Finns form vigilante groups that ‘protect women’ from asylum seekers
Anthony Falola in the Washington Post reports on a troubling trend in Europe.
On a cold night in an industrial city in Finland, three men pulled up to a curb in a beat-up van sporting the stars and bars of the American Confederacy (because, they said, they just liked the look of it). They joined a dozen other beefy vigilantes gathering on a sidewalk for their first patrol to keep “our women” safe. These are the Soldiers of Odin (here is the Facebook page for the group), a new far-right group in Finland. Its members are multiplying as the nation is gripped by fear and suspicion after multiple sexual assaults allegedly committed by asylum seekers and others on New Year’s Eve.
Those incidents, in cities across central and northern Europe, included hundreds of complaints of sexual harassment in Cologne, Germany, as well as 15 alleged sex-related crimes in the Finnish capital of Helsinki. They have quickly altered the debate over the treatment of asylum seekers in Europe. Fresh barriers to new migrants are going up from Sweden to Greece.
KJ