Fights, fury and the Ku Klux Klan: Finland faces wave of vigilante mobs targeting migrants as arrest of an Afghan asylum seeker for rape of 14-year-old schoolgirl pushes one town to the brink
In the town of Kempele, tension between locals and asylum seekers is rising after a 14-year-old girl was raped
Happened fortnight after youth migrant centre opened in town to mass opposition and 17-year-old refugee charged
Across Finland similar cases have sparked panic, with human chains blocking refugees at the country’s borders
Even some MPs are demanding asylum seekers leave country and put an end to ‘nightmare called multiculturalism’
By PEKKA LEIVISKA IN KEMPELE
DailyMail.com
8 December 2015
There is a sense of tension in the pretty, snow-covered Finnish town – an underlying fear which makes parents hold their children a little closer, and angry resentment towards the group of young men who arrived just a month ago.
Kempele, almost 400 miles north of Helsinki, is usually a place where 17,000 unassuming townfolk while away the hours playing ice hockey.
But that peaceful existence has been ripped apart by the rape of a 14-year-old girl as she walked home on a Monday night a fortnight ago.
The alleged culprit is one of the young men living at a migrant centre, which locals did not want in the first place.
But far from being an anomaly, Kempele – which saw hundreds take to the streets in an anti-immigration march last weekend – has become a snapshot of a country where people patrol the streets in vigilante mobs, block people crossing the border and even dress as the Ku Klux Klan at angry protests against the influx of refugees.
The situation is not so tense in some parts of the country. MailOnline went 10 miles north of Kempele to Oulu where migrants at the Vallinkorva are living quietly and say they have been made to feel welcome in the town after fleeing the war-torn countries of Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.
And the country’s Prime Minister Juha Sipilä has offered newcomers a warm welcome – and even said they can use one of his homes in Kempele, where he was born, to use as emergency accommodation.
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