Oulu 'fighting back' after summer of racist attacks and abuse against immigrants

Oulu is a city which should be hitting the headlines for all the right reasons, building momentum towards its reign as European Capital of Culture in 2026 with a string of positive stories about art, design, music, local food, and the expected influx of international tourists. 

But earlier this summer two stabbing incidents at a city shopping mall shocked the nation: the first when a known neo-Nazi stabbed a 12-year-old foreign-background Finnish boy; while just a week later, in what police say was a copycat racist attack, a teenage boy stabbed an Asian man in the back leaving him wounded and bleeding on the pavement. 

The attacks put the whole city - not just its minority and immigrant residents - on edge, and reflect an ideological battle at the heart of Finnish politics between the left and right, and their respective attitudes towards foreigners and the value they add to society.  

"Overall this is a very peaceful city," says Social Democrat MP Tytti Tuppurainen, who was born and raised in Oulu, and has served on the local council for almost a quarter of a century.

"It's safe to go out and to send your children to school without escorting them. You can leave your dog outside the grocery store without anyone stealing it," she tells Finland Insider.

"But we have all the reason to be highly alarmed that we have violent individuals and violent racist groups here in Oulu. I think it's still a very small amount of people who are extreme racists and violent, the majority of Oulu residents are open-minded and tolerant."

She says the city is fighting back, and points to the recent Oulu Pride, which became a moment to rally not only for LGBTQ+ rights, but against anti-racist sentiment and for tolerance, with several thousand taking part peacefully.

Racist undercurrent to life in Oulu

Beyond the stabbings, the issues of identity and integration have not been far from the surface this summer in the northern city.

The local professional football team AC Oulu has had to introduce new measures this week to tackle racism in their home ground following incidents at games, including setting up a hotline to report abuses; while some fans have reportedly decided to boycott the club because there are ‘too many’ (sic) foreign players.

AC Oulu's official fan group said in a statement "racist slogan has never been accepted there and will never be allowed. We strongly condemn racism."

In some areas, explains MP Tytti Tuppurainen, Wolt delivery drivers have been on the receiving end of racist abuse. This sort of gig-economy work is often attractive to men with immigrant backgrounds looking to make a living without the need for fulltime job contracts.

Wolt tells Finland Insider that it "regularly" handles cases of racism and discriminatory language towards delivery couriers in Finland, but doesn't keep city-level data on the number of incidents reported in specific parts of the country.

"Wolt has clear guidance for situations where a courier partner encounters discriminatory language or racism regardless of location. These kinds of incidents are handled by our senior staff, " explains Wolt's Jenni Jusslin..  

"We expect our customers, merchants, and courier partners to be respectable towards each other and have several methods for handling an unwanted situation. For example, one of the stricter ways of making a difference is suspending a customer who has used discriminatory language or poor behaviour against a courier partner," she says.

Mayor slams national anti-racism plan

This week, Oulu's progressive mayor Ari Alatossava sent a strong signal to Prime Minister Petteri Orpo about tackling systemic racism, slamming the government's new anti-racism proposals saying they lack measures to eradicate hate speech and don't take municipalities and cities properly into account. 

But while the mayor is viewed by many as a good leader in the fight against racism in his city, the city council has scored something of an own goal by refusing to let the University of Oulu establish a new downtown hub which would bring the university's international and multicultural students and teaching staff very visibly into the heart of the city. 

“The vitality of the region depends to a great extent on the availability of skilled labour, of which we are already concerned about in some fields,” says University Rector Jouko Niinimäki, nodding to the well-established fact that Finland faces a chronic shortage of skilled and unskilled workers in the coming years, and that population changes mean those workers will have to come from overseas.

"There is a constant struggle against decline in the city, and that's also something that has to do with racism, because people who are racist in the bottom line, they are afraid. They're afraid of change and afraid of different people and if you are afraid of differences,” says Tytti Tuppurainen.

“Oulu is struggling not to be a conservative city but already it has become more conservative to the detriment to the city,” she adds.

"We used to be the hub of Nordic tech, we were the Silicon Valley of northern Europe. We had more than 20 daily flights from Oulu to Helsinki and as things started to change internationally with Nokia's business and more unemployment, and in 2015 with the increase in migrants, there came also an increase in racism."

Statistics paint a varied picture

Statistics are a blunt tool, but can be used as one way to measure racism when looking at the number of incidents reported to police.

The latest figures from the Police University College Polamk show that almost 75% of all hate crimes reported to police nationwide in 2022 (the last year for which data is available) were related to ethnic or national background.

The same statistics highlight that Oulu has one of the lowest numbers of reported hate crimes of any city in the country, and one of the lowest per capita rates of reported hate crimes too. 

But those figures mean little when high-profile cases involving children being stabbed, or attacking foreigners, hit the news headlines. 

A survey in the spring carried out by International House, a service run by local authorities to help foreigners who arrive in Oulu, found some 76% of people said they felt integrated into the city, while just 4% felt poorly integrated.

The majority of the 448 people who responded to the survey listed English as their main language, and were either employed or studying full-time.

But 65% cited finding a job, and 40% cited making friends - especially local Finnish friends - and the lack of information available in English (26%) as barriers towards greater integration.

National political climate plays its part

The political climate in Oulu makes the fight against racism and xenophobia all the more pressing.

One of the city’s most prominent politicians from the far-right Finns Party, recently elected to the European Parliament in Brussels to represent Finland, has three court convictions for racism-related offences. 

And at a government level, other far-right politicians promote discredited race theories, setting the tone of the national conversation: their actions since taking office (and when older online writings surfaced, exposing senior Finns Party leaders as the authors of some shocking, violent and racist comments) are exactly what forced Prime Minister Orpo to commit to an anti-racism strategy in the first place, after widespread criticism of his political partners.   

"Some Finns Party ministers have been defending the so-called 'great replacement theory' that there is a change which threatens the white Finnish way of life," Tuppurainen explains.

Finland's intelligence service Supo has repeatedly flagged up the popularity of the trope in far-right groups, and noted how dangerous it can be.

Both the current and former Finns Party leaders, Riikka Purra and Jussi Halla-aho, have also used the phrase, as has Finns Party Interior Minister Mari Rantanen, whose portfolio controls borders and immigration.

"I think it's totally insane, but this mad theory can be a reason why the people in the shopping mall attacked innocent people," says Tytti Tuppurainen.

"But we are fighting back. The spirit and the mood of the people at the Pride parade was amazing. We won't let a small minority ruin our reputation."