June 2013 - Page 4 of 5 - Migrant tales

European Commission vice president condemns death threats to journalists in Finland

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Migrant Tales

It’s a good matter that the vice president of the European Commission, Neelie Kroes, speaks out against the death threats that Swedish- and Finnish-language journalists and public figures have received recently.

Read Neelie Kroes’ blog here.

The Dutch vice president of the European Commission expressed concern about media freedom in Finland and Greece.

She writes: ”Death threats are unacceptable against anybody. But in this case [Finland], there is also a particular threat to freedom of speech, and to our cultural and linguistic diversity.”

Migrant Tales, which was linked as a source on her blog concerning death threats against journalists in Finland, is worried about the how an anti-immigration, anti-EU and anti-Swedish language minority party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) has attacked the media and uses it to polarize society.

Occasionally the media doesn’t set clear lines between the newsroom and politicians as this blog entry reveals.

Members of the Swedish-speaking communities are not the only ones who have received death threats. Feminists, researchers and even Migrant Tales have received such threats as well. It is a sad reality of life in Finland these days.

The NSA and the path to tyranny

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Migrant Tales

A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.

Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

The leak by US National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden has given us a unique opportunity to ask a vitally important question: Do we want unchecked surveillance? If we give up our right to privacy, what wider implications does it have on our democracy and society?

See original story here.

The answer to these above-mentioned questions can be found in many volumes of history. Social thinkers like Montesquieu, whose ideas were crucial in creating today a functioning Western democracy, warned us about the dangers of absolute and unchecked power.

It’s not my estimation, but that of many others who are equally concerned about how the United States has compromised its civil rights, specifically the fourth and fifth amendments, which guard its citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures and abuse of government authority.

Considering the close links that the NSA has with the CIA, it’s clear that such organizations would care less about civil liberties.

A security organization that requires up to an estimated $80 billion to operate and may have 100,000 employees ensure that we’ll be applying the same wrong medicine to the problem of security. Like a locksmith, who will never admit that crime has fallen sharply, the NSA will never downsize itself either but continue to grow and amass more power and pry into the lives of billions of people.

It is the aim of any state, be it small or a hyperpower like the United States, to survive and attain immortality. States go about this in a number of ways. Some, like the NSA, monitor and place under scrutiny our privacy in a belief it makes our country more secure.

Former Eastern European communist states and the Soviet Union attempted the same thing. It wasn’t the lack of civil liberties that eventually led to the downfall of these former autocratic states, but unchecked power and surveillance.

Even power-hungry military dictatorships in Latin America, which were backed by Washington and the CIA, planted the seeds of their destruction when the believed tried to attain absolute unchecked power.

When any state or government believes that it is invincible because it controls ultimate power, that’s the moment when their irreversible demise begins. The reason why they fall from grace is because they lose focus on the problem and decide to survive with the help of absolute power and force.

If we want to make the world a more secure place, we have to address social inequality, hunger, corporate power, autocratic regimes, human rights violations, privilege, environmental damage and others that we have the resources and ability to solve together.

The demise of a country doesn’t begin with an attack like 9/11, but on the credibility of its actions. True, a country may arm itself to the teeth because of fear, but that is only the penultimate phase before tyranny, social strife, demise and revolution.

Where are you from?

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Even if I have lived most of my adult life in Finland and my mother is Finnish, I’m still asked occasionally where I’m from. In a spirit of mutual respect, I ask the person the same question. Some don’t like it.

The innocent question, where are you from, reveals a lot about our prejudices and ignorance about who we consider Finns.

In order to emphasize their Finnishness at the cost of your Otherness, you’ll even get sometimes a lesson in race-and-blood myths and how their ancestors have lived for centuries in Finland.

When faced with such exclusive views of who is a Finn, I ask them how many ancestors they’d have if they went back 20 generations. The answer is about one million.

Read full story here.

Then there are those who claim they are as old as Methuselah, a biblical figure who died at the age of 969. Those who play Methuselah claim that their great grandparents fought in this and that war and built this land from scratch even if they had never seen war never mind suffered poverty.

I ask them a simple question: Are you 150 years old?

One matter that gives hope about building a more inclusive society is that we are still a young nation. Our national identity, which is nothing more than a social construct, was built by and large on wars and our loathing of Russia. This must change in order to make our society more inclusive and acceptant of cultural diversity.

