Suspected hate crimes reported in 2019 totaled 899 cases, which is 1.21% less from 910 cases in the previous year, according to the Police University College of Finland.
As in previous years, the lion’s share (72.3%) of suspected hate crimes was due to ethnic or national background, which rose by 2.52% fro 650 from 634 cases. Religion was the second-biggest group (14.8%) of hate crimes totaling 133 cases, down by 14.2% from 155 cases in the previous year and down 43.4% from 2017.
Reports the Police University College of Finland: “In 63 percent of the cases, the victims of the crimes based on ethnic or national origin were males and in 37 percent of the cases, victims were females. Most common crimes targeted against the males were assaults whereas majority of the crimes
targeted against females were defamation.”
And adds: “In relation to the number of people with foreign citizenship and living in Finland, those holding a citizenship of Somalia experienced the highest frequency of crimes motived by ethnic or national origin in 2019. From all the reports of offenses based on ethnic or national origin, nine percent of offenses were against a member of a Roma minority. Of these, the most common suspected crimes were defamation.”
Some NGOs like the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), state that Muslim women are the most vulnerable to Islamophobia. In France, 81.5% were women, and over 90% in the Netherlands suffered attacks due to Islamophobia.
Seventy-nine percent of Muslims do not report their most experience of discrimination to any competent organization, according to ENAR.
If this is true elsewhere, then it suggests that hate crime reported in Finland is the tip of the iceberg and hate crime against Muslim women underreported.