Beggars on their knees cause consternation on Helsinki streets

East Europeans have been driven here out of abject poverty at home

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By Kimmo Oksanen
     
      A euro coin rattles into Mariana Moldovan’s cardboard cup on Keskuskatu in downtown Helsinki.
      A pair of brown eyes looks up from ground level next to Mariana.
      They belong to her 2-year-old daughter Angelica.
     
The temperature is a less than balmy +4°C, and there is a light breeze from the north-west to add a touch of bite.
      It must be chilly down there on the pavement.
      “I can’t just walk past when someone is asking me for money”, says Terttu Kirjavainen by way of explanation for her alms. “Nobody’s going to be sitting out here in this just for fun. The Finnish authorities ought to be doing something.”
     
Who are these beggars who are showing up increasingly prominently in the city’s streets? Where do they come from? Why didn’t they get up and leave when the summer came to an end?
      Should I give them some money, or keep my hands in my pockets?
      Are these possibly the same people who have allegedly been stopping cars on the highway and trying to sell trinkets as gold?
      Are they criminals, like the Barcelona crowd, who make out as if they are selling roses but deftly lift your wallet while you are off-guard?
      Or are they victims, pawns in a bigger game, whose earnings off the street go to line the pockets of some bigger fish?
     
Many claim to have seen a big van bring them to their pitches and drop them off, and then the beggars set themselves up suitably at intervals of a couple of hundred metres from each other.
      For many, the sight of these beggars brings to mind the familiar organised - and even violent - gangs of beggars seen in the metropoles of Southern Europe, and they worry lest such a phenomenon might be taking root here in Finland.
     
Who are they? On Mannerheimintie, right in front of the Old Student House that is for most locals the geographical ground zero of Helsinki, there sits an elderly man who nitroduces himself as Solo.
      Solo says he is from Slovakia and he is begging in Helsinki because he needs money for gasoline. The conversation is carried on in Italian, and is rather laboured: both sides are struggling to find words.
      “Gasoline, back Slovakia”, says Solo.
      Between heavily-lined cheeks and a pair of handsome dark eyebrows are two genial eyes, and his smile is irresistible.
      But where is the car, and where is the driver?
      “I don’t understand your question”, replies Solo.
      There is EUR 1.70 in coins resting at the bottom of his cardboard coffee cup. It won’t take him many kilometres, even in a diesel.
     
Not far away, on the corner of the block occupied by Stockmann’s department store, a man rather younger than Solo squats on his knees.
      He introduces himself as Tomas Solt, a Hungarian from Budapest.
      “There is no work in Budapest”, Solt says in explanation for his presence in Helsinki.
      But Tomas - surely you don’t have any work here, either?
      “This is my work”, Solt explains being on his knees next to yet another disposable coffee cup. His cup is empty. Not a cent.
     
And the next guy? A moment ago I saw him further down Mannerheimintie, but now he has moved onto Aleksanterinkatu, to a pitch out in front of the World Trade Center building.
      Miklos Kovoca says he comes from Romania. “There is no work there”, he adds as his reason for coming to Finland.
      On the other hand, Miklos has a wife and a two-year-old child back home, whom he misses, and to whom he sends back money.
     
On Keskuskatu, around half a dozen beggars have gathered in a small group.
      It turns out that they are all from Romania and are all members of the same extended Moldovan family.
      “A flood took their home. The government in Bucharest has done nothing tro help them. They are just cheats and bandits”, explains a passer-by who stops and interprets the family’s story.
      The passer-by has lived in Finland for 12 years and speaks the language. When he refers to cheats and bandits, the “they” does not mean the beggars, but the Romanian state authorities.
      "These people don’t want anything from Finland except a job.”
     
The group huddled on the corner of Keskuskatu and Kaivokatu, by the Ateneum Art Museum, includes Angelica’s mother Mariana, her grandmother Verginia Moldovan, her father Musca Trandafir, a pregnant young woman named Suras Moldovan, the woman’s husband Marius Moldovan, and Mihaiela Stoica.
      Two-year-old Angelica has apparently spent the last few chilly nights outdoors. Her mother Mariana starts to cry at what the child has to go through.
      So why don’t you approach the Finnish authorities, then?
      "They daren’t. They are afraid that if they do, they’ll just get picked up and deported straightaway”, the interpreter explains the beggars’ reluctance to come in from the cold.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 21.10.2007

More on this subject:
 Police equally stumped by panhandlers
 Social Services Department to take action on children accompanying Helsinki beggars

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Authorities powerless to act against beggars with children in tow (7.8.2007)

KIMMO OKSANEN / Helsingin Sanomat
kimmo.oksanen@hs.fi