Certainly we should respect our veterans. Even if they had no choice but to fight in trenches and die in battlefields, we don’t have to be there with them since the Winter (1939-40) and Continuation War (1941-44) ended over sixty years ago. We have to forgive and move on. The longer we stay in those trenches the longer we’ll be resentful and suspicious of the outside world.

Despite all the challenges facing us during this century as we become a culturally diverse society, I’m confident that we’ll succeed at the task.

Our Nordic democratic social welfare state values and the spirit of our laws ensure success.

My Conscience Your Conscience

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Migrant Tales

By Dana

Who has conscience?

Who doesn’t have conscience?

Finnish law doesn’t because it made a deep wound in me and it could not feel it did anything bad, oh nothing at all. So why is this law so cruel to me and my situation??? Because it isn’t wise…. because wiseness has conscience. What about racist people? Black and white or of other colours?

A racist has nothing except a circle… a sad circle that has no light in at all.

Do u feel anything in u like kindness?…what does your conscience teach you every day?

When was the last time u got a lesson from ur CONSCIENCE?

If u have no feelings for sadness and happiness then ur conscience is dead…who killed it?

You yourself killed it with your proudness and anger against other humans beings, so u r a killer….

now u got ur bad news and if u still feel nothing then u r truly not a human.

People who have no feelings for each other, who are like walls, who cant think more than money and some private things…they may look human but they are not human….NO

Then we have another matter…hmmm

We all live and we all will leave one day

We cant take anything with us to the other side and you dont know which side you will move to… be aware. Tell me about zero, all u know is about zero? What u know about zero?

We have a big parliament here in Helsinki that has zero conscience…. it is an unwise parliament What benefit has a parliament that is unwise?

What goals has this shaking parliament?

How many good things has this fat parliament done this week? How about last week? And whats their goals and plans for next week?
Your silence means you know nothing….

Your attack means you are barking….

Your stone-heart means your belong to stone age

You are not human, the only thing you have is a bad rage

And so universe will close your ugly page

If you are a fanatic i dont care at all

If you are a religious i dont believe it no more

If you cant see me in injustice, you are just shadow

You are a zero zero zero with No ego

You need a hero hero hero that’s alive – Conscience

Buenos Aires Herald (February 12, 1987): The old-new frontier*

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Comment: It’s sad to point out 25 years after writing this opinion piece that Argentina has become a poorer country. Emigration continues to be the rule, not the exception. The opening up of the economy to foreign investment during the 1990s was a disaster. Too many foreign companies did not invest in Argentina to make it more efficient but to pillage its natural resources and markets. Corruption continues to be one of the country’s biggest issues and keeps Argentina from attaining its economic potential.

______________________

To govern is to populate.

Juan Bautista Alberdi (1810-84)

Although Alberdi coined the phrase more than a century ago, it is still by and large true even though the statement has in mind Anglo-Saxon emigrants as opposed to Latins never mind Amerindians, blacks or Orientals.

As most long-range programes int his country, Argentina’s immigration policy turned out a failure. The flow should have been continuous and the vast empty patches of the countryside populated; new blood should have injected viror, social dynamism balanced with tolerance – political stability and economic prosperity should have been the rule.

True, Argentina did gain from the millions of immigrants that helped raise this country’s mid-19th century population of roughly one million to around eight million in 1914, paving the way for Argentina’s present-day 30-million-strong population.

As opposed to Australia, Canada and the US, during the early 20th century Argentina was in its own league when compared to the foreign-to-native ratio.

For instance, in the 1914 census 30 percent of the national population was composed of foreigners and, for Buenos Aires alone, this figure reached 40 percent. Add to these latter percentages the children of these original immigrants and the above-mentioned ratio becomes even more impressive.

No wonder why writer Manuel Gálvez, in a sarcastic allusion to Alberdi, said “to govern is to Argentinize.”

However, a number of internal and external factors – the Great Depression of the 1930s, World War II, domestic strife and instability, among others – curtailed the flow of immigrants thus giving way to a new demographic phenomenon: Argentina emigrants.

For those Argentines that left from the 1960s on, those who had made their homes here for a generation or two, Argentina became a stepping stone in their long search for a country that would offer them a decent existence.

Undoubtedly, the effects of this emigration are self-evident: hundres of thousands of Argentines – many of these qualified professionals – have caused a serious brain and qualified labor drain on the country, let alone speak of the flight of capital, ingenuity and hard work that are synonymous with the latter reality.

