Month: March 2012

Finland and our Trayvon Martins

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

The unprovoked killing of Trayvon Martin, 17, in the state of Florida in the United States has caused widespread national outrage especially among black USAmericans. How did we react in Finland when our own Trayvon Martins appeared after a killing spree took place involving three Muslims within about three weeks? On top of this we had a former councilman of a major Finnish party, the Perussuomalaiset (PS), saying publicly that he’d give one of the killers a medal. 

The killing of Trayvon Martin was, like the deaths that occurred in Finland in late-January and early February, horrifying: The black Florida adolescent was visiting a friend of his father wearing a gray hoodie and with a pack of Skittles and a can of iced tea. Following him from behind was  George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old member of the local Neighborhood Watch, who thought the teen looked “suspicious.” The man shot and killed Martin on the spot with legal impunity protected in part by Florida’s expansive definition of self-defense.

Apart from a demonstration on February 25 in the cities of  Oulu and Helsinki, only silence followed as the police were quick to rule out hate crimes.  One gets the impression that ruling out the latter by the police appears to be their first and foremost aim.

But what can we expect if immigrants and visible minorities don’t have a say about their plight in this country? As long as the majority of the Finnish police are white Finns and as long as we have a large anti-immigration party in parliament like the PS, our silence will be encouraged and matters will continue as before.

Even so, our community must do more to voice its opinions and outrage at what happened in Oulu and Leppävaara.  Racism and social exclusion shouldn’t be left off the hook as easily as now.

Until we do, Finland will unfortunately see more Trayvon Martins in the future with the blessing of our shameful silence.

But there is good news. Many of us have been moved by these tragic events and the spread of racism in our society. Migrant Tales is one example but there are many others like that of Miriam Attias, who has written two moving blog entries on Uusi Suomi and gathered up to 730 signatures for a petition asking for more debate in society about racism.

To sign the petition click here and scroll to Julkilausuma hiljaisuuden jälkeen: Riittää jo rasismi ja “suvaitsevaisuus” – tarvitsemme dialogia!

Anti-immigration groups in Finland plan vicious campaign as the municipal election nears in October

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

As the demonic rumors and stereotypes spread by Finland’s anti-immigration groups lose their appeal among voters, expect a new round of vicious attacks by them as the municipal election nears on October 28. The good news, however, is that using the usual crime statistics and racist arguments that gave some Perussuomalaiset (PS) candidates their ticket to parliament in the April 2011 election will be a hard sell in October. 

One of the main reasons is the PS itself, which has given us a good taste of what kind of a party it is thanks to the numerous scandals that have rocked it. Voters are wiser today about the PS than they were on April 17.

Another important reasons is Anders Breivik, who shocked Norway and the world with his outlandish mass killings on July 22.  All parties in the Nordic region that are anti-EU, anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam suffered as a result significant losses in recent elections and in the polls.

Racism is like an ogre that you cannot control once you let it out of the cage and give it an opportunity to flood society with hate. It can bite back, and hard, as we saw when Breivik went on his mass-killing rampage.

On a much wider scale racism can as well lead to wars and conflicts as it has in the past, according to the U.N.

“Racism and racial discrimination have been used as weapons to engender fear and hatred,” said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his message marking this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. “Racism undermines peace, security, justice and social progress.”

Another reason why extremist and populist anti-immigration politicians will have a difficult time selling their message in the municipal election is because it is utter baloney based on exaggerated fiction. The media, some politicians and the general public have learned after close to one year of watching PS shenanigans in Parliament the distinction between fact and populist fiction.

Jussi K. Niemelä, a writer and editor of the Vallan vahtikoira blog, told Migrant Tales that the PS has the highest number of convicted criminals among their ranks when compared with other political parties. Many of their MPs are members of the far-right Suomen Sisu association.

Niemelä has been threatened by two PS members for his critical stance against the party. The police are presently investigating the matter.

More and more Finns understand racism, like hate, is a serious threat to our society.

