Organised Crime & Crime Prevention - what works? - Scandinavian ...

NSfK’s 40. forskerseminar, Espoo, Finland 1998
The racist hate crimes committed against Russian-speakers in Finland is another alarming
phenomenon. In the ealy 1990´s the Finnish media engaged in a spectacular campaign of
xenophobic, even racist, scaremongering against the Russian-speaking minority and Russian
tourists. After the Soviet Union collapsed and the borders were opened, there were actual
cases of Russian-speakers practicing efficient shoplifting and prostitution; the media pounced
on these few instances and blew everything out of proportion. The popular image of Russian
speakers as “thieves and prostitutes” was created very quickly, and this resulted in the
creation of a culture of hate crimes. The assaults and attempted murders against Russianspeakers
have not been committed by young fanatics or skinheads, but by ordinary, “mature”
individuals. The typical stimulus has been the act of speaking Russian in a public space. The
following examples registered by the Finnish police in 1996 and 1997 illustrate the nature of
these hate crimes.
- A 55-year-old Finnish male pensioner heard a woman speaking Russian in the centre of
Helsinki after midnight. Suddenly he loudly called her “a whore” and struck her in the face
- A 49-year-old Finnish Lutheran priest heard two young boys speaking Russian at the
Helsinkin railway station. The priest said that “Russians are shit” and hit one of the boys on
the head with a plastic bag full of glass bottles.
- In the provincial town of Jaala, a 25-year-old Finnish woman wildly opened fire with a
shotgun at a motel accommodating Russian tourists. Later she explained to the police that she
had been overcome by “holy wrath” against the Russians, whom she considered to be
prostitutes.
- In Helsinki, a middle-aged Finnish man believed he had been robbed by a Russian the night
before, and decided to kill the first Russian in sight. When he heard three men talking to each
other in Russian on the street, he went to buy a Mora-knife and stabbed one of the men.
In addition to the violent hate crimes above, Russian-speakers are under a constant barrage of
public verbal abuse, with the words “whore”, “thief” and “mafia” being bandied about by the
Finnish citizens. It is hardly surprising, that the over 20,000 Russian-speakers resident in
Finland tend to avoid speaking Russian in public places.
When two Finnish policemen were murdered in the centre of Helsinki in 1997, public opinion
was instantly convinced that the murderer was Russian, because the man had spoken English,
and because newspaper reports claimed that the man had carried his bag “in a Russian
manner”. All those concerned about Finnish-Russian relations breathed a sigh of relief, when
the murderer turned out to be a Dane.
The activities instigated by the public hysteria about Russian criminality are a deeper cause of
worry for the police than Russian criminality itself. Besides the hate crimes, the Finnish
public is working up a demand for illegal or semi-legal goods and services, such as smuggled
alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, sexual services and stolen goods. Similar public demand is
promoting such supply in Northern Norway as well. The following example sheds some light
on this problem.
In 1997, investigative journalists revealed the existence of a couple of small brothels
operating in Eastern Finland. There were claims that the “Russian Mafia” is entering the
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