Probably the saddest fact was that Argentina could do little about halting this trend And, even today, the economic conditions aren’t attractive enough for Argentines living abroad to return en masse to the country.

Although the Radical administration [of President Raúl Alfonsín] has roughly 20 months left in power, it has ventured – voluntarily or involuntarily – to open up the closed doors of the economy as the recent 40 percent sell off of Aerolíneas Argentinas to Scandinavian Airlines proves.

This week another important step was taken by deregulating the petchem, steel and iron industry sectors. Naturally, these ar only previews of what will happen to other sectors such as telecommunications, railways, electric power et all as the months unfold ahead.

The interesting question about all this is if these economic structural changes will pave the way for a stronger, self-confident Argentina.

Considering that the country’s economic transformation will be a long, bumpy ride, it is not likely that this Southern Cone nation will be a magnet for Argentines living abroad or foreigners in the near future, which is undoubtedly one of the major obstacles in transforming this country into a modern 21st century republic.

Will anything be done to those political, economic and social impediments that reversed the immigration trend and encouraged Argentines to leave be deal with effectively it the upcoming years?

As one foreign businessman told this journalist: “Although Argentina has 30 million people it functons as a country of two million.”

As far as both Alberdi’s and Gálvez’ phrases are concerned, to govern effectively in the late-20th century is first to modernize and, in the early 21st century, to repatriate and populate.

*This column was originally published in the Buenos Aires Herald on February 12, 1987.

Burqas, nijabs, the PS and red herrings

Posted on June 8, 2013 by Migrant Tales

A tabloid Iltalehti story wrote about a heated debate in parliament Friday between the anti-immigration populist Perussuomalaiset (PS) party and the Greens over a draft bill spearheaded by PS MP Vesa-Matti Saarakkala, which aims to ban the burqa and nijab in public places. The PS MP considers the law as a “preventive measure” even if the nijab never mind the burqa are extremely rare in Finland.

PS MP Marja Louhela, who turns into a Ms Hyde whenever she hears the word “Muslim,” believes that such a ban would do a lot of good for Muslim women because it would improve their chances of getting a job.

MP Jussi Halla-aho, who was sentenced for ethnic agitation and who has never hid his loathing for Muslims and especially Somalis, claims the following: “It [burqa and nijab] messages wanting to be set apart from others, wanting to encapsulate in one’s culture. Those societies that don’t want women to communicate [with others] outside the home [require] women to veil their faces,” he said.

MP Olli Immonen, an Islamophobist like Halla-aho and Louhela who believes that Muslims will overrun Europe, offered a red herring by claiming his concern for Muslim women’s rights.

Green MPs Oras Tynkkynen and Satu Haapenen argued that the ban by the PS is unconstitutional and would not empower Muslim women.

To all those PS MPs, who claim to want to “liberate” Muslim women but in reality want to oppress them by denying them acceptance and their right to their identity, I offer the picture below.

Source: The Sociological Cinema

“Only Finnish spoken here” versus cultural diversity

Posted on June 8, 2013 by Migrant Tales

What would you do if you saw on an elementary school classroom door the following message: Only Finnish spoken here? Would you ask if speaking Swedish is ok? Would it raise disturbing memories of how minorities like the Saami were persecuted and discouraged at school especially after World War 2 for speaking their own language?

The Saami minority were one of many groups that were victims of white Finnish assimilation.

Here’s the double-standard and conflict: It would be disturbing to see such a sign at a school in Lapland today but we wouldn’t think anything of it if the message was intended for third-culture children, or those who have one or two immigrant parents.

One of the issues that we see over and over in the ongoing debate on immigration and immigrants is our acceptance of cultural diversity. In the last century, Finland dealt with cultural diversity in the following way:

discouraging “Otherness” and assimilation of minorities like the Saami, which began in the nineteenth century*
systematically prohibit immigration and foreign investment to the country

If we consider that it took Finland 65 years after independence to have its first Aliens Act in force in 1983, and that the Restricting Act of 1939, which severely undermined foreign investment to the country and was shelved in 1992, our assimilation policy included immigrants and foreign investment.

Finland is a very different country today than it was in the last century. We live in a globalized world and our society is becoming ever-culturally diverse. Since our assimilation policy was systematic in the last century after independence, it’s easy to understand why some Finns oppose and are hostile to cultural diversity.

