"Shame on the racists" read a sign carried by one young woman. "We want a multi-cultural Joensuu" proclaimed another. Nearly 1,000 residents of Joensuu took part in an anti-racist demonstration on Saturday.

   

In the afternoon several hundred people attended an anti-racist rock concert put on by local bands on the Ilosaari stage.

"A pretty good turnout"

, said Joensuu’s acting City Manager, Voitto Maksimainen.

   

In addition to young people and local foreign residents, the march brought together members of the City Council, the chairman of the Local Government, as well as personnel of the University of Joensuu.

   

"Many more people would have come if there had been more information about the event", said Kaarlo Sutinen, 77, one of the few senior citizens taking part.

   

The turnout was well below that of Joensuu’s previous anti-racist march three years ago, when about 2,000 people showed up. At that time, the march was arranged in response to a number of racially motivated attacks against local foreigners. In recent weeks there has been a new upsurge in acts of vandalism against foreigners’ property and businesses run by immigrants.

"I was just getting tired

of hearing about how people were being beaten up", said Pertti Feller, the man behind the anti-racism rock concert, and vocalist for the band 2U, which performed at the concert.

   

He had made the initiative for concert against racism in the spring, long before the most recent wave of racially-motivated crime again brought unwelcome attention to Joensuu.

   

"There have been brawls all the time. Every evening someone falls victim to the terror of local skinheads. They don’t even care about the colour of your skin: it’s enough that you’re wearing a cap that the skinheads don’t like", says Feller, who has twice fallen victim to the skinheads’ intimidation himself.

"There are constant problems"

, says Pelel, who moved to Finland from Somalia 11 years ago.

   

About 50 racially-motivated crimes have been reported in Joensuu this year so far, and Pelel says that the intimidation is worse now than before. "There has not been the kind of violence now that there was in the 1990s. Instead, there has been vandalism. However, the intimidation is more frightening because the skinheads are constantly trying to find out where we immigrants live", says Pelel who does not want his full name to appear in the newspaper.

   

"I am simply fed up with fighting and having to be afraid."

   

Just over a week ago the Local Government of Joensuu appealed to the local people to help police solve the racist crimes and to show that they do not accept intolerance.

   

"There is racism in the whole country, but in Joensuu people are afraid to report crimes they have witnessed because they are afraid that they will be the next target", Kaarlo Sutinen suspects.

   

"I don’t understand what there is to be afraid of, if there are only about 20 young men on the other side against the 52,000 residents of Joensuu", said Aila Kervinen, the producer and manager of the rock concert.