Helsinki: A visit to Metsälä detention center on New Year’s Eve

When the year was coming to its end a group of around 20 people went to visit the Metsälä detention center. We showed our support to the people inside – imprisoned because of their origins – by making noise outside the fences.

We communicated our message with drums, vuvuzelas, fireworks and our voices. We managed to exchange contact information with a few imprisoned. One of them told that he has been kept in detention already for six months without any contact with the outside.

When the year was changing, the cops came to interrupt the communication between people inside and outside the detention center walls. The cops checked the identity of all demonstrators and detained one comrade who refused to cooperate. He was released after a couple of hours.

We left the center wishing a happy New Year to the imprisoned. Our wishes were answered from behind the barbed-wire fences, windows and the balcony of the detention center.

Protests against prisons and detention centers are arranged on New Year’s Eve around the world.

Solidarity with migrants! No borders! No nations!

in Finnish