Police foil anti-immigration demo in Helsinki

The Helsinki police on Monday foiled a move of an anti-immigrant group to stage demonstration from their makeshift encampment at Helsinki’s Central Railway Station, eye accounts said.

Earlier, the police imposed a ban on holding the demonstration in the area and ordered the anti-immigration group Suomi Ensin (Finland First) to leave the spot by 6:00pm, local media reported.

As they did not pay heed to the ban, the law-enforcers started to evict the group’s members at 6:00pm and made the area free by 8.00pm.

The police also picked up four activists of the group as they tried to deter police from carrying out the drive.

A number of people who were present at the spot appreciated the police action and expressed their joys at that time, said sources.

The police took the move following a number of incidents of assaulting people by the members of the group during their demonstrations.

Earlier, Helsinki police Chief Inspector Jari Taponen told the national broadcaster Yle that the camp occupied by the Suomi Ensin activists would be shut down by 6:00pm Monday.

Supporters of the nationalist movement have been occupying a space near the Central Railway Station since February, reported Yle.

The police said the demonstrators are posing an immediate risk to people’s safety, said the Yle report, adding that there is no other alternative but to shut down the protest camp.

“The demonstrators are suspected of assaulting several passersby at the Central Railway Station. Of course this has happened before, but over the weekend there were three different cases in which the protesters have assaulted onlookers,” Taponen told Yle.

Extremism and racism have been the burning issues in the country during the recent period, particularly after the death of a man at the Helsinki Railway Station Square last year.

A passer-by was beaten up outside the Helsinki Central Railway Station where the Finnish Resistance Movement (SVL) was holding a demonstration on September 10, 2016. The victim succumbed to his injuries at the Helsinki Meilahti Hospital on September 16.