Finland’s cultural diversity debate: Patronizing a minority into complacency

Posted on by Migrant Tales

One of the big issues concerning the ongoing debate on Finland’s ever-growing cultural diversity is that rarely are we asked our opinion.  A good example was Friday’s Helsingin Sanomat, which asked only white Finns whether our country understand the threat that racism poses and if such a threat is taken seriously. 

The question that we should possibly ask is why does Helsingin Sanomat and the media in general rarely take into account what the victims of racism and social exclusion think about this social ill? Is it a cultural thing (this is our country and our discussion – stay out)? Or is it patronizing behavior by the majority to a largely silent “Other” Finland?

One of the positive matters about the Helsigin Sanomat survey, however, is that 74% felt that racism isn’t taken seriously enough in Finland. Thirteen percent felt that it was while 13% had no opinion.

One of our most persistent stands on Migrant Tales has been that racism is not taken seriously enough in Finland. Politicians, the media and the general public have preferred instead to watch from the sidelines while this shameful behavior takes place in the form of institutional and colorblind racism.

Writer Kaari Utrio said on the survey: “The only way to deal with the matter is to have zero tolerance for racism. Our past reminds us the terrible consequences happen when we accept racism. If we tolerate racism, it will soon be accepted and become the way of [our everyday] thinking. Thereafter we’ll start building concentration camps and gas chambers.”

Who is to say that racism isn’t already a part of our everyday thinking? Why is it when some of us speak about this social ill, we usually end up using the conditional or future tenses? Racism is something that could impact us in the future but is not a problem today.

Excluding Finnish- and Swedish-speakers, a total of 226,220 people speak another language as their mother tongue in Finland, according to the Population Register Center.  For the sake of comparison, there were 291,153 Swedish speakers in Finland (5.42%) in 2010-11.

If we added to the former figure the children of immigrants who are bilingual but speak Finnish as their mother tongue, the number of “Other” Finns is quite significant.

Could we speak of disenfranchised groups? Certainly.

The attitude of leading dailies like Helsingin Sanomat, which did not even bother to ask immigrants never mind a Finn with international backgrounds their opinion about such an important matter, is a classic case of how  Finland deals and challenges such a social ill.

If we sit around waiting for our point of view to be heard, we might as well wait forever.  The solution? Get active and say it loudly!

Migrant Tales Literary: Poem – Beyond Recognition

Posted on by Mark

BEYOND RECOGNITION

Part I

Jella played with the sand, spade
digging earnestly at the dry earth.
Jaref thrust out a hand, grabbing
thief-like, as older brothers do.

Jella cried. First in despair, but
then in the corner of the yard,
there under the peeling gable,
standing troubled, forlorn,
like a totem of the oppressed.

Jaref knew himself declared,
a bully in the sight of the world.
Conscience prodded, but
he just stared – stubborn, defiant,
squatted in the shallow sand pit,
a small distance from the house.

And though he might deny it,
her pain dug at his callow heart.

The screaming rocket hit the upper floor.
Noise erupted, huge and flat
like a tolling bell,
clasping at Jaref, stealing him instantly
towards a soundless universe.
He watched, mute, as the gable wall fell,
smothering his sister in dust
and unearthliness.

Part II

The newspaper mentioned five dead.
In hidden rooms, crumpled maps
on wooden tables showed
pencilled roads towards retaliation.

Part III

Jaref knew nothing save an absence. An age
of gnawing deafness to the world.
The youth veered towards maturity
while hope and beauty lay feigned,
swathed in a stained white shawl,
sleeping in a dusty grave.

Pain wrapped in numbness,
a weight pushing on all sides.
Only one sure relief,
a raffish friend, seeking to console –

Revenge!

A force majeure mission,
for love brutalised beyond recognition.

Part IV

Jaref strapped on the belt.
His friends looked on solemn.
A remote trigger.
He walked away resolved
to find his place,
to stand among the unknown faces
as a totem of the oppressed
at the margins of the broken spaces.

