Finnish Families Flee Immigrant-Dominated Areas Over School Safety Concerns

The Finnish newspaper Iltalehti published an article about a Helsinki family’s experiences with immigration. According to the article, the parents decided to move away from Helsinki because their son refused to start lower secondary school at a comprehensive school in eastern Helsinki. The reason for this was the sense of insecurity caused by immigrant children, predominantly Muslims and children of African background.

The school in question has a large immigrant population and has also been in the news recently for other reasons, as Helsinki decision-makers have changed school admission catchment areas in order to bring not only immigrant children but also native Finnish children into the school. This has sparked opposition among families affected by the decision.

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In the newspaper article, the mother gave her own account of the students at the school who bullied her son. According to her, some children of foreign background would gang up on others, pick fights, and behave violently. She also described an incident in which a group of bullies had been waiting outside the family’s home with sticks so that they could beat up the boy.

The group of bullies had also mocked the boy’s name while his mother was investigating an altercation that had taken place in the residential courtyard. In other words, they showed no respect even towards adults – or at least not towards ethnic Finns.

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Finland’s Minister of Social Affairs and Health, Wille Rydman (Finns Party), commented on the matter on social media. He asked what “open-borders immigration policy,” “tolerance,” and “anti-racism” mean in practice.

He answered that they mean children becoming victims of systematic violence and learning nothing at school, while ethnic Finns are forced to become refugees in their own country. He further stated that “in many cases, immigration also means that your daughter, or in some cases your grandmother, or even you yourself, will be raped.”

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It is clear that this statement by the minister will either be silenced completely or, alternatively, prominently highlighted alongside accusations of racism. For ethnic Finnish families living in eastern Helsinki, however, this is not a matter of political debate but of their children’s future. And that is why those who have the means and understanding to do so are leaving eastern Helsinki altogether.

It therefore remains to be seen how the school involved in the above-mentioned case and its surrounding areas will change in the coming years. It also remains to be seen whether Wille Rydman is right or wrong when he claims that “mass immigration builds nothing. It is a sweeping destructive force that civilizations always succumb to – history demonstrates this unequivocally. For our enemies, migration is a key instrument for weakening us. For the defenders of our civilization, opposing mass immigration and promoting return migration is therefore a fundamental moral duty. European society and civilization will either survive or fall with it.”

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Two Recent Life-Threatening Crimes in Finland
Attitudes Toward Immigrants Are a Problem in Schools
Swedish School Shooting with Automatic Weapon Highlights Nation in Crisis

Attempted Homicides in Finland Reach Highest Level of the 2000s

In January–June, Finnish authorities became aware of a total of 48 homicides, which is four more than during the same period last year. Last year as well, the number of homicides increased compared to previous years.

In Finland, as many as 48 homicides were committed in the first half of this year. This is the highest number recorded for the first half of a year since 2014.

The change in the number of homicides has been rapid, as in 2023 the total was only 57. Last year, the number rose to 89, and this year—if the pace of the first half continues—it could approach one hundred.

Whether one hundred homicides is a lot or a little is not a straightforward question. One only needs to look back one generation, to the 1990s, when an average of about 140 homicides were committed annually—nearly half more than in the first half of this year.

On the other hand, there has also been an increase in attempted homicides in the first half of the year, with as many as 209 cases reported to the police during the first six months. This means that the number of attempted homicides in Finland was the highest in the entire 2000s.

Naturally, one might wonder whether something unusual lies behind the rise in homicides. So, I ran a Google search with the word “murhasi” (meaning “murdered”) to find a few random cases to examine.

In the first case, a 60-year-old man—apparently of Roma background based on his name—was reported to have been convicted in court of murdering his partner with a knife. In the second case, a 30-year-old man is suspected of murdering his mother, also with a bladed weapon. In the third case, a man in his thirties killed his parents, both over 70, with a pocketknife when they came to his apartment.

Based on these examples, the use of knives continues to be a recurring feature in Finnish homicides, meaning that in this sense nothing particularly unusual has occurred. Thus, at least for now, the share of immigrants in Finnish homicides is not emphasized in the same way as, for example, in Sweden, where by 2017 their share had already risen to 72 percent.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
A Sudanese Man Killed His Wife – So What?
The Finnish Stabber Has a Long Track Record of Violence
The root causes of racist violence