A good example of the latter are anti-immigration parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS), which would never suggest to their voters the things they do for immigrants. It explains as well why we don’t think twice about “only Finnish spoken here” signs at schools.

“While I believe that our school system in Finland strives to promote cultural diversity, the truth is that we have a long way to go. Killing and discouraging diversity has distorted our view of ourselves and how we accept others in our society.

One example of the latter is how some schools continue to label third-culture children as “students with immigrant backgrounds,” even if they were born and grew up in this country. Such labels serve in too many cases to promote social inequality.

If you want a culprit that is holding us back today and which promotes intolerance, you’ll find it in our assimilation policies and the way we were brought up and taught to see ourselves as an exclusive national group. With more immigrants moving to this country, we need to promote inclusion and acceptance.

One association that played an important role in our assimilation policy in the last century was Suomalaisuuden liitto. Should it surprise us that the association, which has been taken over by the PS, has spearheaded a campaign to demote the Swedish language to elective status at schools.

* Vesa Puuronen: Rasistinen Suomi. Gaudeamus, Helsinki 2011. pp. 111-163.

Broadcasting hatred and racism against Romanis from Bulgaria and Romania

Posted on June 7, 2013 by Migrant Tales

I was surprised to listen on Thursday morning to Anssi Honkanen’s and Renne Korppila’s Aamupoika radio program on NRJ about Bulgarian and Romanian Romanis that come to Finland to beg. If you want to find the sources of Finnish racism and loathing for the Romany minority, tune into their morning program.

The program said, and this is not a joke, that due to the high number of Bulgarian and Romanian Roma who are coming to beg on our streets this summer, there’s a direct link with higher crime rates. Moreover, they claimed that these people are directly involved with organized crime and why don’t we forbid these EU citizens from coming here.

If I could, I’d ask Korppila or Honkanen to show me the statistics that reveal how crime rates have risen in Finland because there are more Romanis in this country from Bulgaria and Romania. I haven’t seen one credible source either that has shown me a link between these people and organized crime.

The fact that such claims are made by a radio station with little or no public reaction show the deep roots of hatred and racism that some have of the Romany minority.

Not only does a large radio station like NRJ spreads prejudice and hatred against an ethnic group, but it is done in the same way by the national media. The solutions offered by city officials and politicians to the whole issue only reveal their suspicion and total incompetence in finding any credible solutions for these Romanis.

It’s shameful behavior for a country that should know better and offer instead leadership on how to improve the plight of Romanis in Europe.

Fortunately some are outraged at what is being written by the media and broadcast by radio stations. More of us should, however, stand up against such prejudice.

Migrant Tales Literary: Voice of My Zeal

Posted on June 5, 2013 by Migrant Tales

By Dana

I have no weapon i have no gun but i have pen

I have no crowd , I have me alone, but i am brave

Am not terrorist, am not dirty one but you are fakes

I have no army i have no soldiers but i am bless

I have a soul in deep of me, i have no sword HEY look at me

I can feel it pain, i can talk to rain, but you mean war

I can expalin i can talk in kind but you are far

Am in your bad list, am not a facist but you are poor

I am not abuse, am a big victor, but you are fool

I paid for my mom, we waited long time, your name scam

We had mountain wish, you are a selfish, i cant be calm

I have bird in me, i sing for big tree, but you mean hate

You are all fearful, sick racist and sour, but i am LOVE

I cant feel happy, i lost my momy, you are monster

I am her baby, she,s gone without me, You are cheater

I have no ball-tank but you are a shark, you are an asp

I am a woman you,r not human, you drink my sap

I am angry, you cant be free, am with my GOD

You are a coward, you have a pig face,am not a tad

I understand, i have no big gang, stop it rape

You raped my soul, you killed my heart, stop it bake

You baked for me balck chemical and poison cake

Now where are you oh merciless racists with my node case???

You are stressful, you can not figure anything out

You cant write a law, you,r jealous in mind and very tight

I am with morals u build wall and walls, you are loser

You are with devil, i can feel it tear, i am winner

You have no hero, you,r bitter fellow, your wild in heart

You bloodthirsty, wow shame on you

Dont attack to me, back to your zoo

You are nerveless, You are wicked

You have a red card, eat your pickled

This is my message for YOU Finland

Not for good people but ruthless blind

Take it serious, am not joking

For you parliament,stop mocking

Dont turn your face you government, oh

You cant talk to me face to face, wow???

