COMMENTARY: Finland - land of blind violence

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By Anna Karismo
     
      How has Finland come to be known around the world in the first decade of the new century?
      As a country of blind rage and violence, and not for much more than that.
      "Another shooting massacre in Finland", blared the headlines over the New Year, all over the globe from Sweden to New Zealand. Espoo was rapidly added to the list of other Finnish locations where blood has recently been spilt, and then the articles catalogued our ugly violence statistics and expressed shock at the way in which the country is drowning in firearms. And it is not much above a month since we here in Finland were tut-tutting and mocking the Finnish author Sofi Oksanen for the less-than-flattering remarks she made in Denmark, suggesting our nation was overshadowed by a tradition and culture of violence.
     
In October 2002, a home-made bomb exploded in a Vantaa shopping mall and killed seven people including the young man carrying it.
      At that time Finland was still in its innocence or blissful ignorance.
      The then Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen (SDP) quickly declared the bombing an act of terror and stated he wanted to improve the nation's strategic readiness.
      Nine died in the Jokela school shootings in November 2007. The Minister of the Interior Anne Holmlund (National Coalition Party) said she believed it was a one-off incident.
     
Less than a year after Jokela, eleven died at a vocational school in Kauhajoki in the worst peacetime bloodbath in the country's history.
      since Kauhajoki, the debate has been largely over the actions of a single police officer in granting a firearms permit to the gunman.
      We can shrug off the problem named Ibrahim Shkupolli even more easily than those other three cases.
      After all, the perp this time was a foreigner, a man hailing originally from an unstable area of the world, whose actions on New Year's Eve can be explained by his earlier experiences - so what that he had spent twenty years living in Finland and had seen at first hand the way we go about resolving problems in these latitudes.
      "This case cannot be compared with the school shootings", said Holmlund on New Year's Eve.
      Oh yes it can, and it should be!
     
There is something very rotten in this society right now.
      Do we have any confidence that Sello will be the last name on the list?
      What is it with these leaders of ours when they have not reacted more strenuously to the mental state of the nation?
      The Prime Minister and the President expressed their condolences to the families of the victims, but tough talking about putting an end to the violence has not been forthcoming.
      In Tarja Halonen's New Year's Day speech to the nation, there was not a word about the events in Espoo.
      So who will catch the ball thrown in the air by Sofi Oksanen and demand some kind of change at last?
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 2.1.2010


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Sello shooting: widespread disapproval over inadequate penalties for firearms possession (5.1.2010)

ANNA KARISMO / Helsingin Sanomat
anna.karismo@hs.fi