Hate crimes rate increasing in Oslo

The rate of hate crimes reported in Norway's capital city Oslo continues to increase, police said on Friday.

According to Oslo police's hate crimes report for 2018, a total of 238 hate crime cases were reported last year, which is 20 percent more than in 2017, and an increase of 66 percent from 2015.

Most cases regard ethnicity (57 percent), followed by discrimination of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons (20 percent) and cases related to religion (17 percent), as well as hate against impaired persons (3 percent) and calls for anti-Semitism (3 percent).

In one of five conditions, however, there is a combination of different grounds for hate crime, among which a mixture of ethnical and religious biases was most frequent one, the police report said.

Most of the victims are male adults over the age of 30, with an exception related to religious hatred, where the majority of the victims are female.

Majority of victims are Norwegian citizens who were born outside Norway.

Most of the identified perpetrators are men over 30 years old, including older people. Majority of them were born in Norway and have Norwegian citizenship.