Arsonists Blamed for Fire at the Construction Site of Buddhist Temple in Turku

Turku, Finland (CHAKRA) – A fire thought to be set out deliberately, almost destroyed a Buddhist Temple under construction in Turku last Saturday.  The fire was started at about 2:00 AM and is thought to be set deliberately.

Deputy Chairman of Finland’s Vietnamese Buddhist community, Ari Vuokko, said that they are leaning towards ‘hate crime’ as being one of the major sources of such an occurrence. Vuokko said he was thankful to the fire brigade for reaching the temple fast enough to burn the fire down before it did drastic damage to the building of the temple.

Just a week prior to this incident there was an attempt to destroy the altar as well as an attempt to burn sheets that were hung up to dry outside of the temple.

The first purpose-built Buddhist temple in Finland started being built five years ago when there were enough donated funds available to start building.  However, because there are only a few hundred Buddhist families in the community the temple building process has been very slow due to the lack of donations.

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