Racist sticker handed to a young girl on a Finnish train prompted a passenger to intervene after she saw a man give the child material linked to the openly racist and fascist Blue-Black Movement.
Juliana Musto was travelling with her young son from Lahti to Helsinki on a Z train last Saturday morning when she noticed a mother and her approximately four-year-old daughter sitting nearby. The situation changed when a man boarded the train near Maentsaelae and took a seat opposite the mother and child.
Musto told Yle that she saw the man hand the girl a sticker carrying the slogan “Sukupuutto vai paluumuutto”, which translates as “extinction or repatriation”. The sticker was associated with the Blue-Black Movement, a group known for its openly racist and nationalist views.
Musto said she immediately got up, took the sticker from the child and tore it apart. She then confronted the man, telling him that giving such material to a young child was unacceptable.
According to Musto, the man did not appear to think he had done anything wrong. She told Yle that she repeated her objection before the man responded by saying that “immigrants don’t have brains”.
Musto said the man later went to complain to friends travelling with him because she had destroyed the sticker. She also said that members of the group filmed what happened on the train.
Yle said it was unable to independently verify the details of the incident beyond Musto’s account.
The episode has also raised broader concerns about how children from immigrant and multicultural families are experiencing racism in Finland. Nora Dadi of Familia, a nationwide organisation supporting multicultural families, told Yle that reports involving children appear to be becoming more frequent.
Dadi said that incidents that once came to the organisation’s attention only a few times a year are now being reported almost monthly. She cited one case involving a six-year-old child who brought home a note containing the words “go back to your own country”.
For Musto, the incident on the train was particularly difficult to ignore because of her own family background. She was born in Finland and said her parents are ethnic Kurds.
She told Yle news that she became angry when she saw the sticker in the child’s hand and began questioning whether children could feel safe if racist material was being deliberately handed to them in public places.
The mother of the girl thanked Musto after the confrontation, although she had not initially understood what had happened. Musto also said that another young woman from an immigrant background who witnessed the situation began crying.
“The situation clearly affected her,” Musto told Yle.
For Musto, the incident was not simply an argument between adults. She said racism can affect children even when they may not fully understand the message being directed at them, and argued that children should be able to grow up in Finland without being exposed to racial hostility.
“Children have every right to live safely here,” she said.
The Blue-Black Movement, known in Finnish as Sinimusta Liike, returned to Finland’s political party register last year. The movement was founded by former members of the Finns Party and has been associated with strong ethnonationalist views.
The incident on the train remains based on Musto’s account, but it has drawn attention to a concern raised by organisations working with multicultural families: that racism encountered by children is not always confined to schools or online spaces. It can also appear in ordinary public settings, where a child and their family may have little opportunity to avoid it.
