Protest and the freedom of assembly are fundamental rights guaranteed by Finland’s Constitution and international human rights treaties. Yet in practice, participation in demonstrations is not equally accessible to everyone. This is especially true for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of colour) and other racialised groups, who often face multiple and intersecting barriers.
While most protests in Finland are peaceful and legally protected, the very people most affected by social injustices frequently face additional risks and barriers when they try to speak out. This undermines the idea that everyone’s voice counts equally in the public sphere.
Amnesty International Finland set out to map these barriers through a recent qualitative study. The study was conducted through in-depth interviews with individuals from diverse backgrounds across the country, treating participants not as data points but as knowledge-holders with lived experience in activism. In their own words, participants explained why they do or do not join protests, what are the barriers that they face and what we can do to dismantle them.
“I don’t feel safe, but I still have to do it”
Racism emerged in the interviews as the most consistent barrier, shaping people’s sense of safety, visibility, and trust in institutions making them feel unwelcome or unsafe at protests. BIPOC participants consistently described racism as central to their protest experiences. Both those who recently moved to Finland and those born or raised here reported experiencing racism. Skin colour shaped their interactions with police, the likelihood of being targeted during protests, and the overall sense of security while protesting.
By contrast, white or white-passing interviewees generally did not view racism as a barrier, underlining the racial divide in experiences.
Racism manifests in face-to-face settings but also in online and media environments. Several interviewees, especially those who are visibly BIPOC, reported being subjected to hate speech, harassment and even doxxing or death threats aimed at silencing them.
“I do a lot of activism on social media, and I get a ton of hate comments and even threats. But someone has to push the Overton window, and I feel like that’s my role. I don’t feel safe, but I still have to do it.”
Barriers built into the system
Another major barrier is the unequal treatment by law enforcement, which many participants linked directly to racism. Interactions with police were a frequent source of discouragement: several people described instances of racial profiling, excessive force or intimidation by officers that left them fearful of joining future demonstrations. Several interviewees noted what they perceived as double standards in policing: protests led by racialised or immigrant communities often seemed to attract a heavier-handed police response than similar protests led by white Finns.
“The first demonstration we had there was for Palestine, and when we started, they quickly arrested five of our organizers and pushed the rest outside. But the very next day, we had one [protest] with the Finnish people, where there were no immigrants, and we, as immigrants, were standing far away. We saw they were allowed to stay there for at least two hours”, one organiser states.
Experiences like this appear to deepen mistrust and reinforce the sense that protest rights are not applied equally.
“I have this beard that marks me as a Muslim. I have been targeted hundreds of times. That’s why I’ve stopped putting myself at the front. I’ve been doing a lot of activism, but I always try to stay behind the camera because whenever I organize something, they take my picture”, one participant describes.
Repeatedly the interviews painted a clear picture of how racism is strongly rooted in the structures of this society and affects how safe people feel to participate. Another participant, a Black Muslim woman, reflected on her constant self-awareness in public actions:
“When I think about myself specifically, I have to be aware of the fact that I am a person of colour, and I have to think about the fact that I’m a hijabi.”
For immigrants, protest can come with a price
Another barrier that strongly affects participation in protest is immigration status. Many participants with insecure migration status described a constant fear that taking part in demonstrations could jeopardize their ability to stay in Finland. Even minor encounters with authorities, such as being briefly detained or fined, were seen as potential risks to their residence permit or future citizenship application.
Several participants felt that being racialised made them more visible to authorities and therefore more vulnerable to scrutiny or punishment. One participant described how being arrested at a demonstration left him feeling threatened and pressured not to protest again:
“If you don’t want to get into trouble, you’re pressured not to join protests in Finland. It does affect me; I hesitate to take part again. It doesn’t feel safe when you can’t really trust the local police.”
Recent political developments appear to have deepened these fears. As one interviewee observed, new restrictions that make residence permits and citizenship harder to obtain send a message that people with immigrant backgrounds do not enjoy the same freedom to protest as others.
“I don’t think most people with an immigrant background in Finland have the same opportunity to join protests: especially now, with the Orpo government making it harder to renew residence permits or even get citizenship.”
Who gets to protest decides who gets heard
Across many participants’ stories, barriers overlapped and reinforced one another, shaped by the multiple layers of their identities. Other barriers identified to have an effect on participation were migration status and legal vulnerability, trauma and transnational risks, language exclusion, negative experiences with police and authorities, community pressure and stigma, gender and sexuality-related risks, economic and accessibility challenges, and exclusionary activist spaces and cultures. If the structural and cultural racism and the other overlapping barriers are not addressed, the consequences for society are severe. Marginalised voices will remain silenced or under-represented in Finnish society, and the issues that affect them most, from racial justice to migrant rights, may go unaddressed.
Around 10.8 percent of Finland’s population, more than one in ten residents, speak a first language other than Finnish or Swedish. Yet the diversity of people living in Finland is rarely reflected in protest or decision-making spaces, leaving a large share of the population effectively under-represented.
When only the most privileged groups feel able to safely protest, decision-makers end up hearing a much narrower slice of public opinion, and injustices faced by minority communities do not get addressed properly. In the long run, such exclusion weakens Finnish democracy and the realization of human rights.
When barriers to participation in protest are dismantled, joining a demonstration can transform fear into solidarity and isolation into belonging. The vision that emerges is of a society where protest is not a privilege for the few but a shared practice of democracy, where the diversity of voices on the streets reflects the diversity of society itself.