Month: June 2014

Close your eyes and repeat: The PS of Finland isn’t a racist and fascist party…

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Harri Tauriainen, a Perussuomalaiset (PS)* councilman of the northern city of Kemi, is a good example of how racism and fascism have found fertile ground in the PS. Taurianen was elected by the region of Lappi as a PS candidate for the April 2015 parliamentary elections, according to Rovaniemi-based daily Lapin Kansa. 

Tauriainen, a councilman of Kemi, got more votes than any other candidate in his city in the October 2012 municipal elections.

An interesting pattern emerges after having followed for some time the political antics of an anti-EU, anti-immigration, homophobic and especially anti-Islam party like the PS: Say outrageously racist things, fear-monger with gusto, get elected, and then start to appear mainstream but don’t forget to speak in code to your followers.

The PS has done a half-ass job with Tauriainen’s political facelift. He took some white power and “save our race” pictures down from his Facebook page below after the municipal elections. True, we haven’t heard him lash out at migrants like before. We haven’t heard him state:

“…it’s odd that we can’t put in line in Finland this colored human trash. Just put a stamp on their ass and deport them for good from Finland.”

In one picture greeting PS MPs this year in Kemi, Tauriainen has a White Guard emblem on the left of his coat.

While one of the aims of the White Guards was to contain the spread of communism and socialism in Finland,  it was disbanded after Finland signed an armistice ending hostilities with the former Soviet Union in September 1944.

Those who wear White Guard emblems these days are considered far-right activists that long for the days of fascism of the 1930s.

Tauriainen”likes” the far-right Suomalaisuuden liitto association.

He denies that he’s a fascist but calls himself instead a nationalist.

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Tauriainen’s Facebook page in October 2012.

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Taurianen’s Facebook picture album today.

The PS facelift to make the councilman more mainstream only required taking down two pictures and some racist posts.  There is, however, a second drawing in the first row that isn’t apparently considered racist by the PS. That picture states that Finland should guard its borders from foreign ogres like the one pictured in the drawing.

Despite the facelifts to become more mainstream, the PS has lagged behind its historic parliamentary election victory of 2011 in the  presidential, municipal and euro elections.

If the PS attract around 12% of the vote in next year’s parliamentary elections, it means that about half of its 38 MPs won’t get elected.

This is good news for Finland but bad news for an anti-EU, anti-immigration, homophobic and especially anti-Islam party like the PS.

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

Finnish gay rights hall of fame, shame and extra shame

Posted on by Migrant Tales

As the winding history of Finland’s first same-sex marriage law is being written, there’s already a hall of fame and shame from February 2013. As everyone knows, the citizens’ initiative for same-sex marriage was defeated Tuesday in the legal affairs committee of parliament by a vote of 10-6.

Even if those 10 who voted against the citizens’ initiative still believe that the world stands still and moves to the beat of their morality, there are two others that have the dubious honor of being in the hall of extra shame: Social Democrat MPs Mikael Jungner and Arja Juvonen of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party.

MP Suna Kymäläinen, a Social Democrat, wasn’t present at the voting because she came down with the flu on Tuesday morning and there’s wan’t time to get a substitute for her.

Green Party MP Oras Tynkkynen, who is a member of the legal affairs committee, wrote on a blog that the voting would have been much closer if the two Social Democrats would have been present.

PS MP Juvonen has gone on the record favoring same-sex marriage but wasn’t present to vote at the legal affairs committee.

Juvonen wrote on a blog that she intentionally chose not to attend the meeting because the PS’ and her stand over same-sex marriage are different.

“That’s why there was a substitute [at the meeting] that voted and took to the committee the party’s [official negative] stand [on same-sex marriage] because I couldn’t have done it.”

Wow, so here’s an PS MP who told voters before she was elected that she supports same-sex marriage but couldn’t vote on such an intiative because the party’s chairman, Timo Soini, keeps his MPs on a short leash.

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 From left to right: MPs who voted for the same-sex initiative, those who voted against, and those who were absent.

 

Jungner denies that he was at a bar when the voting took place.

The same-sex citizens’ initiative will be voted in the fall by parliament.

 

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

Four in five Swedes express concern over xenophobia

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Swedes are more worried about the rise of xenophobia in their country than the ever-growing number of immigrants, according to The Local, citing a study by the SOM Institute of Gothenburg University. The survey revealed that while 49% expressed concern over immigration levels, 78% were worried about the rise of xenophobia. 

