August 2013 - Migrant tales

Why is the immigration debate in Finland so distorted?

Posted on August 30, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Here’s a question that needs serious debating in Finland: If refugees account for a minority of all immigrants, why do they get so much attention in the media? Why do anti-immigration parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) constantly speak of them and give us the impression that all of Finland’s immigrants are mostly refugees and Muslims living off social welfare?

In 2012, a total 3,129 asylum-seekers came to Finland compared with 3,089 in the previous year, according to the Finnish Immigration Service (FIS). Of these, about half (1,601) got accepted as refugees last year.

So why the distortion? It shows that those who oppose immigration, or cultural diversity, will distort, exaggerate and lie to drive home their point.

The strategy that anti-immigration groups use resembles me taking pedophile crime statistics and preposterously claiming that all Finns are pedophiles.

Read full 2012 annual report here. The majority (64%) of immigrants are from Europe, followed by Asians (20.5%) and Africans (9.1%).

The amount of refugees that we take in annually is tiny. In neighboring Sweden, there were a total of 43,900 asylum-seekers in 2012.

As a country, we should be ashamed of ourselves. Finland has committed itself to take in 750 quota refugees annually. The last time we filled that quota was in 2003, when we accepted 749 refugees.

Every year after 2003 we’ve missed the 750 quota target: 734 in 2012; 626 in 2011; 634 in 2010; 727 in 2009; 737 in 2008; 727 in 2007; 676 in 2006; 690 in 2005; and 679 in 2004, according to FIS.

One of the reasons why we haven’t been able to take 750 quota refugees annually is stiff opposition from municipalities. The PS, for example, campaigned in the municipal elections that municipalities should not accept refugees.

Having grown up in the United Sates, Argentina and studied culturally diverse countries like England, Canada, Australia, Brazil and others, I do not understand how somebody can claim that immigration is a burden on society. If immigration fuels growth in these countries, it spurs growth in Finland as well.

An OECD study published in June claimed that immigration boosted economic growth in Finland in 2011 by 0.16%.

Those who disagree with the OECD’s claims can take a close look at countries like the United Sates, Canada and Britain, which have large immigrant populations, and ask why they have the most powerful economies in the world.

Supreme Court upholds PS city councilman’s conviction for ethnic agitation

Posted on August 29, 2013 by Migrant Tales

The Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it will not grant Perussuomalaiset (PS) Kotka City Councilman Freddy van Wonterghem the right to appeal a conviction for ethnic agitation in February by the Kouvola appeals court, reports YLE. The ruling is similar to a lower court ruling on PS MP James Hirvisaari’s hate speech conviction in June 2012.

Van Wonterghem said he would appeal the decision to the European Court of Human Rights.

Read full story here.

The city councilman commented on a blog entry written by Migrant Tales that he had no regrets about what he wrote in the summer of 2011. He wrote back then that it was a good matter that a Muslim woman would die since it would be one less person giving birth to a member of that religious group.

While it’s clear what van Wonterghem wrote is something he would most likely never say to a woman from his own national or ethnic group, his defiance and support from the PS is more than revealing. The excuses are an insult to any sensible person’s intelligence.

The PS of the region of Kymi played down the whole affair by stating that the councilman didn’t know how to express himself adequately in Finnish.

The Belgian-born naturalized Finn has lived in Finland for over 30 years.

Van Wonterghem knew exactly what he said and did it get national attention, which he succeeded.

The councilman, who is a Holocaust denier, played down the whole affair by stating that it was “only a sentence” and that he didn’t consider it offensive and/or racist, which it was.

A common excuse used by racists in Finland is that their comment was either taken out of context or that it was humor.

Van Wonterghem claims that his statement about killing a Muslim woman was “irony.”

The whole case is another example of how PS chairman Timo Soini has been forced to eat his words and promises on racism.

He said that any PS candidate that was convicted for ethnic agitation would be kicked out of the party.

First Soini claimed there were no racists, later “one, two or three,” and now his totally silent.

Migrant Tales (May 26, 2011): Racist propaganda during Finland’s Winter War (1939-40)

Posted on August 28, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Consequently, racial prejudice and discrimination are nonexistent (in Finland). Heikki Waris, An introduction to Finnish Society (1965), p. 2

Finland was also denying in the 1960s that racism did not exist because there weren’t any foreigners living in the country. Racism has, however, been part of our culture for a very long time: Kongoshoe polish, Neekeripusu (n-word kiss) chocolate, the Fazer licorice Gollywog are some examples of how this social ill had implanted itself in the national culture.

