Over the Midsummer weekend, more than 40 Romanian Roma asylum-seekers took off from the Salmijärvi reception centre near Kajaani, and simply vanished into the Finnish countryside. The precise number of those who left the centre was not known to police in the north-eastern town on Sunday night.

   

The police were equally at a loss to say where the Roma asylum-seekers might have gone, or even how they had left. The same goes for the reception centre staff.

   

A number of those who have gone AWOL have already received notification that their asylum requests have been turned down, and hence the police are now looking for them with a view to returning them to Romania.

   

This incident follows hard on the heels of an incident on Wednesday last, when more than 70 Romanian Roma left Finland for Russia. Most of these had received notice that their asylum applications had been rejected, and the remainder had cancelled their applications themselves. They set off from two reception centres in Southern Finland in their own cars.

   

The choice of Russia as their next port of call was determined to some extent by the fact that a rejection carries with it a ban on entry not just to Finland, but to all countries in the Schengen zone.