Month: April 2018

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Of course a child needs a mother and father!

Posted on by Migrant Tales

“In today’s Finland, it is nothing uncommon for the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) to reject family reunification by a Finnish spouse because the child does not need a father.Doesn’t need a father? Migri should ask Argentina’s Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo if the father, mother, and grandparents are key to a child’s identity and well-being.”

During the dirty war (1976-83) in Argentina, when the state murdered an estimated 30,000 people, members of the armed forces adopted the children of those they apprehended, tortured and threw in unmarked graves. Even if the child was brought up by a person who directly or indirectly caused the death of his birth parent, the search for the child and grandchild continues to date.

A child will always look for his real parents. Growing up without a father or mother is unnatural and painful.

Unofficial translation of the rejection of an applicants family reunification request: “The applicant and family reunification sponsor started to live as a family during a period when there were uncertainties about the applicant’s residence permit in Finland. They must have understood that living as a family in Finland could not be a possibility.”

“The wellbeing of the applicant’s and family reunification sponsor’s unborn child does not require granting a residence permit to the applicant. The applicant has with his actions tried to bypass rules about entering [Finland]. The child can live in the future in Finland with the family reunification sponsor.”

“Soy Jorge Sampaoli, director técnico de la selección argentina. Si naciste entre los años 1975 y 1981 y pensás que podés ser hijo de desaparecido, acerate a las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. Yo te busco para que te encuentres.” 

“I’m Jorge Sampaoli, the coach of the Argentinean national football team. If you were born between the years 1975 and 1981 and you think you may be the son of “disappeared” people, get in touch with the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. I will seek you so you can find yourself.” 

Finland’s hostile environment for migrants, asylum seekers, and all types of minorities

Posted on by Migrant Tales

At Migrant Tales, we are hearing more and more stories about the suffering and plight of undocumented migrants and how greedy companies are taking advantage of asylum seekers. Some of these that we have heard are asylum seekers working full-time in black for 500 euros a month and a promise that they will get hired as staffers, which would help them to get a residence permit. Or what about working 12 hours for 50 hours a day but only declaring 30 hours to the tax authorities?

While it is questionable that such a person would ever get a residence permit because of the needs test, or that the job is first offered to an EU citizen, the inequalities and exploitation found today in the Finnish labor market is the doing of our politicians. They have created the bait and lure for such exploitation to take place.

In the political rhetoric and crusade to make Finland unattractive to future asylum seekers, politicians have lost total sight of how their policies have weakened the rights of all migrants and other vulnerable groups. Their message is clear: It is ok if you are exploited in Finland. We don’t care because we do not want you here in the first place.

Like in the UK, Finland is presently gripped by a hostile environment against migrants and minorities.

In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Theresa May, when she served as home secretary (2010-2016), is credited for the government’s “hostile environment” policy towards undocumented migrants. Since you cannot keep hatred on a short leash and cause it to act selectively, that hostile environment has spread to the Windrush generation,  the first wave of immigrants who arrived in the UK in the 1940s and 1950s from the West Indies.

Even if May is responsible for this hostile environment, it was all part of a broader scheme to take voters away from UKIP, which based its then rising popularity on attacking and stigmatizing migrants.

The political opportunism in the Tory party’s anti-immigration rhetoric already costs the UK dearly. They are not only in its anti-immigration soundbites but in the fact that they believed they could control such a social ill and keep it on a short leash.

Epic fail.

Elsewhere in Europe as in countries like Finland, there is a hostile environment against migrants.

The hostile environment in Finland is possible thanks to the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and by other mainstream parties, like the Center Party, National Coalition Party, Social Democratic Party, which give the same message but in a different langauge.

Amnesty International’s Annual Report 2016/17 highlights below some of the factors that created a hostile environment in Finland.

Source: Amnesty International Report 2016/17.

Continue reading “Finland’s hostile environment for migrants, asylum seekers, and all types of minorities”

Ovatko poliitikot, virkamiehet ja media tänä päivänä rasistisempia, kuin sotavuosina?