Who can talk to me between you bears

Take it off your mask you need a nurse

Finland becareful u break down, u will lose badly u cant be fine

Your,re on balck line so take good care, listen to this bell, this is a sign

This is my war word for you Finalnd

Sure not for good Finns, but for deaf band

Not for every Finn but for Hitlers

I am standing with my soul pearls

Dissecting Finnish racism and bigotry

Posted on June 5, 2013 by Migrant Tales

“Racism is like a Cadillac, they bring out a new model every year.”

Malcolm X (1925-65)

The quote by one of the most powerful voices to emerge from the U.S. Civil Rights Movements, reveals how racism survived in the 1960s to see another day. Even though the quote by Malcolm X was made about a half a century ago, it still sheds light on how racism survives another day to oppress, exploit and disenfranchise.

When speaking of racism in a country like Finland, the first question we should address is where did it come from. The over 1.2 million Finns that emigrated from this land between 1860 and 1999 offer one answer as does Germany, our former historical big brother.

Like many European countries, Germany had colonies in Africa and elsewhere. Like any world colonial power, it too had to establish a racist system that gave it the moral right to pillage, exploit and commit genocide.

European racism was so rampant in the nineteenth century that it had lost touch with reality and created a pseudoscience called eugenics, whose sole purpose was to justify the extermination of so-called undesirable non-white ethnic groups. Any group that was deemed undesirable was one that threatened white or colonial privilege.

What kind of colonial masters were the Germans? They were just as ruthless as the British, French, Spaniards, Italians, Dutch, Belgians, white U.S. Americans, Japanese and others.

Between 1904 and 1908, Germans systematically massacred ancestors of the Herero and Nama people for daring to rebel against their colonial ruler. The first concentration camps were not built by the Nazis in World War 2 but in Namibia by the Germans.

European colonialism was directly responsible for the mass extermination of non-white groups in Tasmania, Latin America and other regions like the former Belgian Congo, where an estimated half of the 20 million inhabitants died to satisfy King Leopold II’s greed. Not only did colonialism bring hardships like mass slavery, it turned against its master in World War I and II by causing the death of some 100 million people.

While there are many examples of how racism found its way to far-flung Finland, it survives amongst us today for the same reasons as it did in the past.

Any sensible person agrees that racism is horrible and none of us would endorse it openly. We do support such a social ill, however, through our silence, denials and prejudice.

Migrant Tales is living proof of how little we have done in this country to challenge intolerance. It’s sad but true: intolerance will become a bigger problem in Finland as our society become more culturally diverse. The rise of the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS) party is one example that reinforces the latter.

Since racism is a pernicious force, we need leadership to challenge it. We don’t need to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people, only a few are enough to leave a lasting impression.

Leadership can be shown on a public tram by Helsinki Deputy Mayor Pekka Sauri, and by others like Rebecka Holm, an adolescent who decided to do something about racist harassment, and Ricky Ghansha, who forced a “super racist” to apologize publicly for his behavior.

Our struggle against intolerance doesn’t even have to be so public. We can do a lot at the workplace just by reacting to a racist, homophobic or sexist comment. The message must be clear: We won’t tolerate intolerance.

Tim Soutphommasane, who wrote an interesting opinion piece on Australian racism, says the following: “It’s [political correctness] nonsense because the worst form of censorship comes from the opposite direction. Nothing shuts down debate more than the idea that any allegation of racism must involve a moral charge against each and every Australian [or Finn in our case]. That it must mean we are saying there’s something fundamentally rotten about the Australian character.”

Soutphommasane explains why it’s difficult to debate a social ill like racism in Australia and even in Finland since we’re at a loss on how to confront the issue. A strange logic takes place when we play down racism and allow self-censorship to muffle our arguments.

He asks: “Do we go to the trouble of making such fine distinctions between hooligan behavior and hooligans? Or between criminal behavior and criminals? Why must we take such extraordinary care to avoid offending those who engage in racist behaviour? This is a grotesque form of self-censorship, if ever there was one.”

Not only must we understanding where and how a phenomenon like racism has lodged itself in our society, we must rally leadership and resolve to confront it with its real name.

If we succeed at this, we’d have made significant progress in stopping new Cadillac models from entering the market every year.