A number of Kurdish refugees living in Finland have expressed fears of a racist backlash to news from Sweden of the death of a 26-year-old Kurdish woman, Fadime Sahindal, who was killed by her father in Uppsala on Monday evening.

   

Sahindal fell out of favour with her family because she had fallen in love with a Swedish man and rejected her family’s plans for an arranged marriage with another Kurd.

   

Four years ago Sahindal made headlines in Sweden when she filed criminal charges against her father and brother for making threats and assault.

On Wednesday, many Kurds living in Finland

called family shelters in the Helsinki region fearing a racist reaction to the events in Sweden.

   

Merja Hakala, head of the Helsinki youth shelter maintained by the Red Cross, said that such honour killings are unknown in Finland. She says that young Kurds are sometimes are sometimes disciplined with threats that they may be sent out of the country to be raised by relatives.

   

"I am sure that this is an isolated incident. This kind of thing does not happen any more frequently in immigrant families than among Finns", Hakala says.

   

The premeditated murder of family members is indeed quite rare in Finland. However, spontaneous family violence involving years of bottled-up frustrations and heavy alcohol consumption, and culminating in the stabbing or shooting deaths of one or more family members - and the suicide of the perpetrator - is all the more common among native-born Finns.

"There are different kinds of families

in the Kurds’ culture. Those for whom religion plays a major role are perhaps more afraid that something will happen to the young people that violates their religion", Hakala says.

   

A while ago Hakala had to deal with a situation in which the parents of two Kurdish girls had been beaten by their father, who was concerned about the boys they were seeing. All types of corporal punishment are illegal in Finland, but an agreement was reached under which the girls would go back home and live according to the wishes of their father until they are 18 years old.

   

The number of immigrants seeking help at various shelters increased dramatically throughout the 1990s. In an extreme case, a young person might say that his or her life is threatened at home. Some have been given foster homes. In some communities the men keep the girls under such tight supervision that they are only allowed to go to school and come back home, always wearing a scarf.

   

In most respects domestic violence among immigrants is not much different from that which involves native Finns.

   

"Parents are not necessarily proud if they have physically attacked their child. However, from their point of view, that is also a way of caring", says one employee at a shelter.

Karwan Ahmad, a Kurd who has lived in Finland

for 15 years, believes that one reason for the tragedy in Sweden was that the father had been humiliated by the fact that his daughter had spoken about her case in public. As a result, the father felt obliged to defend his honour in the eyes of his relatives.

   

Ahmad says that while getting used to Finnish customs is hard, the winter and the darkness are the most difficult issues. He does not understand how Finnish children can physically attack their teachers at school, or drink alcohol.

   

Ahmad also says that many Kurds who have moved to Europe try to maintain their traditional way of life by sending their young people to Turkey at the age of 17 or 18 to find someone to marry. "The young person him- or herself can influence the decision", he says. He also says that marriages arranged by older relatives sometimes work, and sometimes they do not.

   

Ahmad has two daughters, aged 13 and 14. He says that he wants to support them as long as they are underage.