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Read full story here.

Writes The Local: The negative attitude towards xenophobia is likely due to the fact that the topic has been a hot one for the past two or three years, said Marie Demker, a political scientist, was quoted as saying.

“I noticed that people fell that xenophobia threatens society,” she said. “We talk an awful lot about xenophobia and there is also a strongly negative attitude to all forms of racism and xenophobia.”

Demker said that it was “quite clear” that her countrymen and countrywomen were more worried about attitudes towards immigrants and refugees than they were about foreigners themselves.

Compared with the “what do you think about immigrants” surveys carried out in Finland, we can learn a lot from Sweden. Instead of asking if Finland should increase the number of immigrants, why don’t we ask them their opinions about xenophobia? Irrespective if a country has few or many immigrants, few will say that there are too few immigrants, which reveals that these types of surveys have loaded questions.

Meanwhile, Eurostat announced last week that Sweden took in 20% (26,395) of all asylum seekers in the EU in 2013. That was followed by Germany (26,080), France (16,155), Italy (14,495) and the United Kingdom (13,400).

Finland ranked 14th with 1,795.

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Read full story here.

Finnish HJK premier division football coach considers German team “arbeit macht frei”

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Right after the USA-Germany game, Helsinki football team HJK coach Mika Lehkosuo sticks his foot in his mouth by quoting a Nazi phrase, arbeit macht frei, when asked how the German team played. The Nazi slogan, which means “work makes you free,” was found at the gates of a number of concentration camps like Auschwitz during World War 2.

To add salt to mortal injury to the millions of Jews, Roma and other Nazi victims that perished at such death camps, the host bursts out in laughter after Lehkosuo’s comment.

This comment that the HJK coach made is a good example of how racist and homophobic jokes are made at work or other public places. The person making the comment doesn’t understand or cares if what was said was offensive. Instead of reacting to what was said, listeners give their seal of approval with a smile, laughter or silence.

 

If I were Lehkosuo, I’d apologize for what he said. It’s the least he could do. More importantly, he’d be setting an example that such Nazi slogans are unacceptable.

UPDATE: And that is exactly what he did in a statement (in Finnish). He said that his comment wasn’t supposed to be linked to Nazi Germany. “Using hindsight, it’s clear that I shouldn’t have used that phrase [in the first place],” he said.

In April, Rovaniemi premier division football coach Juha Malinen apologized for stating that he had  “most [white] Finnish” team in the league.

“A few years ago RoPS had thirteen black men [players],” he was quoted as saying on tabloid Iltalehti. “…We now have players whose names can be pronounced correctly and who Finns know…”

Thank you Rasmus for the heads-up!

Defining white Finnish privilege #4: Holding the short end of the stick

Posted on by Migrant Tales

In many respects white privilege, or specifically white Finnish privilege, is a good way to understand some of the challenges that migrants and especially non-white Finns face in this country. Migrant Tales invites readers to share their thoughts on the social ill.

Please send your comments on the topic to [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.

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Instituto Elos of Brazil offers inspiring tools to empower communities.

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Definition #4

No matter how many dissertations you write or the skills you have acquired, they’ll never be enough to put you on the same level as a white Finn. You may become like them if you assimilate, learn their ways and to read the code they use. Since it’s impossible to become white if you aren’t, your best bet is to be the exception.

White Finnish privilege is the reason why migrants and minorities usually end up holding the short end of the career stick. Everything takes a longer time to accomplish than normally: education, career, job advancement, even happiness.

White Finnish privilege works in sinister ways because robs you of the most precious resource you have: time.

See also:

 

Is Finland a good country for migrants and minorities?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Finland gets a lot of international recognition for being one of the most competitive countries in the world, for press freedom, women rights, scores high on the good country index, having one of the best educational systems in the world and the likes. The latter raises a question: How inclusive of a country is Finland to migrants, cultural diversity and gay marriage? 

What goes around, comes around, right?

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Read full story here.

 

As a multicultural Finn who has lived in this country for a long time, I’ve never felt that these distinctions granted to Finland applied directly to me. Press freedom? I doubt that many of the issues  we raise on Migrant Tales would see the light of day in the national media.

Why? Because all these distinctions given by think-tanks abroad are meant for white ethnic Finns. They do not really apply to migrants and minorities.

