What kind of worlds live inside the heads of people who make political statements by attacking an event like North Pride, a sexual-diversity festival organized through Sunday in the northern Finnish city of Oulu?
Writes YLE in English: “A discussion event in Oulu on the situation of gay asylum seekers was the target of a pepper spray attack that led one speaker to be hospitalized on Thursday evening.”
The hospitalized speaker was Left Alliance blogger and city councillor hopeful Dan Koviulaakso, who was rushed to hospital after an attacker pepper sprayed his face.
“It was no doubt a strategic attack against us as we oppose the persecution of gay, bi and transgender people. We’re against far-right extremists and racists,” said Left Alliance Oulu city councillor Juha Tapio, adding that security would need to be stepped up in the coming days.
Apart from condemning such an attack, it is a sad example of how intolerance roams freely our streets and mocks at our civil liberties and democratic institutions. The consequences of the attack become more ominous if we consider that on Sunday it’ll be a year after Anders Breivik killed 77 people in Norway.
Two tragic deaths of Muslims took place in Oulu this year as well.
Far-right anti-immigration/anti-minority groups should know that intolerance has no master. Nobody can control it if you let it out of the cage. It can bite back hard as we saw happen in Norway on July 22.
Finnish MPs, Jani Toivola (Green Party) and Silvia Modig (Left Alliance), are the official patrons of the event.