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The media storm caused by what has been labelled Oulu’s immigrant gang-rape shows no signs of dying down, three weeks after the assault took place.
In Friday’s Kaleva, one Oulu letter writer argued that immigration from developing countries always leads to a high rate of rape, claiming that the Norwegian capital Oslo has a rape rate six times higher than New York and that two thirds of these rapes are committed by ‘non-white immigrants.’ The Mayor of Oulu claimed, before Christmas, to be amazed by the ‘racism’ that the rape brought out in Oulu residents on Kaleva’s message-board and a Kaleva journalist accused the Mayor of hysterical over-reaction.
According to the Kaleva, a twenty-six year-old woman was gang-raped in the early hours of 16th December in Otto Karhi park. The gang of between four and six men grabbed the woman, injuring her on various different parts of her body, and then raped her. After they left her, she contacted the emergency services and was taken into medical care. Thereafter, she was interviewed by the Oulu police. The woman claimed to have been raped by several men whom she described as being ‘dark skinned’ but ‘not black.’ She was unable to give any further detail. The police appealed for help immediately through the newspapers. The Kaleva article has provoked a furious response in the newspaper’s letter pages and over three hundred and sixty comments on the newspaper’s websites, which some consider to be rather forthright. The majority of the comments agreed on various different subjects regarding ‘immigrants’ in Oulu. The general view amongst the respondents seemed to be that immigration to Oulu (and Finland) should be stopped, immigrants should be sent back home, Finland does not need immigrants and that, anyway, when they come they, and not Finns, commit street robberies and gang-rapes. Many referred specifically to ‘dark-skinned’ immigrants. The first writer on the forum said, in rough translation, that ‘I knew foreigners were rude . . . but now this!’ Another claimed that rape is not part of Finnish culture but it is part of the culture of many immigrants in Finland. Yet another writer argued that, ‘committing rape should be an automatic ticket to Siberia.’ A minority of published respondents to the article tried to understand the immigrants’ perspective or calm the situation down. A few claimed that ‘you shouldn’t generalise about immigrants’ and that they should be treated ‘as individuals’ or we should wait until we know more before drawing conclusions. Three immigrants were found guilty of a gang rape in Oulu in November last year. The assault, which involved the woman being raped with a pair of scissors, occurred in central Oulu in July 2005. At the time, Oulu’s chief prosecutor claimed that Oulu people were simply completely unused to and unprepared for the possibility of ‘cruel’ crimes of this kind. Police reported to Kaleva a few days ago there had been no new leads in finding the rapists.
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