Month: February 2013

How minority athletes rise to victory – Interview with Star Athletics Winner Nooralotta Neziri

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Çelen Oben and Sheila Riikonen

 In Finland where finance and politics are no longer barriers to achieve star status in sports, what challenges do minorities face? Do female athletes, persons with disabilities, or those coming from immigrant backgrounds have equal opportunities in Finnish society?

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You can visit Nooralotta Neziri official website here.

Nooralotta Neziri just won the women’s 60-meter hurdle on February 3, 2013 at the Star Atlethics  in Tampere (“Tähtien kisoista ja 23-vuotiaiden EM-kisoissa “). She achieved this with an impressive 8.14, while the second fastest Lotta Harala came at 8.20.  Already a national record holder and U20 European champion, Nooralotta now looks forward to the European Championships 2013 in Göteborg, Sweden.

We interviewed Nooralotta for a feature story as part of a project report for the EU and Council of Europe´s programme for Diversity and Social Integration of Minorities in Europe.

The authors Celen Oben (North Cyprus) and Sheila Riikonen (Philippines) travelled in Finland and Cyprus to interview sports figures from a minority background in a span of 10 days in December 2012. Here is the excerpt of the interview with her:

Nooralotta Neziri, 21 years old, first talked about what inspired her. “I started running at the age of 7. My inspiration was my uncle who encouraged me to join a running club to get friends as we moved to a new place. My family and parents are very proud of me and they never doubted my goals. They are always very supportive.”

She currently studies Master of Economic Sciences in Pori. Describing her career, her biggest records are the U20 European Championships Gold medal, U18 European Olympic Festival Gold medal and own national senior record 13.10.

Other achievements are National Champion 2012, U18 World championships 5th, U20 World championships 5th, and Youth national record.

Sponsors and big companies do not mean the same thing, she said. “Yes, they are big companies here, but the amount of money isn’t too big yet.  Last year I made the contracts myself but nowadays I have a manager to do those things. So I don’t have to use my energy to them.”

We spoke to her about some countries for example North Cyprus, when female athletes get married and have children; they stop running – what is her case?

“Usually, in Finland it’s the same. But I think it shouldn’t be over if you have a good motivation to continue training after giving a birth. There are many female athletes winning a medal in the Olympics who are mothers. It’s about your own motivation and how supportive your family is.”

Using drugs and doping are a sensitive issue where top-level athletes have been penalized.  “I would never even consider using that. I think it’s unfair towards others. And I wouldn’t risk my health with drugs. I believe I can become a world champion without ever seeing them, “ she said.

Nooralotta’s dad is a Macedonian Albanian while her mother is a Finn. “So I’m 50% Albanian 50% Finnish. I think that’s my strength, I have always been a bit different from everyone else and I think it so cool! I’ve learned to like my difference. My goal is to be the best hurdle runner in the world!”

While there are challenges in everyday life and seemingly insurmountable odds in international competitions, athletes like Nooralotta persevered. Families and relationships are big factors in their success. The role of mentors and clubs are also important. A passion for sports and healthy lifestyle are enabling factors to succeed.

Nipping prejudice in the bud with our example

Posted on by Migrant Tales

We must find effective ways to nip prejudice in the bud. The worst matter we can do when it happens is our silence, which emboldens and strengthens intolerance to see a new day. How you may ask can we challenge such social ills? The answer is simple: our example and leadership. 

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Racist rants are usually accompanied by Nazi slogans like this one found in Mikkeli, Finland.

One of the worst mistakes some make when speaking about other groups is to generalize. When we generalize we water the seeds of our prejudice, which eventually bloom and reinforce our intolerance.

A study by  Janet Swim and Laurie Hyers in the United States asked the following question to women if they heard a sexist joke: Would you put them in their place, or would you be too nice to confront?

The study showed that 50% of the women participants said they’d ignore the comment, while 16% would actually comment on its inappropriateness. Two percent would grumble and do nothing.

I suspect that when it comes to racist jokes or comments, the number of people that would ignore them would be much higher than 50%.

