On the Finnish indepence day 6th of December there was a big riot (on local scale) in the
capital Helsinki and the police estimates that a 100 000 euros worth of property was
destroyed. ---- The banner on the left reads "let's stop the cuts, collectivize
everything" and on the right "class war now" ---- December 6th is the national indepence
day of Finland. It is a day when the nationalists and the elite celebrate "an united
Finnish nation" and lost wars in the Presidential Palace in Helsinki on taxpayers money,
while the elite and politicians have driven harsh austerity measures for everybody (except
for themselves, obviously). ---- In the past years anarchists and autonomous leftists have
organized pretty peaceful demonstrations against these rich people's baccanals in front of
the Palace. This custom had been going on for over 10 years until the 6th of December last
year when the Presidental Palace was under renovation and the rich celebrated in the old
working class city of Tampere instead.
Local anarchists organized a demonstration against nationalism, which turned out to be the
biggest riot of Finland in decades. Though this was hardly a riot on international scale,
it gave a huge boost to the anarchist movement and it was the headline of every paper for
a week or so. The police was completely unprepared, and the 500 demonstrators fought with
them successfully and then went on to the city center smashing windows of malls and banks
and other symbols of power and capital.
After the humiliating failure by cops, the parliament issued more money for crowd control
gear and the police had trained strategies for riot situations. They have also practised
dominating tactics in the demonstrations earlier this year. For example they confiscated
anarchists' and the Left-Youths flags in the May Day demonstrations in Tampere and
Helsinki as they were considered as "weapons". Due to the police actions, nobody expected
this years demonstration to be anywhere near as successful as last year.
This years demonstration was again organized by anarchists and the theme was "from the
suburbs to the Palace" and the place of assembly was in It?keskus, a suburb in
east-Helsinki, which population mainly consists of immigrants and poor people. The start
of the demo was very calm, with some 300 people enjoying subversive rap artists and vegan
food. The place was well chosen as it managed to attract local hood kids and immigrants
and other people who rarely attend to demonstrations.
After the gigs had ended the demonstration started to march towards the local metro
station. A lot of people did not expect that cops would let the crowd into the metro, as
the station was surrounded with dozens of riot police. To my and others' amazement they
did let us through and the demonstrators packed into the train. The cops were expecting
for the demo to get off in the Central Railway Station where they had centered most of the
crowd control units. The demo however departed at different station which totally confused
the cops. When the demo hit the streets, people started smashing the windows of pretty
well chosen businesses, for example the air ventilation of Subay and McDonald's
restaurants were improved. People threw fire crackers and burned flares and were shouting
chants like "class war"and "what do the people want? ANARCHY!". After a while the cops
managed to regroup and reached the demo to escort it to a location of their choise. They
tried to move the demo to the designated area well away from the Presidential Palace and
there was minor confrontations between the demonstrators and the police. The demo managed
however to break out from the police escort and it took a good long time for the police to
outnumber the demonstrators again.
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The demo headed for the upper class parts of the city smashing windows and damaging
expensive cars and spray painting slogans. People also tore down Finnish flags and burned
a couple of them. After a long while the police managed to surround the demo, but afted
one unsuccessful attempt of breaking through which led to some arrests, the demonstration
managed to escape the siege and went on to one of the richest areas of the city. A lot of
property were damaged ranging from traffic signs to jewelry stores.
Finally the police managed to surround the demonstration again. This didn't calm the
rioting though and a lot of people and most of the rioters managed escape for the last
time before dispersing through one buildings inner courtyard. Some 100 people couldn't get
away however and they had to stay put for three hours. Finally the police let some of the
people go and arrested the rest after filming everybody stating their name and social
security and so on.
At the end of the night some 30 people were arrested including reporters and hang-arounds,
most of which hadn't participated in the destruction of property. All the same they were
charged with rioting, assaulting and not complying with police's orders. The police
estimated that over 100 000 euros worth of property were damaged or destroyed.
In conclusion the night was a great success on the anarchists' part and the demo managed
to attract people who hadn't been in any kind of demontrations before. Of course these
kind of demonstrations are just a small part of the every day class struggle, but it gave
the participants a great experience and hopefully this tradition continues next year.
Mainstream media coverage:
http://yle.fi/uutiset/police_make_arrests_at_independence_day_protests/7674025
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» Finland, A Brief Report from the December 6th riot of Helsinki