Taking into account the adverse winds blowing in Finland against minorities, migrants and their children, is it surprising that the legal affairs committee of parliament  voted Tuesday 10-6 against a citizen’s initiative on gay marriage?

The same committee voted 9-8 in February 2013 against gay marriage. This prompted a citizens’ initiative that got 166,000 signatures.

Finland is the only country in the Nordic region where gays cannot get married.

If you are surprised by the most recent vote, then you’re pretty gullible and probably think that the rise of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party in the 2011 parliamentary elections was nothing more than a mere protest vote that would go away in time.

The question is not only to connect the dots, even if this is important, but why we don’t bother to do so. There is a relationship between the rise of intolerance in Finland against migrants and minorities like gays.  Our problem is that those in power don’t want to know because some of them may dread what they’ll see.

And why should their day be ruined if the  World Economic Forum recently named Finland as the most competitive economy in Europe?

Risto J. Penttilä expresses dismay at the award in the Financial Times:

For a start, Finland’s economy has not grown in five years. The unemployment rate is 9 per cent. The flagship company, Nokia, was forced to sell its handset business to Microsoft last year. Its shipyards are in trouble; its forestry companies are cutting costs and closing plants. Public expenditure is expected to reach 58 per cent of gross domestic product this year – a larger share of output even than France.

Even if Penttilä, a member of the conservative National Coalition Party who represents the interest of the business sector as chairman of EVA, a policy and pro-market think tank, he does have a point. 

The latest vote against gay marriage is a clear indication that matters for other minorities in Finland won’t improve in the near future.

Is Finland then a good country for minorities and migrants?

Taking into account that the unemployment rate for migrants, which is generally three times higher than the national average of about 9%, coupled with the rise of a xenophobic party like the PS, it’s clear that this isn’t an ideal country for some migrants and minorities.

It is not only a dead-end country for some, but outright hostile as well.

 

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

Marine Le Pen fails to form the far-right European Alliance for Freedom

Posted on by Migrant Tales

There was great news today when we read that far-right Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders failed to form a European Parliamentary group called the European Alliance for Freedom (EAF)., reports the euobserver.

After the gains that the far-right made in the Euro elections of May, Migrant Tales welcomes Le Pen’s and Wilders’ failure to form the EAF as the best piece of news in a long time.

National Front’s secretary general, Florian Philippot, played down on the Independent that it “would not real really be a disaster” but “an embarrassment” if the EAF didn’t materialize.

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Far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen is all smiles until Tuesday, when her group failed to form a European parliamentary group. Read full story here.

 

Writes the Guardian: “The plans of Europe’s extreme right to try sabotage the EU from within were hit…failed to gain enough allies to qualify as a single caucus in the new European parliament – denying them precious funding, speaking time and committee positions.”

While the EAF was able to muster at least 25 MEPs, it wasn’t able to get seven countries as required to form a caucus. The five parties that were in Le Pen’s group were including the National Front: Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV), FPÖ of Austria, Italy’s Lega Nord, and Belgium Flemish separatist Vlaams Belang.

A sixth possible candidate, Poland’s Congress of the New Right (KNP), was cited but the views of its leader, Janusz Korwin-Mikke were too extreme even for Wilders.

One of Korwin-Mikke’s aims is to deprive women voting rights.

Meanwhile, Nigel Farage’s of the UKIP announced that it has formed a new anti-EU Europe of Freedom of Democracy group with 48 MEPs from 7 countries led by the UKIP (23 MEPs) and Movimento 5 Stelle of Italy (17).

Two far-right Sweden Democrat MEPs were admitted into the group.

Migrants’ Rights Network: Immigration statistics to be debated for 3 hours in the House of Commons

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Awale Olad

Awale_web

 

 

MPs are set to debate the political minefield of migration statistics this Thursday, 26 June. The Lords will also debate the right to work for asylum seekers.

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Read full blog entry here.

 

The Westminster Hall debate will be led by Bernard Jenkins MP, the Chair of the Public Administration Select Committee, which looked into migration statistics last year and published a critical report of how the government was recording statistics and ensuring a proper mechanism to manage migration numbers in the UK existed.

The committee’s inquiry considered various factors that record migration and took oral and written evidence from key experts including Dr Scott Blinder from Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford and Professor John Salt of the Migration Research Unit at UCL. Civil servants from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) and the Home Office also faced questioning from MPs.