Our reaction should be like Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s, who said that his country had become after Anders Breivik’s attacks a “more tolerant, [and] more careful not to judge people” according to their ethnic background.  His answer was more democracy, openness and tolerance, not less.

If you are at a meeting with colleagues or friends and they make a racist joke, tell them that it’s inappropriate.

Our reaction to intolerance should be first and foremost a reaction.

Jyväskylä may turn into another blow to Finland’s Counterjihadist -anti-immigration hardliners

Posted on by Migrant Tales

If the Counterjihadist-anti-immigration tide turned in Finland and the Nordic region after 22/7, when Anders Breivik went on the rampage killing 77 innocent people, the attack in Jyväskylä on Wednesday by suspected far-right thugs could be a serious blow to anti-immigration and far right groups in Finland. 

Whenever hatred metamorphoses into violence, like in the case of Breivik, and now the attack on the event in Jyväskylä, people get scared  and think twice before jumping on the hate bandwagon again.

It’s like picking and bullying somebody in a group. It may seem “fun” at first but when it turns messy that’s when people start regretting what they did.

Since politicians who built their popularity on racism and intolerance are the worst opportunists, it’s clear that they will play down what happened in Norway, as Jussi Halla-aho and James Hirvisaari did, and as Juho Eerola now does with Jyväskylä.

Eerola not only told the suspected neo-Nazis in Jyväskylä how to crash the next book event, but that the organizers had staged what happened in order to sell more books.

Halla-aho, Hirvisaari and Eerola are Perussuomalaiset (PS) MPs who have built their political careers by spreading hatred and intolerance of immigrants. All three are or have been members of the extremist href=”http://www.migranttales.net/supo-suomen-sisu-is-an-extremist-group/”>Suomen Sisu association.

Migrant Tales has written before that you cannot keep racism on a short leash. Intolerance knows now master. It can bite back at its keeper and hard as we saw in Norway in July 2011.

 

 

Red Herring tales (Part 2): City of Vaasa bans the burkini

Posted on by Migrant Tales

As expected, the Vaasa city leisure committee voted unanimously on Wednesday to prohibit the use of burkinis. The committee claims that the swimming outfit, consisting of a head scarf, tunic and trousers designed for Muslim women, is a dangerous to the swimmer and unhygienic.

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It’s unclear from the rules if Muslims are required to go to the sauna naked.

While the city may have a point, the prohibition goes much deeper: it’s another example of our hardened stance against Muslims and cultural diversity in general. It is a sure recipe for failure in integrating all parts of our ever-growing culturally diverse society. The following message rings out loud and clear:  This is Finland and this is how we do things. Go back to where you came from if you don’t like it.

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 The cartoon depicts perfectly when the city of Vaasa prohibited the use of burquinis at their public pools.

Migrant Tales spoke last week to the City of Vaasa official who made the proposal to the leisure committee. I wasn’t impressed by the reasons for prohibiting the burquini, which revealed a red herring: We are not willing to compromise and work with you on this matter.

The quotes by the city official that reinforces the above were: “We have for as long as I can remember men from wearing shorts [at pools]. There are no exceptions,” and “99.9% of the swimmers are for the ban.”

The percentage figure, 99.9%, reveals that only a handful use burkinis.

If it is a single-digit figure couldn’t it have been resolved in a different way?

It is incredible as well that while some officials speak of getting immigrant women out of the home and integrate them into our society, the burkini ban does the opposite and will encourage them to stay home.

Another matter that raises serious questions is the Suomen Uimaopetus- ja Hengenpelastusliitto (SUH), the Finnish swimming instruction and lifesaver’s association, which is planning to recommend prohibiting this spring the burkini throughout Finland.

Who is the SUH? Is it one association or many different that should look into the matter and recommend policy?

The SUH official told Migrant Tales that he had got in touch with Suomen Somaliliitto, the Somali Association,  and a Somali Helsinki city councillor. None of them had responded back about the burkini, according to the SUH official.