If Waris and other researchers wanted to find out if racism existed in our culture, all they’d have to do was study Finns that emigrated to Africa, North and South America. I once asked a second-generation Finn in Argentina how many races there existed in the world. “There are three,” he said. “White, black and pitch-black.”

We can even see racism prevalent in a Suomen Kuvalehti Easter 1940 issue: “In the East Indies Islands there appears a strange form of sudden mental disorientation that is called ‘running amok,’ or being taken over by horror and then reacting in a mad fashion. Even while running away from battle with a dagger in hand, the inflicted person rushes here and there striking anyone dead (that gets in his way).”

And then on the next page of the story is a picture of two Finnish solider representing the “civilized” world who know how to keep calm in the face of shocking situations. “Can somebody imagine for example that these Finnish soldiers would “run amok?” the caption reads.

The gist of the story by PhD Jan Gästrin, headlined “Spiritual discipline,” is that blacks are uncivilized and Finns civilized. In battle Finnish soldiers don’t “run amok” but can withstand the most rigorous tests of war: rats, lice, poisoned air etc.

The first page of a Suomen Kuvalehti article published in 1940 that attempted to show how the European white man was superior to blacks.

Note: The author apologizes for the racist content of the Suomen Kuvalehti article and wants to make clear that he does not play down the valiant fight the Finns put up against the former Soviet Union in the Winter War.

This blog entry was originally published May 26, 2011.

ENAR condemns racism against blacks in Europe

Posted on August 28, 2013 by Migrant Tales

MT comment: The statement by the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) was published five days before the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream” speech, and the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and of its Abolition. Millions of black Europeans are still victims of racism and discrimination in this part of the world.

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Over the course of four centuries, approximately 17 million Black Africans were sold as slaves and transported across the Atlantic to European colonies. Racism played a fundamental role in the slave trade by constructing the European myth of an inferior Black race that served to legitimise anti-Black violence. Although science long ago debunked the myths of biological “races”, hostility towards Blacks continues to be embedded in the idea of a separate Black “race”.

Read full statement here.

23/8/2013- Today, on International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and of its Abolition, ENAR brings attention to the fact that the racist legacy of colonialism endures in Europe. Millions of Black Europeans are still being treated as inferior, continuing to lack equal access to employment, education, housing, justice, as well as goods and services. For example, unemployment among Black 16 to 24 year-olds in the UK is double that for White counterparts.

Black people in Paris are on average six times more likely to be stopped by the police than White people.

A European-wide survey by the Fundamental Rights Agency also showed that 41% of Sub-Saharan African respondents felt they had been discriminated against on the basis of their ethnicity at least once in the previous 12 months. Despite data that show persistent and European-wide racism against Blacks, there are no comprehensive and focused strategies on EU and national levels to tackle anti-Black racism. ENAR therefore issues the following recommendations to the EU and European States:

– Identify and combat anti-Black racism, or Afrophobia, as a specific form of racism rooted in European colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade.
– Raise awareness about people of African descent in Europe and their positive contributions to European society, history, culture, and economics.
– Ensure that people of African descent enjoy equal access to quality education and address the existence of discrimination against Black students as well as biased school curricula.
– Promote equal justice for people of African descent and tackle disparities in police and border stop rates, sentencing, incarceration, and other inequities in justice.
– Collect and publish EU-wide racial discrimination and inclusion data to empirically document and monitor discrimination and exclusion impacting people of African descent.

ENAR Chair Sarah Isal said: “There continues to be a complacent acceptance of Afrophobia in European societies. To end discrimination against Blacks in Europe, political leaders and representatives must publicly recognise anti-Black racism both as a specific form of racism and as a pan-European problem, stemming from a shared heritage of colonial abuses. It is high time that states and civil society acknowledge that hostility towards Blacks is irrational and grounded in the myth of a distinct and inferior Black race”.

Fifty years from Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech

Posted on August 27, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Today marks the 50th anniversary when Martin Luther King Jr.(1929-68) gave his historic “I have a dream” speech. When he gave the speech in Washington on August 28,1963, I was eight years old. Even if I knew nothing about MLK at the time never mind anything about his famous speech, his words would have a profound effect on me throughout my life.

His historic speech was not only meant for black Americans, but applies to any minority struggling for equality and justice irrespective of the country.

Much of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s starting from Rosa Parks and others before them like Frederick Douglass and nineteenth century abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown, who paid with his life to end slavery.