Part V

Aschil, soon to be twenty and married,
busied herself among the stalls. A proud
father wafted like a shawl at her side,
offering the easy advice of one not
given to fussing over craft or colours.

He was there to serve, in a declaration
of his daughter’s worthiness.
His role merely to proffer his wage,
though he beamed with priceless joy
for his daughter’s coming of age.

Part VI

She peered inside the shadowed interior
beneath a gently billowing canopy,
at wares strung on bright yellow strings,
lights and lanterns of myriad crystal bounty,
all winking blithe in the morning sun.
A light, she reflected – a good omen.

As Aschil turned, the tented wall lit up.
Time becalmed. And piece by piece,
the thronged scene split asunder,
as flying shards of fevered metal roared at
the crowds with furious thunder.

Canvas and flesh yielded without rebuff.
Aschil fell, eyes staring at the final terror.
She let go her last breath, crushed.

A love brutalised forever.

Part VII

The newspaper mentioned 43 dead.
In hidden rooms, crumpled maps
on wooden tables showed
pencilled roads towards retaliation.

– Mark

Migrant Tales is a blog that accepts who we are where we are

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

I sometimes wonder where I get the strength and inspiration to write at least one blog entry a day on Migrant Tales. It’s not that I have the luxury of giving 100% of my time to this blog because I have a job and a life as well.  Migrant Tales is a powerful voice because it is a hand-on-heart operation running on the fuel of passion for social justice and equality.

I am not the only one who has turned our blog into not-such-a-humble voice of our community. JusticeDemon, Mark, PeterofFinland, Eyeopener, D4R, Sasu, Jonas and many others have played a key role.

Contrary to what people think, I am a Finn with an international background.  Finland is my home sweet home.

I personally never knew it then but when I was a child briefly growing up in Helsinki between the end-1950s and early 1960s, there was a lot of racism that would single you out irrespective of your age and sex.

In order for my neighborhood friends to accept me, I had to fight my way with my fists. If I hadn’t challenged their initial prejudice towards me I would have never been accepted.

Fighting my way to acceptance was possible if the kids were of my age. There were older children that I could not defend myself against them because they attacked me as a group and were stronger than I. From them I ran away if they physically and verbally started to harass me when I was playing on the swings by myself.

There were complete strangers as well that would ridicule me in a cinema because I looked different from them. Some children would laugh along while others would watch with their silence.

All my life I grew up with a clear unwritten message from this society: I am not from here but you can stay with us as long as you don’t claim to be from here. Classifying you as a Finn is too complicated and would upset the order of things.

You may ask why did I choose Finland out of my two other homelands, the United States and Argentina? Because Finland was the most challenging and the hardest of the three where I’d be accepted.

There were many noble exceptions, however, to that rule. In the early 1970s, when I was spending my summer holiday with my grandparents in Mikkeli, I took part in a regional high jump competition. I won but there was a problem: I wasn’t a Finn.

After meeting and discussing the problem, they made a decision: I had won the competition and was recognized as the regional high jump champion.

My life in Finland has been a constant battle between acceptance and exclusion. Sometimes I have excluded myself with the full approval of society.

When the economic chips are down, it’s clear that you will get the short end of the stick because you have no claim to historicty.

In the early 1990s, when Finland was suffering from its worst recession in a century, I had written, among other topics, a lot about racism and refugee issues from countries like the former Soviet Union.  I was seen by some foreign ministry officials as a threat to this country’s international image. Some officials even complained directly to the publication.

Will I suffer the same type of persecution I did back in the early 1990s for what I wrote and defended?   Not as long as Migrant Tales and we exist.

We are a blog where I and many others have found strength to battle a social ill that raised its head in the April election. Even so, we are confident that our efforts and arguments will expose the ugliness of racism and social exclusion in our society.

Our blog has grown thanks to you because we have finally accepted who we are where we are.

Is Finland ready for cultural diversity?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

In light of social ills like racism and social exclusion in Finland, J. W. Berry of Queen’s University of Canada offers us an opportunity to ask a very important question: Are we in Finland ready for cultural diversity? If we still aren’t quite there yet, how long will it take? 

Nationalism is a double-edged sword. It served to unite and mold a social construct like the national identity of the Finns but in the process it excluded other groups.

While great injustices were committed against us by Stalin, we have to learn to forgive and move on. This is necessary if we want to build a well-functioning culturally diverse society that reaps synergies and grows successfully. But taking into account the political situation in Russia, such a task can be challenging.

We should, however, not mix the Russian people and individuals with its past and present political system and leaders.

Our national identity should not hinge on those rivers of blood from former wars but how we turned this society after those wars into a successful Nordic welfare state. Lasting values like social equality and social justice should unite us today, not the hatred that lingers from those conflicts.

Doing away with our ethnic and national myths, which constantly remind us that we are under threat from the outside world and that war is only a heartbeat away, will be easier said than done.

Certainly I would want to be an optimist and state that this wretched period is only a short temporary phase.  Admitting that things will be better in a few years time is, however, an exercise in self-deception.

I hope, however, that time will prove me wrong.

But let’s look at Berry’s view* on the factors that make a culturally diverse society possible. According to him, there are four criteria:

  1. There needs to be a general support for cultural diversity as a valuable resource for a society.
  2. There should be overall low levels of prejudice in the population.
  3. There should be generally positive mutual attitudes among the various ethnocultural groups that constitute the society.
  4. There needs to be a degree of attachment to the larger national society.

All these points could be debated for and against about our society. Possibly some would claim that all four points are met with flying colors by our society. Others would disagree.

I believe it’s not a question whether we are ready or not for culturally diversity. The fact is that our society is culturally diverse and we should deal with it.

If the aim of political parties like the Perussuomalaiset [1] has been to make Finland white again, then it’s clear that they’ve failed.

* J. W. Berry: Prejudice, Ethnocentrism and Racism. Siirtolaisuus-Migration 2/1996. pp. 5-9.

[1] The Finnish name of the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The English names adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings.

Victim pays fine to attacker of racially motivated crime

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

A story published by Kuopio-based Savon Sanomat* on Monday shows us how a racially motivated crime can lead to a conviction involving the victim. Thus this shows how the victim’s population group become part of the statistical profile. Anti-immigration groups then use the information to show a group’s “abnormally high propensity to violent crime.”

JusticeDemon makes a valid point: “Offences characterised by the use of excessive force in self-defence can only occur when self-defence is possible, i.e. when the offender has been attacked. It follows that any population group with a high propensity to victimhood will also have a disproportionately higher propensity to commit such offences.”

The story reports that in Iisalmi a dark-skinned woman, a native Finn, was attacked in public with a knife by a compete stranger. Fortunately nothing happened to the victim but the both of them ended up in a brawl in which the woman punched the aggressor in the face, for which she got slapped a 100 euro fine by a court.

The same man that attacked the woman earlier, attacked a dark-skinned security guard at a camp. He racially insulted the security guard and the women, who had paid him 100 euros for damages.

The man was finally convicted and sentenced by an Iisalmi court to a seven-month prison term.

*Thank you JusticeDemon for the heads up! 

Selling malarkey by the pound in Finland’s cultural diversity debate

Posted on by Migrant Tales

I am always amazed by the malarkey and bravado expressed by anti-immigration, populist and nationalist groups when they speak of war, racism and censorship. They speak of these social illnesses as if they had first-hand experience even though they have never seen or been victims of war, racism and state censorship. 

Even so, they have lots of opinions about what war, racism and state censorship are. Sometimes they even surprise us with an occasional solution, albeit impracticable, to the challenges posed by our ever-growing cultural diversity as a society.

Some of these characters make incredible claims like being the oldest people on Earth, like  Methuselah.

Here is an example: “That guy thinks it’s “his” society? Hey Enrique, where were YOUR family when WE fought against Soviet Union? Where were your family when the civil war raged here in spring of 1918 and my great grandfather barely made it alive from the prison camp?”

How old is this person anyway? 120 or older?

My answer to such a preposterous claim is the following: My grandparents fought in all of these wars.

It is clear that those that have never seen war are the first ones to glorify it. Their saber-rattling arguments not only have generous quantities of malarkey in them but are strongly peppered with bravado.

If some of them ever had the misfortune to go to war and were officers, they would be the ones that would lead their troops from behind.

Some of them make the most incredible claims on Migrant Tales as well. One of these is that racism is a minor problem in this country and the fault lies in the immigrant for not adapting. All these people have to do is sit on their behinds and watch how the world adapts to them.

And then we come to their absurd claims and hate speech that they spread wholesale on the net anonymously. Like questionable war heros they claim to be, they are the first ones who would rise and defend our right to free speech.

Hogwash.

I know what state censorship is because I lived under a dictatorship in Argentina during 1976-83. People got killed for what they published never mind what they thought. If they were lucky, they fled the country.

The most important matter I learned as a young journalist a long time ago was that words are weapons. Words can move mountains, even bring down dictatorships.

We are confident on Migrant Tales that our efforts and arguments will expose the ugliness of racism and social exclusion in our society.
We will not sell malarkey by the pound and beat our chests with arrogant bravado like those who have never seen war, racism or state censorship but claim they have!

Selling malarkey by the pound in Finland's cultural diversity debate

Posted on by Migrant Tales

I am always amazed by the malarkey and bravado expressed by anti-immigration, populist and nationalist groups when they speak of war, racism and censorship. They speak of these social illnesses as if they had first-hand experience even though they have never seen or been victims of war, racism and state censorship. 

Even so, they have lots of opinions about what war, racism and state censorship are. Sometimes they even surprise us with an occasional solution, albeit impracticable, to the challenges posed by our ever-growing cultural diversity as a society.

Some of these characters make incredible claims like being the oldest people on Earth, like  Methuselah.

Here is an example: “That guy thinks it’s “his” society? Hey Enrique, where were YOUR family when WE fought against Soviet Union? Where were your family when the civil war raged here in spring of 1918 and my great grandfather barely made it alive from the prison camp?”

How old is this person anyway? 120 or older?

My answer to such a preposterous claim is the following: My grandparents fought in all of these wars.

It is clear that those that have never seen war are the first ones to glorify it. Their saber-rattling arguments not only have generous quantities of malarkey in them but are strongly peppered with bravado.

If some of them ever had the misfortune to go to war and were officers, they would be the ones that would lead their troops from behind.

Some of them make the most incredible claims on Migrant Tales as well. One of these is that racism is a minor problem in this country and the fault lies in the immigrant for not adapting. All these people have to do is sit on their behinds and watch how the world adapts to them.

And then we come to their absurd claims and hate speech that they spread wholesale on the net anonymously. Like questionable war heros they claim to be, they are the first ones who would rise and defend our right to free speech.

Hogwash.

I know what state censorship is because I lived under a dictatorship in Argentina during 1976-83. People got killed for what they published never mind what they thought. If they were lucky, they fled the country.

The most important matter I learned as a young journalist a long time ago was that words are weapons. Words can move mountains, even bring down dictatorships.

We are confident on Migrant Tales that our efforts and arguments will expose the ugliness of racism and social exclusion in our society.
We will not sell malarkey by the pound and beat our chests with arrogant bravado like those who have never seen war, racism or state censorship but claim they have!

Ilta-Sanomat tabloid ad (lööppi) from June 2, 1993

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales publishes on and off Finnish tabloid ads* (lööppi in Finnish) from the 1990s. Taking into account that Finland’s immigrant population started to grow during that decade, it is easy at least through some of the main stories of tabloids like Ilta-Sanomat and Iltalehti to see how some of them reflected our xenophobic and racist views.

Reinforcing the perception that the only good matter that rises from the east is the sun, Ilta-Sanomat claims in bold letters a Finnish man got more than he bargained: killers for an Estonian woman.

During the Soviet days, Estonia was a place where Finnish men went to drink and fool around with the local women.

*Migration Institute archive.