How should this affair been handled?

Why didn’t the City of Vaasa get in touch with the local imam(s) and spoke to them about this problem to find a solution? This would have been a more effective and sensible way to find a compromise.

In sum, the burkini prohibition in Vaasa reveals one of the biggest challenges and issues facing Finland as it becomes ever-culturally diverse: Taking into account other cultures and empowering them through the decision-making process.

Post-Jyväskylä: Where do we go from here?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Considering how the media treated before the April 2011 election racism and far right ideology and how social media sites were teeming with racist online lynch mobs, we are today waking up from the hangover of our state of social inebriation. The aftereffect will not go away in a day, week, or month but will take a very long time to wear off. 

Instead of alcohol, Finland has been consuming and experimenting with racism, nationalism and far right ideology as answers to our ever-growing cultural diversity The more it drinks, the more we lose touch with reality and what is good for us.

Was it a coincidence that the attack in Jyväskylä marked exactly the  eightieth anniversary when Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany as chancellor  and transformed the country into a totalitarian state?

When speaking of far right violence and racism in Europe, we cannot avoid addressing social ills like intolerance.

Claiming that social exclusion of white Finnish youths is one of the main factors behind what happened in Jyväskylä is only addressing part of the problem without seeing the whole picture.

Reading a number of editorials about what happened in Jyväskylä, only one by Savon Sanomat cited racism as the real culprit. It wrote: “An even  greater threat from organized extremist movements is a sort of daily racism that is targeted against immigrants and even to our [Swedish-] language minority. Attitudes in Finland have changed course, which isn’t anything to brag about.”

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The Kuopio-based daily makes a valid point. Every day racism, xenophobia and attacks against our Swedish-speaking minority feed far right and populist-nationalist groups. They are the 98 octane fuel that permit it to spread their intolerance.

Bears hibernate in winter but so can countries for many years when they live in a state of denial. Finland is no longer a nation owned and controlled by just white Finns. It is a fact that we are an ever-growing culturally diverse nation.

Let’s not give an Andres Breivik the opportunity to commit murder on a mass scale before we understand that our response to intolerance was inefficient.

Everyone in Finland has the right to be treated as an equal member of society and with respect.

Some sectors of our society have a very hard time accepting this. They are not only white marginalized Finnish youths, but a far bigger group that extends to all sectors of our society.

PS’ Eerola now claims that Jyväskylä stabbing was probably staged

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Juho Eerola said that Wednesday’s attack by suspected neo-Nazi thugs at a book presentation in Jyväskylä was probably staged in order to sell more books, reports Turun Sanomat citing STT.  

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Two of Äärioikesto Suomessa’s (Far right in Finland) three authors, Li Andersson and Mikael Brunila,  were present at the event but weren’t hurt. One man, who attempted to prevent three men from gaining entry to the event, was stabbed, write YLE in English.

The man was taken to the hospital but his injuries were not serious.

Police now say that both sides were armed but declined to specify what kinds of weapons were being used.

Criticism against the police has been mounting.  Uljas, a University of Eastern Finland student publication, claims that the police were aware that far right members were going to be sent from Joensuu to the book event in Jyväskylä.

The police chose not to do anything.

While what happened Wednesday was condemned by all parties because it infringes on freedom of speech and the right to assembly, PS vice president Eerola gave advice the following day how neo-Nazi Suomen Kansalinen Vastarinta activists should crash such an event the next time.

“The next time don’t look like ”patriots” when you plan to enter such an event. Don’t go as a group but be [inconspicuous] in the crowd,” he wrote.

Friday’s Helsingin Sanomat published Eerola’s comments. He later apologized for not expressing his ideas more clearly.

While the PS MP may regret publicly what he said, it’s a common tactic used by the party’s members to express their far right or racist views. After they make an inappropriate statement they disclaim it by stating that it was  “sarcasm” or  that their statements “were taken out of context by the media.”

Eerola said that the what happened in Jyväskylä was staged in order to sell more books.

