Neo-Nazi groups like Suomen Vastarintaliike (SVL) and the Solidiers of Odin are carrying out street patrols in a number of Finnish cities, reports Pori-based daily Satakunnan Kansa. Migrant Tales reported Saturday that SVL started street patrols in Pori, which have now expanded to three neighborhoods of that southwestern Finnish city.
The founder of The Soldiers of Odin, Mika Ranta, has admitted being a nationalist socialist, according to MTV3.
The immediate question that arises concerning these neo-Nazi street patrols is what are they doing patrolling our streets. What’s the reaction of the police service and politicians?
Are non-white people safe and could they be attacked by such neo-Nazis who are openly hostile to them?
It appears that not too many are worried. It’s a bit like the rise of far right nationalists in the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, who are just “letting off some racist steam” in parliament and municipal councils. White Finns aren’t too worried since they aren’t the target of their hateful anti-immigration rhetoric.
Western Finland deputy police chief, Timo Vuola, had nothing else to state in YLE except that such street patrols aren’t allowed to keep order.
If a Soldiers of Odin Facebook post is true, some Finns wouldn’t care less what the deputy chief said:
“I caught two of them and the rest escaped…I sat on top of one and held the other one with a hand-lock after a couple of minutes until man came to help me. The police arrived and thanked me stating that these types [asylum seekers] are a real problem…I nodded and stated: You don’t damn say! I was surprised that I didn’t get charged [by the police] for assault. I don’t care if I did. The grandmother’s and grandfather’s words [of gratitude] and expressions = priceless…?”
Why are neo-Nazi groups like the SVL patrolling our streets? Here’s what the SVL states:
“With these patrols we wanted to guarantee ethnic Finns’ weekend and at the same time encourage other Finns to become active for the sake of their family and neighborhood.
Especially sexual crimes against women have spun out of control during the fall due to the refugee crisis [sic!]. According to the National Research Institute of Legal Policy [Optula], rapes committed by Africans and Arabs are 17 times higher than those committed by whites.”
Here’s another example above how the Optula study has been used, now by neo-Nazis, to twist facts and ethnically profile whole groups.
It’s shameful that the researchers of the Optula study never bothered to remind the media that the results of the study cannot be used to make generalizations and ethnically profile whole groups.
The rape statistics used in the Optula study by anti-immigration groups, politicians and the media are an unfortunate example of how researchers in Finland have little regard for migrants and minorities in this country. What good practices did they use in the Optula study to avoid labeling whole groups?
“We don’t know how many unreported rape cases there are in this country because many of the rapes committed by Finnish men are against women they know,” Professor Vesa Puuronen told Migrant Tales in spring. “The rape case may never get reported for fear of getting her acquaintance in trouble. How many of these cases are there? We simply don’t know.”
* The Finnish name of the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The names adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings.