Month: April 2012

The Eronen “armband” scandal reveals healthy accountability by the media

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

The Helena Eronen scandal exposes an important watershed in Finland. It is a similar turning point as we saw on July 22 with the mass killings in Norway by Anders Breivik and in February, when Tommi Rautio suggested decoarating a white Finn for killing a Muslim in in cold blood in Oulu. The latest scandal reveals something equally important: accountability.  

Back in the so-called good old days before last year’s election, politicians could say just about anything they pleased against immigrants and visible minorities without being held accountable. Times have changed since then and the Eronen scandal is a case in point.

What would happen if Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Jussi Halla-aho published today a fraction of the quotes he made last decade? What would happen if Eronen published her infamous column on sleeve emblems in 2006 or 2008? Would she experience anything close to the criticism she is getting today? Probably not.

The magic word is accountability. Politicians, and especially those who gained prominence with their racist and Nazi-spirited language before last year’s election are now being held accountable for what they write by the media, some politicians and the general public. This is good news for Finland.

Accountability can do wonders. An association like Kansainvälinen Mikkeli sent an email to all those candidates before last year’s election who were strongly in favor of cutting back funds to immigrant associations and tightening immigration policy. You’d be surprised by how apologetic some were when they answered back.

It shows that if we ask questions and let politicians know that we are watching, listening and ready to act they will think twice what they say in public.

The media can play an important role. Leadership was shown by Turun Sanomat last week, when it picked up Eronen story on Uusi Suomi. The Turku-based daily merely did its job by asking her a question and, most importantly, held her accountable for what she wrote.

It’s still unclear whether Eronen will be able to keep her job as PS MP James Hirvisaari’s aide. In the meanwhile the scandal will continue to grow.

Turun Sanomat reports that apart from Sweden, Russia and former IVY countries, the column that suggested sleeve markings for different national groups has now spread to Holland, Iceland, Italy, Poland and Romania. To add more fuel to the fire, Johan Bäckman asked the police to investigate whether Eronen’s column is guilty of inciting ethnic hatred, according to Turun Sanomat.  

Finland’s interior minister wants to make begging illegal

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Christian Democrat (KD) Interior Minister Päivi Räsänen was quoted as saying on MTV3 that she is in favor of making begging illegal in Finland.  Just like many past suggestions by the conservative Räsänen, like her provocative views on homosexuality that caused last year an exodus from the Lutheran Church, her views on begging and how to deal with a group like the Roma of Eastern Europe doesn’t come as a surprise. 

While Räsänen uses the term “organized” begging, it’s clear that she is targeting Roma beggars from Eastern Europe that come to Finland.

In order to understand the dynamics of the Finnish government’s tough stand on immigration and its views of certain ethnic groups, Kokoomus Prime Minister appointed last year Räsänen to head the interior ministry in charge of immigration policy.

Her appointment was a clear attempt by the government to not only calm the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, which had gained a historic 39 seats in last year’s election, but to rob it of its anti-immigration thunder.

Räsänen’s stand on gay rights and marriage reflect her conservative views on immigration and Finland’s ever-growing cultural diversity.  Last year she said there are plans to tighten once again family reunification laws, which were tightened by the previous government.

Her views on immigration are pretty well summed up on a blog entry she wrote on Uusi Suomi:  “Our country’s culture, values and morals have been built around Christian ethics and we must not abandon them starting from our homes, day care centers and when bringing up children.”

What Räsänen is saying in the quote is that she doesn’t believe in cultural diversity but that immigrants should assimilate — not integrate — to Finnish society.  Assimilation is one-way integration, or something like sitting on your behind and requiring immigrants to adapt to your culture while you do nothing except watch.

Some have criticized Räsänen’s double standards. On the one hand she claims to uphold Christian values concerning the family but doesn’t appear to be bothered by minors who are refugees in Finland that are forced to live without their parents because of strict reunification laws.

While Räsänen likes to give the public simple answers to complex problems, her latest view on begging will not resolve anything but complicate the problem even more. We will soon see pictures of the Finnish police rounding up, arresting and deporting women and children from Finland. It will reveal and reinforce the image that we are an intolerant country that doesn’t have a clue on how to deal with a social problem like begging in our society.

It prefers instead to brush the problem under the rug by making “poverty illegal” by patronizing to parties like the PS.

Nipping fascism, Nazi-spirited and far-right ideology in the bud in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

After most of the Finnish media was taken for a long and extensive ride by the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, Migrant Tales  has warned on numerous occasions about the threat the party poses is not only to immigrants, visible minorities and Finns with international backgrounds, but to our whole society. The Helena Eronen scandal, when she wrote about sleeve emblems, is another case in point. 

Tuomas Muraja, Turun Sanomat’s foreign editor, the daily that published the story on Eronen’s column, says outright that history will see PS chairman Timo Soini as the man who brought the “aggressive far-right” to parliament.

The whole scandal reveals a lot about what Eronen thinks about our democratic institutions and institutions like the media.  After the attraction that her blog entry caused in Finland and abroad, Eronen is now planning to sue Turun Sanomat for defamation.

Her writing about sleeve emblems and her boss, PS MP James Hirvisaari, who was fined by a court for hate speech in December, say a lot about Eronen. She used to advertise openly on her Uusi Suomi blog profile belonging to the anti-immigration Muutos2011 party.

Another factor that sheds more light on her far-right anti-immigration ideology is that she visited Auschwitz in 2007 and knew where people were some exterminated during the Holocaust. Here more on the topic by Ossi Mäntylahti.

Jews were forced by the Nazis in Germany and occupied Europe to wear a yellow Star of David. This is satire, right?

As if missing totally the point, Eronen blames the Turku-based daily for the bad press she attracted. She conveniently forgets that it was what she wrote that was unacceptable, especially coming from a parliamentary aide.

Those who visit our blog regularly have noted by now that every month  there is a scandal coming from the PS. The lion’s share of the scandals hinge on racism, homophobia, offering medals to cold-blooded killers, as well as an eerie fascination for fascism, Nazi-spirited and far-right ideology.

Muraja correctly states that the whole Eronen scandal and what she wrote wasn’t satire at all but exposed far-right or Nazi-spirited ideology with humor or as a joke. Spreading fascist, Nazi-spirited and racist jokes are nothing new by these groups. Such writings are primarily meant for their followers even if they are published online.

Another important aim of this type of questionable satire and jokes by groups like Suomen Sisu is to move the goalposts in order to make racism, and the ideology that supports it, “normal” to common voters.

Will they succeed depends on our reaction and how deeply we want to bury our heads in the sand.  The only reason why there are far-right MPs in parliament is because we have given them a mandate. It is now our job to take it away from them.

How? The answer lies in our democratic institutions and most importantly in our values: independent media, vigilant public, and leadership.

In many respects what happened in April 2011 is due to many factors: the financial scandals that rocked the Center Party, the EU financial crisis and the bailout of Portugal a week before the election, but most importantly traditional parties lacking courage and leadership to challenge the PS.

Migrant Tales writes shortly after the election:  “Another factor that spurred the PS to new heights was a watershed statement in March 2010 by Kokoomus chairman Jyrki Katainen, who stated that being critical and debating immigrant issues in this country didn’t make you a racist. After that green light to racism was given, the Social Democratic leadership gave the PS another pat on the back with their infamous saying, maassa maan tavalla.”

Even if we respect the election result we can passionately express our opposition to the political agenda of a party like the PS.

Unless we want to turn Finland into a country where fascism, far-right and Nazi-spirited ideology have a clear mandate, our media, politicians and the general public will have to do much better.

Our Finnish national identity in the new century

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Glancing through a pile of documents and certificates my late grandfather (1892-1979) had is like entering a time machine. Two certificates catch my attention: a Finnish-language test in 1925 and another one when he changed his surname from Hantwargh to Harvo.  Both documents offer us a glimpse of how a social construct like Finnish national identity was forged in the last century.

Taking into account how some Finns define it today an ever- globalized world, it’s easy to see that their definition of a Finn has its roots in those two documents.

Being a Finn had little to do with your place of birth but is due to jus sanguinis, right of blood. Your citizenship is not determined by place of birth but by having one or both parents as citizens of that country.

The first document proving that my grandfather spoke perfect Finnish is understandable in the jus sanguinis context. The second one, which was from 1931, states at the following:

In light of the petition made by military instructor Harald Vilhelm Handtwargh, the governor of the province of Mikkeli grants his family permission to change their  surname to Harvo; this is backed by statements from the vicar [of the Lutheran church], Suomen Sukututkimusseura [Finnish Genealogical Society] and the Suomalaisuuden Liitto [Association of Finnish Culture and Identity]…

Taking on a new national identity was relatively  easy in the last century as long as you were white, nationalistic and didn’t make too public your foreign roots. In the case of my grandfather it was his Jewish background.

Today there are totally new demands placed on our society with respect to inclusion and “us.”  How we included and excluded people and groups in the last century is, I believe, what is causing us to fall flat on our faces and hindering us from seeing the bigger picture of what Finnish identity is in the new century.

Since we are a young nation with a young identity there is time to make it more inclusive. But for that change to happen it requires us to see the world in a radically different way than today.  A good example is some of our feelings towards the Russians and that fear of being a small nation constantly under threat.

It’s clear that in order to build a more inclusive and culturally dynamic society, we have to break away from our past hatreds, prejudices and myths.

But let’s not fool ourselves, breaking free from them will be a long process that will take a concerted effort and generations.

This document gave my grandfather the right to change his surname from Handtwargh to Harvo in 1931. 

One good way to become a more inclusive society today would be to change Section 5 of the Constitution from jus sanguinis to jus solis, right of the soil, nationality or citizenship granted to a person born in country.

The whole idea of jus sanguinis is deeply rooted in how ethnicity and nationality were defined in the nineteenth and greater part of the twentieth century.

While I am happy that Finland is an independent country today, we cannot escape the fact that it was built on nationalism and racism that was ever-present in Europe before and even today.  Thus our independence was in many respects an ethnic thing. We didn’t like the Russians never mind Russification.

The racism and nationalism that existed in Europe in the nineteenth century had a clear role: It justified the colonization and exploitation of other people in Africa and Asia. It was very ethnocentric as well. We thought that we were the epitome of civilization and therefore it was our right to  exploit others because they were less “advanced.”

As we know, World War I exposed the barbarism of our “civilized ways” and was pretty good reality check.

Hopefully our culturally diverse identity will not resemble an excerpt from Heikki Waris’ “An introduction to Finnish history” on page two:

“A fourth aspect is the high degree of homogeneity of Finnish society. Racial homogeneity particularly characterizes the Finnish people who have practically no racial minorities, the less than three thousand Lapps in the northernmost arctic communities making up the largest racial minority group. Consequently, racial prejudice and discrimination are nonexistent.”

Apart from avoiding mention of the Roma of Finland and Finnish expats and those with international backgrounds, Waris’ affirmation are quite humorous from today’s perspective.

Räsänen sees no wrongdoing, ethnic profiling by police with spot identity checks

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Christian Democrat (KD) Finnish interior minister, Päivi Räsänen,  didn’t see any abuses nor ethnic profiling with spot identity checks of foreigners by the police, according to YLE. The statement follows a story on Wednesday after the office of the Ombudsman for Minorities expressing concern about the large number of complaints that foreigners are being arbitrarily stopped on the basis of their ethnic background. 

Räsänen said that while she hasn’t received any complaints of ethnic profiling, the present methods prove to be effective in clamping down on undocumented immigrants.

“The vast majority of foreigners look just like the natives, so it’s not even a very sensible way to supervise aliens,” she said.

JusticeDemon said in a comment on Migrant Tales:  “The idea that members of visible minorities should be disproportionately stopped while going about their daily business in order to catch illegal aliens makes no sense whatsoever in terms of intelligent policing priorities.”

He states that the overwhelming majority of undocumented immigrants in Finland are visa or visa-extempt overstayers. “Their typical profile is likely to match that of a visitor, not an immigrant,” he said.

While some analysts believe that Räsänen was appointed to head the interior ministry to calm the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, for some she is the last person to approach in government to tackle a problem like ethnic profiling by the police.

Räsänen uses the adjective “illegal”  when speaking of undocumented workers.

“In fact, Finland acts rather efficiently in the matter of illegal immigration and there is no reason to weaken this efficiency [by not carrying out spot checks], because it is our strength and in this we can set an example for other Schengen countries.”

Eronen strikes back in order not to strike out

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

The Helena Eronen scandal, Perussuomalaiset (PS) party MP James Hirvisaari’s aide who suggested with bad satire that foreigners should start wearing armbands, struck back today with a new column in order not to strike out. 

She has come back but with a vengeance especially against Turun Sanomat, the Turku-based daily that broke the story that then spread to Sweden, Russia and who knows where tomorrow.

After being apparently shocked by the reaction that her column caused, her boss Hirvisaari must have given her a long pep talk. Such pep talk, however, spells disaster and convolutes the PS even more, especially after the party’s parliamentary group recommended sacking Eronen.

Eronen claims that she is innocent. Her aim was to use satire to show how armbands for foreigners could help policemen distinguish between foreigners and Finns. The column was as well a pretty clear jab at the Ombudsman for Minorities.

Hirvisaari as well as his ideological comrade in arms, PS MP Olli Immonen, hold the Ombudsman for Minorities office in low regard. Immonen suggested in October that it would be a good idea to make the Ombudsman for Minorities office redundant.

There’s a lot more to what and why Eronen wrote what she did than meets the eye.

Her defiance is evident. When she published her latest blog entry, she included the one that got her in this mess in the first place and was later republished on Hirvisaari’s blog.

Uusi Suomi censored the column again as it did the first time.

Eronen offers an odd apology with her fingers crossed apparently behind her back. She does say sorry per se but only to those who were authentically offended. She does not tell us what “authentically offended” means but it becomes clear pretty soon.

After a long not-so-mea-culpa explanation she finally gets to the punch line of her column and singles out Turun Sanomat: “And so my blog entry was handled by a brilliant Turku journalist…”

There is one important matter missing in Eronen’s latest blog entry: She doesn’t tell us what she did wrong and why it has caused such an uproar.

Eronen asked for trouble when she wrote her column about armbands

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Finland has been inflicted for a number of years by people who think they can say and write anything they please about immigrants and visible minorities in Finland. It’s only natural that when you let out racism and prejudice to roam freely in society unchecked, things will eventually snap as we saw in Norway in July. What did Helena Eronen, Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP James Hirvisaari’s aide, do wrong?

Eronen blames the scandal on her own ignorance, according to an interview she gave to YLE. “The strong reactions to it [blog entry] were to be expected,” she said.

Reactions to what she wrote about sleeve emblems for foreigners to help the police in Finland have been published in Sweden and now throughout Russia and former IVY countries such as Belarus, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

Eronen blew it to put it lightly. If you are white and try to be “sarcastic” about other nationalities, work for a right-wing populist party like the PS and your boss is none other than Hirvisaari, you are going to get in hot water. She forgot as well those whom she was being sarcastic about, the immigrants, and if this may be offensive to some groups.

Who are the losers and winners of the scandal?

The biggest loser shouldn’t be difficult to figure out. That’s Eronen and the negative debating atmosphere in Finland concerning immigrants and visible immigrants.

Do I think that Eronen’s column was in bad taste? Certainly. But there may be a silver lining revealing that matters may have changed in Finland since Jussi Halla-aho and his xenophobic band roamed the net with near-impunity.

Some, like MP Hirvisaari, who was fined for hate speech in December, still don’t get it. They live somewhere deep in the previous decade when defaming and insulting immigrant groups and cultures was a free-for-all social media lynching job.

Hirvisaari added more damage and salt to Eronen’s wound Wednesday by republishing his own blog the column that was taken off Uusi Suomi. He went as far as to claim that the scandal is an example of the rot that inflicts the media in Finland.

The biggest winner could be the PS. Eronen could give them a scapegoat opportunity to wash their hands of all the racism and prejudice they have spread in Finland since last year’s election, according to a column by Jussi Jalonen. Such a sacrificial object looks especially inviting for the PS with the municipal election nearing in October.

Finland, and I am certain Eronen as well, have learned a valuable lesson: When you write about immigrants and visible minorities you should be extra careful and try to see the world from their perspective when dressing a column up in sarcasm.

If you have that ability, probably one of the first things you’d do is drop the whole topic and write about something else.

PS parliamentary group wants Hirvisaari to sack Eronen

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

The Perussuomlaiset (PS) party parliamentary group decided today that Helena Eronen, PS MP James Hirvisaari’s aide should be sacked immediately for writing about foreigners wearing armbands to help police differentiate the nationality of the person, according to YLE. 

After the meeting, Hirvisaari told reporters that nothing had been decided about Eronen.

