buses arrived on the scene. The fire was extinguished and no one was injured.

The noble-minded gesture of Sipila for taking in the refugees at his home this month has been a great move that naturally attracted both global attention and criticism within the country. “The news about open doors in Finland have sent many young men on a journey towards the promised land”, Mika Niikko, a deputy from anti-immigrant party The Finns, formerly known as True Finns, said last week in a statement. So far this year over 13,000 refugees, most from Iraq, have arrived in Finland, compared to 3,600 last year, the news agency said.

About 500 refugees per day have recently been crossing the Finnish land border in Tornio, near the Arctic Circle, after a journey through Sweden, Reuters reported. No incidents were reported.

Kari Kettunen, head of the crime prevention unit of the Finnish Border Guard, told Finnish national broadcaster Yle that a quarter of the arriving personal identity papers have been found with some indications of falsification.

Finland was the only European Union state to abstain from this week’s vote about relocating refugees across the member countries.

Finland had earlier proposed a drastic tax hike in order to help pay for the refugee crisis.