There are also other ones who showed the way with their lives but never imagined we’d remember them today with so much affection and sadness: Treyvon Martin, George Stinney, and Emmet Till.

In many respects, the same message that MLK gave should be the strategy used by anti-racists groups in Finland and Europe. As he said: “Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.”

Today marks the 50th anniversary march on Washington and I have a dream speech. Source: Flickr.

The jury is still out if our Nordic way of life and values will help us to stand togethers on that solid rock of brotherhood. Anders Breivik on 22/7, the rise of the Sweden Democrats and Perussuomalaiset in Finland suggest that attitudes have toughened in this region of Europe as well.

Europe not only has the burden of the legacy of slavery and colonialism hanging over it, it has appeared time and again to haunt us and ravage our continent with wars and mass devastation.

Ethnic discrimination is an aberration and one of the worst social ills that can inflict us. There is a cure according to MLK: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Great speeches like the one MLK gave half a century ago and the gains made by the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s are clear examples that the most oppressed minorities can have a dream of a better life and challenge intolerance.

There are many parts of his speech that move me. One passage in particular I especially like: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character.”

Hear MLK’s full speech here.

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Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, August 28, 1963

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon of hope to millions of slaves, who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, the colored America is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the colored American is still sadly crippled by the manacle of segregation and the chains of discrimination.

One hundred years later, the colored American lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the colored American is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our Nation’s Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our great republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed to the inalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given its colored people a bad check, a check that has come back marked “insufficient funds.”

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.

We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is not time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy.

Now it the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.

Now it the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

Now is the time to make justice a reality to all of God’s children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of its colored citizens. This sweltering summer of the colored people’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end but a beginning. Those who hope that the colored Americans needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.

There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the colored citizen is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.

We cannot be satisfied as long as the colored person’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.

We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “for white only.”

We cannot be satisfied as long as a colored person in Mississippi cannot vote and a colored person in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

No, we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of your trials and tribulations. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by storms of persecutions and staggered by the winds of police brutality.

You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our modern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you, my friends, we have the difficulties of today and tomorrow.

I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.

I have a dream that one day out in the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interpostion and nullification; that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to climb up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father’s died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!”

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that, let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi and every mountainside.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual, “Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”

Prepared by Gerald Murphy (The Cleveland Free-Net – aa300) Distributed by the Cybercasting Services Division of the National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN).

Finnish Immigration Service terrorizes immigrants (Part II)

Posted on August 27, 2013 by Migrant Tales

By Dana

Why are we all so passive if we’re oppressed? What do you fear? What will you fear losing? Money? Benefits? What, then?

Where’s your humanity? Who makes up your mind for you? Who controls your thoughts? How do you build and make your morals and values stronger each day?

What is your religion? If you have few morals, then you and your religion don’t count much. Don’t fool yourself in the name of religion, and in the name of the law.

Do you hate me? Do you care about me? Yes, it’s easy not to care about me because it was three years that I spent on trying to bring my parents to Finland. I spent a lot of money. It cost me as well my time, my trust, my family, my dearest parents, my blood, my wish, my happiness and my hope.

When you lose a five-cent coin, u will probably search for it for at least 20 minutes. I spent three years searching!

I invite you to judge me and my case. Go ahead and show me ur hate over and over again…it’s easy for you because Finnish law works in your favor, not in mine.

Could you tell me why Finnish law works for you but not for me? What’s the difference between you and me, as a foreigner and foreigner, or as a foreigner and Finn?

Does it have something to do about human worth?

What does human worth mean to u? Can it be measured with money?

Why should I care for you if you have all you need?

What makes you feel happy about my situation? When i lost my parents you felt so happy – why? U think death only affects my parents and me?

Death will catch you sooner than you think and you can’t take your money with you, nothing, except yourself and your indifference and crimes.

FIS* laughs in our faces

FIS has a good time with our money and time

FIS instills tragedy that can destroy your life in the name of the law.

How would you stand up to FIS?

Would you struggle with FIS or become its jester?

How?

Show me how?

You could at least spare some of your pain on this blog.

*Finnish Immigration Service

The Jews of Finland

Posted on August 27, 2013 by Migrant Tales

The Jewish side of our family was never discussed openly when I was young. If it was, the matter appeared as a fleeting question: Is it true that part of our family is Jewish?

Read full column here on page 14.

Silence always followed that question.

In retrospect, our silence and answer revealed a lot about how some Finns saw cultural diversity.

