The Finnish city of Oulu has banned asylum seekers from making visits to local schools and day care centres as an investigation into migrants abusing children in the city continues.
The so-called “integrational visits” were organised by charities including the Red Cross but the local school authority has now banned them due to concerns from parents as the child abuse investigations remain ongoing, Yle reports.
Head of Education and Cultural Services for Oulu, Mika Penttilä, commented on the cancellation of the visits saying, “We have agreed with the organisers that no such visits will take place at the moment. People have approached us about these visits to find out whether they pose a security risk.”
Over the past several weeks, police have been in the process of investigating a foreign-born man believed to be connected to the abuse of at least one underage child who was drugged and sexually exploited. Investigators say they are still looking into other potential cases involving the migrant suspect.
In total, police say that they have at least 16 suspects from foreign backgrounds, most aged between 20 and 30, who are believed to have abused Finnish children over the last year.
After the child rape cases emerged, the Finnish government proposed not only deporting the offenders but also stripping the citizenship of those involved in gang rape cases against children.
Minister of the Interior Kai Mykkänen also demanded the government crack down on those responsible saying, “things like these shouldn’t be happening in Finland,” and added, “There are, of course, some Finnish people who commit terrible rapes… But the fact is that foreigners are much more likely [to be] suspects and this must not be brushed under the carpet.”
The cases form a broader trend of migrant sex attacks that have occurred across Europe since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015 including the infamous Cologne New Year’s Eve sex attacks in 2015, as well as similar attacks at music festivals in other parts of Germany as well as Sweden.