Finland: ‘Cruel way of handling humans’: the escalating crisis at Finland’s border
Colonel Matti Pitkäniitty has been working for the Finnish border guard for a quarter of a century, but he has never experienced anything quite like the rapidly escalating events of the last fortnight. There are similarities, certainly, with the migration crisis of 2015 and 2016, when about 1,700 people traversed Finland’s remote northern border crossings. But, for the head of the border guard’s international affairs unit, the tensions that have heightened in recent weeks between Helsinki and Moscow have resulted in a situation that is unique. With Moscow accused of waging “hybrid warfare” on its neighbour and driving refugees and migrants to the border area, the Finnish government abruptly announced on Tuesday that it would close the entire 830-mile land border between the two countries for two weeks. Pitkäniitty said Russia had become a “transit country” for migration and accused Moscow of using asylum seekers for its own political purposes. “To use people as tools who come from environments like this, that is a cruel, cruel way of handling human beings,” he told the Guardian. “And I have to say that when you look at the weather conditions at the moment in Lapland, it was -25 C [last] week. And then you put people bicycling there.” Over the last two weeks, asylum seekers from countries including Somalia, Syria, Yemen and Iraq have braved snow, Arctic temperatures and two-hour days to reach Finland – many arriving on bicycles and in clothing ill-equipped to cope with the extreme cold.