My grandfather never spoke about his Jewish background because many members of his generation, who were born in the early 1890s when Finland was a grand duchy of Russia, were busy erasing who they were to forge a new Finnish national identity. He did this with the help of nationalism, by joining the White Guards (Suojeluskunta) and changing his surname in 1931 to Harvo from Handtwargh.

Even if silence was the best answer we could rally about our past, it wasn’t until many decades later when I stumbled on a wealth of genealogical information on the Internet about my grandfather and family.

I discovered that my grandfather of my great grandfather was Jakob Weikaim (1785-1848), a tinsmith from Daugavpils, Latvia. My great great great grandfather became in 1832 the first Jew to be granted a permanent residence in Finland.

A 1782 law, when Finland was part of Sweden between ca. 1150 and 1809, forced Jews to settle in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Norrköping. Any Jew that wished to live outside these cities had to convert to the Christian faith.

The Jewish community of Finland has always been small. Today their numbers total about 1,500 versus 870 in the 1870 census. One third of the Jews that lived in Finland at the time were natives with the rest being from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and the Ukraine.

Jews that settled Finland in the nineteenth century were the so-called poor Russians who were conscripted in the Russian army for up to 25 years.

The first synagogue build in Finland was in the 1830s on the island of Sveaborg, located outside Helsinki.

If Jakob Weikaim was our first Jewish relative to live in Finland and my grandfather the last, our Jewish heritage survived four generations in this country.

The Holocaust

Like other minorities in Finland, the Jews were victims of outright discrimination. Citizenship rights were not granted to them until 1918, and they could only work in a few professions like selling secondhand clothes.

Even if Finland was the first country in Europe to grant women the right to vote, it was the last together with Romania to grant Jews full citizenship rights.

The national media exacerbated people’s fears about the Jews. In an article published in 1883 by Uusi Suometar, the daily claimed that the Jewish population of Finland would reach half a million within a century due to high birth rates.

Dan Kantor, executive director of the Jewish Community of Helsinki, said that many of the fears and claims used by anti-immigration groups today were used against the Jews in the past.

Even if my grandfather had renounced Judaism and replaced it with Finnish nationalism, I’m certain he knew about the Holocaust long before its horrors became widely acknowledged by the outside world. My aunt, who was married to a US diplomat, asked her brothers and sisters to leave Finland. She feared that if the Nazis won the war, they’d be sent to extermination camps.

Fearing persecution, another aunt fled to Sweden shortly after the outbreak of the Continuation War in June 1941, when Finland was militarily allied with Nazi Germany.

Even if my grandfather never spoke about the Holocaust, I’m certain that the pictures of emaciated and dead humans at concentration camps would have horrified him. The mass murder committed by the Nazis would petrify anyone. The Holocaust will alwys live by us like an ugly reminder of our savagery, or in particular of a regime that based its existence on racism and ethnic purity.

If my grandfather lived today, I’d ask him about our alliance with Nazi Germany.

If he chose to answer my question candidly, I’m certain he’d tell me that hatred makes strange bedfellows. Even if Nazi Germany and Finland had a common enemy, the Soviet Union, what would have happened to the Jews of Finland if the Germany would have won the war?

Finns claim proudly – followed by an obvious sign of relief – that even if we were an ally of Germany during World War 2, anti-Semitism never reached the same levels as in Hungary, Romania and other parts of Nazi-dominated Europe.

Even so, former Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen formally apologized in November 2000 to the Jewish community for the extradition of eight Jews to Germany in 1942. Only one of the eight survived after they were sent to Auschwitz.

In neighboring countries like Estonia, the fate of the Jews was far worse. An estimated half of the country’s Jewish population, which totaled 4,000, died in the Holocaust. Nothing, however, compares to the barbarity that the nazis committed in Poland and other parts of Europe, where an estimated 6 million Jews perished.

The anti-Semitism that we still see in Europe today is in many respects linked to the intolerance we are seeing against immigrants and visible minorities. Factors like the economic recession and rising unemployment play important roles in fueling racism, xenophobia and far right ideologies.

The history of the Jews of Finland, as that of other minorities like the Finnish Tatars, Roma and Saami, should serve as a constant reminder of the importance of teaching and reinforcing tolerance.

Disenfranchising and denying people their right to their identity should never be encouraged but condemned by society.

I have a strong hunch that my late relatives would agree.