”It surprises me that whenever this type of far right violence happens it always happens at an event with Dan Koivulaakso or Li Andersson,” he was quoted as saying. ”Nowhere else does it happen in practice. It’s the right, good advertising for their book so that where they’re giving a talk on how dangerous the far right it’s where the far right strikes.”

Politicians like Eerola, whose ties with fascism are well known,  should look at the mirror before making such outrageous statements.

His aide, Ulla Pyysalo, was embroiled in a scandal in 2011 when it become public that she had applied for membership in the neo-Nazi Suomen Kansallinen Vastarina (SKV).

Eerola as well as PS MPs like Jussi Halla-aho, James Hirvisaari, Olli Immonen and many others have victimized and lynched on social media immigrants. All of them have built their political careers thanks to fear-mongering and the social media.

UPDATE: Here’s a link that lists (in Finnish) nine attacks by the SKV.

Pia Grochowski: Women in sports, what’s being missed

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Pia Grochowski

As women’s rights, LGBT rights are advancing in the world, women are taking a larger role in sports. In Finland, the position of women in sports has been rather strong in athletics, in football even hockey. Finland is a nation that is advanced in terms of gender equality. If one looks at the crossover of minority women in sports, or immigrant women in sports in Finland, the discussion takes a 180-degree turn.  Immigrant women in sports is seen as a field where there is a lot left wanting. The media discussions of immigrant women in physical activity are dominated by the access of muslim women to swimming. While this cohort is rather small, there appears to be 20 articles written for every single Muslim woman needing to swim in a special circumstance. One has to ask if this is all to it?

The trouble of immigrant women in sports is that the debate and discussions have been heavily tilted in the areas of barriers and inaccessibility. Also a sizable amount of discussion has been dedicated to the inactivity of migrant women in sports and physical activities. The representation of migrant women in this sector is one that is very passive and highly complicit to heterosexist patriarchic normative stereotypes of women. The distance in representation between the activity of Finnish women in sports and migrant women is extensive. This has severe consequences for the development of immigrant women in the realm of sports and objective representation. The engagement in sports by women has been shown to elevate their status according to the United Nations. Sports is constantly documented as a pathway towards empowerment for women. Its ironic that rather than become a sector which is used to discredit stereotype of immigrant women, it has become a sector to reinforce the stereotypes. While the inactivity of some migrant women in the field sports is concerning, the extensiveness of the discussion is negative, pessimistic and problem focused. Remedying this challenge is plagued with barriers, and possibilities for empowerment are elusive.

While I can take many turns in this discussion, and will likely do later on, I hope to focus on miss opportunities for an empowered representation of minority sportswomen in Finland. I recall a few months ago reading  the October, 2012 issue of Fit magazine. I was surprised and pleased to see the magazine featuring Jasmine Showlah, a Finnish sprinter of Ivorian background who won silver at the Finnish Championships in 2010. I was disappointed though to see rather than telling her story, which I already find inspiring considering her feats, the feature decided to direct inspiration to her rear end, “Peppu kuin spintterillä/an ass like a sprinter.” There are so many paths one can go on when interviewing a accomplished minority women sprinter: having her serve as a role-model, being a minority woman representing Finland at a elite level, tips on how to be a better runner, on how to be a better sprinter, how woman can take a bigger role in the field of athletics. All this was lost in describing how important it is for a woman to have a proper looking rear-end. There was no opportunity for a voice to be granted to the athlete here, just have her serve as a model. To put yet more salt in the wound, the main feature of the magazine was interviewing a Finnish male rockstar on his yoga habit. It’s a shame when a woman’s fitness magazine fails to advance the case for women sportspeople, let along engage in such patrio-normative representations of gender in sports.

This is just a single case, but its one of many. Not only is there an active force of representing migrant women as passive, but opportunities to engage in a discussion representing the accomplishments of even minority women are overlooked. Women make up half the immigrant population here in Finland, they face a double barrier of not only being an immigrant but also facing gender based stereotypes, and not enough is explored on why this is the case, and not enough effort is being made to rectifying the representation.