There was an appeasing attitude from the cross-party group of MPs who looked at migration statistics with an open mind, especially at around the time of screaming and scaremongering by backbench MPs who wanted to close the borders to Romanian and Bulgarian (A2) migrants. Some newspapers said that the UK was set to be flooded by millions of EU migrants and the United Kingdom Independence Party filled the vacuum when the government refused to release projections of potential arrivals from the A2 countries.

So it was somewhat unsurprising that the government took almost a year to respond to the committee’s report, which was published in July 2013. It gave the government an opportunity to pour cold water over any suggestions that the UK was set to receive a disproportionate number of A2 migrants. The committee was particularly critical of the government’s dependence on the International Passenger Survey; they also urged the government to rapidly move on to the e-borders scheme, and improve the ability of the ONS to gather accurate estimates of migration data.

In terms of the net migration target, the committee’s recommendations are congenial to the government’s efforts, however, it falls just short of saying that a net migration target is both confusing and unnecessary – the committee recommended that the government ‘should do more to enable better public understanding of migration’, which the government agreed to.

The debate on Thursday will bring together hostile as well as friendly voices on immigration. The ever thorny issue of immigration numbers – something that shouldn’t be misconstrued with migration statistics in general – will certainly be the instruction that could potentially take this debate into hostile territory.

The government, however, has an opportunity to engage with a committee of highly informed cross-party parliamentarians who will be able to debate constructively with them on the factors that create the hostility around migration numbers. Three hours of debate on statistics alone could suck the energy out of both ministers and others, but a central figure could raise the tempo of the debate if one calls for the dropping of the net migration target, potentially wrong-footing both the Coalition and the Labour party on how best to deal with immigration policy post next year’s general election.

Read original story here.

This piece was reprinted by Migrant Tales with permission.

*Awale Olad is the Public & Parliamentary Affairs Officer at MRN, coordinating the work of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Migration, supporting parliamentarians and policy makers on establishing a cross-party consensus on immigration policy.

Interior minister’s plan to close legal “loophole” would increase the number of undocumented migrants in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Christian Democrat Interior Minister Päivi Räsänen has a dubious reputation in Finland for her homophobic and conservative religious views. In her latest attack against refugees, Räsänen writes that when an asylum-seeker gets a negative decision and doesn’t want to leave the country, the Finnish Immigration Service is required to give a residence permit if the person cannot return back to his or her country for a number of reasons.

Kaisa Väkiparta, head of communications at the Finnish Refugee Council, flatly disagrees with Räsänen’s claim.

“This isn’t true,” she writes. “The Supreme Administrative Court had to make an alignment concerning such cases because the Finnish Immigration Service wasn’t following the law. “

Väkiparta said that Räsänen’s plans to change the law would force the number of undocumented migrants in the country to rise.

 

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Read full comment here.

Räsänen writes in a statement that such a “loophole” in the law, which permits asylum-seekers to get a residence permit after a negative decision, has lured more asylum-seekers to Finland.

The rise in such residence permits to asylum-seekers who have received a negative decision – according to Väkiparta – hinge on the residence permits that the Finnish Immigration Service was supposed to give in the first place.

“The amount of asylum-seekers to Finland has been pretty stable in the past years, or about 3,000 people annually,” she says. “There is no factual base that the [so-called] loophole is luring people [to Finland].”

The PS of Pori, Finland, wanted to stop funding to Islamic cultural association

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Two Perussuomalaiset (PS)* members of the City of Pori board failed to get enough support behind a motion to stop funding to an Islamic cultural association, reports YLE. The association gets 4,000 euros in funding from the city.

Migrant Tales not only read this story with some concern.

Apart from being Muslims, is there any other reason why the PS wants to cut off funding to the Islamic cultural association in Pori?

 

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Read full story here.

The motion, which would have cut funding to five other political and student associations as well, was defeated 9-2.

The two PS city board members who backed the motion are Laura Huhtasaari and Tommi Salokangas.

Migrant Tales tried to get in touch with Huhtasaari but she was unavailable for comment.

Salokangas said that he didn’t really understand what Huhtasaari’s aim was except to probably get some attention.

“I’ve visited the people of the [Islamic] association and there is nothing wrong with them,” he said. “You have to ask Huhtasaari about the her motives [for trying to stop the funding].”

 

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