Source: Sarah Beizer and Meliza Amity: Migration Patterns among Jews – Finland. Originally downloaded from www.amitys.com.

The column was originally published in Finland Bridge 4/2013.

Finnish Immigration Service terrorizes immigrants (Part I)

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Migrant Tales

By Dana

The Finnish Immigration Service (FIS) strikes terror in immigrants like me. I’ve lived for three years in uncertainty not knowing if I’d ever be reunited with my family. My mother died in May and my father in July. I hadn’t seen my beloved parents for seven years. I never thought that the last time we saw each other in 2006 in Iran, that we’d never see each other again.

The FIS was never helpful. It made sure that I’d live with uncertainty about ever being reunited with my family. The uncertainty persisted day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second.

The FIS not only terrorized with uncertainty but my family in Iran too. I tried so hard to improve my life in Finland. Having my parents at my side would have helped matters a lot. But nothing ever happened. My application was shelved in some lost FIS corner, where it gathered dust.

The aim of the FIS is clear: to put as many obstacles in front of me so my parents would never come and live with me in Finland. Its aim was simple: to ensure that I’d live alone and in loneliness for the rest of my days in Finland. How cruel and senseless…

Who are the FIS? They’re always showing off themselves as being so important…there are many family reunification cases like mine waiting in the FIS. Many, many are waiting for their turn, waiting, waiting. The FIS responds: “Oh, we have no time now…You are nothing, nothing, but wounded people, your deep filthy wounds…”

Who are those officials, judges in the appeals and supreme court? What kind of judges are they anyway? Judges of what? For whom? What values are they judging and defending? Not mine!
Yes – power is dark.

Dark power isn’t immortal and will lose in the end because it is its worst enemy… The Finnish Immigration Service not only work against me but against Finland, and itself…A dark wind is howling for them, it is a sad song indeed.

I got a negative decision three times to bring my mother and father to Finland. I’m have a feeling, and am certain, that they never took my case seriously. They never cared about me never mind my parents.

Even you, reader, hiding from my eyes. But GOD will answer you and tell you that you cannot hide from GOD because GOD is the Master of the Universe, which you are not. You are a virus, a dangerous virus that will soon infect the whole of Finland and then it’ll be too late because nothing will be able to save this country. Finland now has a fever, a high fever, hotter than your sauna, hotter than the suffering you inflicted on me and my family.

I do not care about those persons who may judge me, in silence or with words, on this blog.

Are you a Finn?

A foreigner?

Do you have your family with you by your side in Finland?

Has what happened to me happened to you? How has the FIS treated you? Speak, speak, speak out here on this blog…

Like I have, now.

Racism in Finland: The media is part of the problem

Posted on August 25, 2013 by Migrant Tales

A party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS), which has capitalized politically on xenophobia and racism, claims that the Finnish media picks on it unfairly. The fact is, however, that the PS could have never achieved what it did in the April 2011 election without the help of the media, which gave its racists inflated respectability and importance.

If the PS criticize today the media for being biased against them, is it an indication that the Finnish media has become more critical of, and is less inclined to, give racists credibility and importance as in the past?

The documentary gives a warning at the end: “The most important thing we’re saying is don’t trust the media. Don’t take television, the press, radio [and social media] at face value and above all don’t take them sitting down.”

The Finnish media is not the only one that has been taken for a ride by racists and anti-immigration politicians. We saw this happen in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s with John Kingsley Read, founder of the xenophobic National Front, and Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech.

Powell claimed in the 1968 speech that the influx of black immigrants from Commonwealth countries caused him to be “filled with foreboding.” He claimed that he seemed to see a race war emerging where our rivers would end up “foaming with much blood.” Powell’s speech was given 45 years ago. Britain’s immigrant population has grown many fold since then. Where are those rivers of blood that Powell warned us of?

I’ve jotted down some notes from a 1984 documentary that shows how racists in Britain were given “inflated respectability and importance” with the help of the media.

The mistakes that the media made in Britain are happening in Finland today. It’s important that we study what occurred in Britain because the media plays an important role in shaping our attitudes and reinforcing our prejudices. Such prejudices are then reinforced by mainstream political parties, which gave the xenophobic and racist message of parties like the PS political credibility.

In sum, there was and still is very little critical thinking by the media concerning the so-called immigrant and cultural diversity issue. Instead of reporting news, too many reporters, editors and the media editorialize their prejudices when reporting the news, which should aim at being fair and well-balanced.