PS parliamentary leader Pirkko Ruohonen-Lerner, who stepped out of the meeting after Hirvisaari, gave a totally different version.  She said that the majority of the PS MPs decided to recommend to Hirvisaari that he’d “immediately sack his aide [Eronen].”

Ruohonen-Lerner said that this type of writing by Hirvisaari’s aide hurts the party and the parliamentary group.

She said that the parliamentary group cannot give the boot to Eronen. That was Hirvisaari’s job.

What PS MP aide Helena Eronen wrote about armbands for foreigners in Finland (part 2)

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Even if Helena Eronen’s boss, Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP James Hirvisaari wants to play down the impact of his aide’s blog entry by claiming that we do not know what satire is, the whole affair exposes something far worrying: It is a new dive into the depths of these shameful political times.  

I don’t know what is worse: what Eronen wrote or Hirvisaari’s defense.

As everyone knows, Eronen published a column Wednesday on Uusi Suomi suggesting how foreigners should  wear armbands to help the police to distinguish whether the person is a Finn or not.

Hirvisaari wrote on his blog Wednesday evening that the scandal exposed the “ever-evident rot of the [Finnish] media:”

Now, folks, think about it. If an MP says that Finnish media is infested with rot, what words would he spare for immigrants never mind Muslims?

Hirvisaari was fined for hate speech in December.

One of the questions we could ask about what the Eronen scandal reveals is wrong with Finland today and where is it heading?

What do we accomplish by writing and suggesting that foreigners should wear armbands especially during these difficult times? Nothing at all. Instead we do nothing more than promote greater polarization of our society by stressing “us” and “them.”

Much of the persona of the PS as a party relies on promoting “us” and “them.” The racism and prejudice that festers in the PS, and which gets a lot of attention from the media, will destroy it in the end.

But not all agree with Hirvisaari’s take on things. Possibly one positive matters to emerge from this scandal is PS parliamentary leader Pirkko Ruohonen-Lerner, who condemned what Eronen wrote.

“I hope that we can distance ourselves totally from these types of writing,” she was quoted as saying on MTV3. “They bring harm to our party and parliamentary group.”

What PS MP aide Helena Eronen wrote about armbands for foreigners in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri 

Every month we’ve seen some sort of scandal coming from the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party. In April, which is only eleven days old, we already got another one by an aide who suggested in a blog entry that foreigners should start using armbands to help police distinguish who is an immigrant and who is a Finn. 

Eronen was hired as PS MP James Hirvisaari’s aide in January. Hirvisaari, a hard-core  anti-immigration extremist, was fined in December by a court for hate speech.

The PS MP defended in a  new blog entry on Uusi Suomi Eronen’s writing.

Eronen suggested on her blog entry today that foreigners should start using sleeve badges in order to help the police figure out rapidly who is a foreigner and who is a Finn. Her blog entry was directed at the Ombudsman for Minorities, which accused today the police of ethnic profiling.

Her opinion piece was published around midday and was deleted by Uusi Suomi in the afternoon.

She writes: “If every foreigner were required to use an armband of his/her national background, the police could immediately spot whether that ‘aha, that is a Muslim from Somalia’ or ‘aha. that is a beggar from Romania.’ Muslims could [use sleeve badges] with a half moon…Russians [with] a hammer and sickle, Kampucheans could have field mines, a burger [could be used to distinguish] USAmericans…”

Eronen  appears to like her own suggestion so much that she envisions a ceremony taking place.  “…take for example if a refugee from Kurdistan would get permanent residency [in Finland], his red half moon would be changed for a blue-white half moon when he’d become a Finnish citizen… Think about what an important moment in that Kurd’s life [if he would exchange his red half moon for a blue-white half moon at some ceremony at Immigration Service]. It would enforce integration and would make Finnish and Finnishness an important goal [for every immigrant to attain].”

The parliamentary aide suggests that potential terrorist could wear chips under their skins to monitor their movements.

One of the matters that has raised concern in Finland has been the PS’ ties with neo-Nazi groups like the Suomen Kansalinen Vastarinta. There has been concern as well of PS MPs like Hirvisaari who belong to extremist associations like Suomen Sisu.

If you visit Eronen’s Facebook page and go to photos, you’ll find one where she is wearing an army-looking cap with a flower emblem. The edelweiss flower was used by a mountain commando division in Hitler’s army.