Pepper Spray Attack on Gay Rights Event
The second annual Gay Pride March in Oulu – North Pride – was overshadowed by one if its organisers being attacked with pepper spray. 65DN spoke to him.
The North Pride march itself went ahead peacefully on Saturday afternoon with security stepped up. Despite rainy weather, around 600 people marched through the city centre in support of the event. At many points, the march looked like a river of umbrellas. Marchers carried banners and placards with such slogans as ‘Difference is a Gift,’ ‘Liminka’s Art Homosexuals’ and ‘Bi.’
It was part of a three day North Pride festival, from Friday to Sunday, which included music and various seminars.
But on the Thursday before the festivities started, Dan Koivulaakso, of the Left Alliance, was attacked with the spray during a public meeting about homosexual asylum seekers attended by about 40 people.
Koivulaakso told 65DN that he was waiting for the meeting start when, ‘I noticed one guy looking very nervous. He had his hand deep in his pocket and was squeezing something. He went into the corridor.’
Koivulaakso, who is a trade unionist, had ‘a weird feeling about’ about the man, whom he describes as being ‘under 25.’ He followed him into the corridor, where he found him with ‘some other guys.’ Later, he checked them again and the young men, now alone, sprayed him in the face close-up and ran away.
He recalled ‘a burning feeling on my skin’ and was taken to hospital.
Police claim that they know who the perpetrator, who fled the scene immediately, is. Cllr Hanna Sarkkinen, a Left Alliance representative on Oulu City Council, told 65DN that the incident should be investigated see if it was orchestrated by a particular group. She argued that ‘this is not the first time that gay rights events have been attacked in Finland’ and she speculated that an Oulu-based Neo-Nazi group may have been behind the incident. She declined to name the group which she suspected was responsible.
Koivulaakso told 65DN that he has been threatened on a particular Nazi website, which he declined to name because there is an ongoing police investigation. But he strongly suspects that these people – who also attacked a Kokoomus candidate during last year’s election – are responsible. He feels he was targeted because he has been strongly critical National Socialist groups in Finland.
How about next time you write this kind of article you check your facts out and write of what actually happened?
a) The Left Alliance speech event had nothing to do with the Pride event – Dan Koivulaakso was going to make a speech about “the dangers of the far right”. The timing was appropriate, but organised independently.
b) The man Koivulaakso spotted, was according to the other interviews, “well dressed and didn’t seem to fit in”. Koivulaakso proceeded according to his own words, “to check the man from the files in my laptop”, which sounds extremely interesting.
c) The man left the venue, while Koivulaakso followed him to the foyer, again according to his own words “to interrogate the man of his presence”, when the man gassed him.
While it may be quite plausible that Koivulaakso is paranoid about the neo-****s of Oulu, it begs the question what actually happened. Koivulaakso, who wouldn’t know what a trade is let alone an union, is a violent left wing anarchist who practices MMA. He evidently is not aware that holding any records of people and their political affiliations for the kind of use he does is illegal. He also fails to realise that public political events are public events, and its not his place to go “interriogate” anyone just if he happens to be well-dressed and does not belong to his own anarchist crowd. What Koivulaakso did was go attack a nervous person – all we know it could have been a gay man who defended himself from violence.
This kind of piece you pass as news is left-wing propaganda fed hook-line-and sinker. We know your color now. Pride isn’t supposed to be a “red” event – keep party politics out of it.