Read of the National Front claimed that immigrants were tearing toilet bowels and placing their feces in back alleys apparently because they had never used a Western toilet before. While the BBC reporter didn’t question this claim when he interviewed Read, he did some investigating and found out that it was completely untrue, according to the local council and health authorities.

Politicians like Jussi Halla-aho, James Hirvisaari, Olli Immonen, Juho Eerola and others have used the same tricks as Read by inflating rape and crime statistics committed by immigrants. Rarely if ever did reporters question if these claims are true.

I would go as far as to say that if the Finnish media would have done its job effectively, it is highly doubtful that the PS could have won 39 seats from 5 in the previous election.

In the same way that Read rose to prominence on its xenophobic message that struck fear in people, the PS copied what groups like the National Front did. Apart from allowing unsubstantiated racist slander to be published freely, editors like Helsingin Sanomat’s Saska Saarikoski gave PS MP Jussi Halla-aho greater respectability and recognition. His ex wife, Anja Snellman, believed that she was defending Halla-aho’s right to free speech but in fact it was her Islamophobia and prejudices that were the issue. One publication that has done a lot to spread racist myths in Finland is Uusi Suomi. Much of the bogus and inflated rape claims by PS candidates like Halla-aho and Hirvisaari were spread from Uusi Suomi. Common mistakes by the Finnish media when reporting on migration and minorities:

White sources are always used as authorities when immigrants and minorities are the topic
Editors of Finland’s main dailies are white Finns
Immigrant and visible minority voices are rarely if ever permitted to make their case
Rarely if ever do editors ask if the source of the”immigrant problem” are whites
We give inflated respectability and importance to racists because they mirror our attitudes
In Finland, the stronger racism became, the more airtime it gets
The rise of racism in our society and our coverage of it reveals how unbalanced and uncritical our media is
When it comes to fighting racism, the media are part of the problem

Old Finnish national social constructs still fuel intolerance and exclude visible minorities

Posted on August 24, 2013 by Migrant Tales

The Association of Finnish Culture and Identity (Suomalaisuuden liitto) is an association founded in 1906 to “strengthen the sense of national identity, to promote Finnish education and culture.” While this statement may appear innocent at first, the association endorses the intolerance white Finnish speakers have today against Swedish speakers never mind immigrants and visible minorities.

In sum, the Association of Finnish Culture and Identity is an enemy of Finland’s inevitable cultural diversity.

The values and attitudes of the association are maintained with the help of myths tucked deep in the nineteenth and twentieth century. In their world, Finnish-speaking culture is static and supposed to remain in a time warp. They promote an exclusive ethnic club that has no place in modern Finland today.

One of its campaigns is to undermine cultural diversity in Finland together with Vapaa kielivalinta, the youth wings of the PS and National Coalition Party. These four groups succeeded at gathering over 50,000 signatures for a direct initiative to demote the Swedish language to elective status at schools.

Swedish is a minority language in Finland. It is the country’s second official language together with Finnish.

Here’s a logo used before by the Regional Council of South Savo. It depicts the inhabitants of this region as indigenous natives, which fuels “us” versus “them.” Anti-immigration groups in Finland argue that they are “vulnerable natives” being attacked by “immigrant colonizers.”

When the association speaks in defense of “Finnish culture,” it is defending only the rights of white Finnish speakers and not that of other groups who are Finns as well.

It shouldn’t be surprising that in the face of Finland’s ever-growing cultural diversity, there’s still no non-white Finns on the board “strengthening our national identity.”

The Association of Finnish Culture and Identity is today led by anti-immigration and anti-EU Perussuomalaiset (PS) party members. Its chairman is Sampo Terho, a PS Euro MP.

When building a social construct like Finnish national identity, like what happened to Swedish and foreign surnames in 1906-07 and in the 1930s that were changed into Finnish ones, there are bad side effects like xenophobia and racism.

Groups like the Association of Finnish Culture and Identity continue to promote intolerance, indirectly and directly, by not questioning, or even recognizing, how some of its former causes, like strengthen Finnish identity, promoted, and continue to fuel, intolerance and hostility towards non-white Finns.

One of the biggest decision that Finland must make in order to take that first crucial step towards cultural diversity is acceptance and respect for other groups. This process is a two-way street.

While many of us are acceptant of cultural diversity, the shadow of our own national identity social construct continues to intimidate us into not accepting that our national identity in this century is very different from what it was before.

Apart from being a proud nation of its accomplishments, it is a nation that accepts and is respectful of its cultural diversity that is inclusive.