Helsinki police supervised New Year’s Eve celebrations intensively and were also prepared for an extensive gathering of asylum seekers. Before New Year's Eve, the police were informed that asylum seekers in Helsinki Metropolitan area may have had similar plans as the men who, according to recent media reports, gathered around the railway station in Cologne. In Cologne, Germany, a group consisting of some one thousand foreign men is suspected of dozens of offences. According to a newspaper in Cologne, it is believed that 15 women were sexually assaulted.
Iraqi asylum seekers arrived in Helsinki to celebrate the new year not only from reception centres in the city but also from other parts of Finland. Around 11 p.m., up to 1,000 asylum seekers from Iraq congregated in the underground passages around the railway station. The police removed dozens of people from the area, and several persons were already apprehended in the early part of the evening under the Police Act.
The police maintained a visible presence and supervised the celebrations intensively. Police officers wearing yellow high-viz vests mixed in with the revellers on the streets. During the evening and the night, police had no knowledge of attempted attacks.
- Three attacks have since been reported to the police, and a report of an offence has been submitted in two of these cases. The police have later been informed that similar harassment also occurred more extensively in the city centre. The police take every case of harassment seriously and urge the customers to always report them as an offence. Unfortunately, we often only are informed of these attacks afterwards, and they are not reported to patrolling police officers or security stewards, says Ilkka Koskimäki, Deputy Police Chief from Helsinki Police Department.
According to Koskimäki, more large-scale disturbances were prevented by the good advance preparation of the police, high-profile supervision and a low threshold of intervention.