Posted on by Reija Härkönen
Somaliotsikot 1
Ilta-Sanomat 27.6.1994

Me teemme Suomessa yhä edelleen tiliä siitä, mitä meillä tapahtui niinä vuosina, kun natsit tekivät hirmutöitään etelämpänä Euroopassa. Aiemmin muistelimme, vähän huojentuneinakin, että oliko niitä nyt viisi niitä juutalaisia, jotka lähetimme Saksaan tapettaviksi, nyt Wikipedia kertoo, että pakkopalautimme kymmenen juutalaista pakolaista ja joitakin kymmeniä juutalaisia sotavankeja – ja syyksi mainitaan Saksan painostus.

Tuolloinkin homma olisi ilmeisesti hoideltu kaikessa hiljaisuudessa, elleivät aktiiviset kansalaiset olisi nostaneet meteliä ja saaneet omantunnon omaavia poliitikkoja mukaansa.

Sisäministeriö selitteli tuolloin, kuten tänäänkin, että luovutuksissa oli kysymys ”tavallisesta poliisiasiasta ja vain turvapaikkaoikeutensa menettäneiden epäsuotavien ja rikollisten ainesten poistamisesta maasta”.

Nyt, kun tilanne jälleen on se, että ihmiset joutuvat pakenemaan hirmuhallintoa tai täysin kestämätöntä tilannetta sotaa käyvien ryhmittymien keskellä, omatunto tuntuu painavan lähinnä opposition edustajia. Tällä kertaa vainoa pakoon ovat lähteneet muut kuin eurooppalaiset. Siis barbaaritko? Ovatko yhtä kaameita, kuin juutalaiset olivat saksalaisten mielestä? Pakolaisten kohtalo ei tunnu juuri liikuttavan suomalaista vallanpitäjää, eikä monia kansalaisiakaan, ja aivan kuten toisen maailmansodan aikaisessa Suomessa, myös nyt entiset ja uudet sisäministerit ovat ryhtyneet reippaasti toimiin mahdollisimman monen pakolaisen karkottamiseksi ja närkästyvät kovin, jos heidän toimialaansa yritetään puuttua.

Aika hätkähdyttävää on se, että mediassakin on samat jakolinjat kuin 40-luvulla. Wikipedia kertoo, että sensuurista huolimatta sanomalehdet käsittelivät juutalaisten kohtelua. Helsingin Sanomat ja Suomen Sosialidemokraatti tuomitsivat luovutuksen voimakkaasti, mutta Uusi Suomi vähätteli sitä.

Helsingin Sanomat ei ole tänä päivänä kovin tomerasti asettunut heikoimpien puolelle, vaikkakin ihan viime aikoina on sentään turvapaikanhakijoiden oikeusturvaa puolustettu pääkirjoituksessakin.

Pitemmän ajan ihmisoikeustaistelijana on ehkä parhaiten ansioitunut Suomen Kuvalehti, joka ei kuitenkaan ole päivittäinen uutislehti. Mutta niin nyt kuin silloinkin, Uusi Suomi lähinnä edistää rasistien työtä nostamalla keskustelupalstallaan heidän kirjoituksiaan toimituksellisesti esiin ja sallimalla rasistikansanedustajilta ja heidän avustajiltaan lähes millaista tekstiä hyvänsä. Sensuuri tullee tänä päivänä rahoittajien taholta, media kirjoittaa siihen sävyyn, kuin omistajat ja viiteryhmät vaativat.

Olen usein keskustellut ulkomaalaisten kohtelusta Suomessa Migrant Talesin päätoimittajan, Enrique Tessierin, kanssa. Hän on elänyt maassa niin kauan, että on nähnyt rasismin kehityksen eristyksissä eläneen kansan ihmispelosta tämän päivän rasismivyörytykseen. Hän on myös ottanut talteen iltapäivälehtien otsikoita 1990-luvulta – ja kirjoittanut mielenkiintoisen artikkelin rasistisista asenteista 60- ja 40-luvun mediassa.

Somaliotsikot 2
Ilta-Sanomat 7.8.1996

Meillä väitetään, ettei media olisi rasismin myötäilijä tai nostattaja, mutta selväähän on kaikille uutisointia seuranneille, että tummaihoiset ulkomaalaiset ja etenkin turvapaikanhakijat on mediassakin alusta alkaen nähty Suomelle haitallisena ja petollisena massana – tai ainakin media on hyödyntänyt kasvattamattoman kansanosan pelkoja ja vihantunteita otsikoinnillaan jo silloin, kun maailmankuvaa ei vielä muodostettu Internetin rasistipalstoilla. Aivan samaan tyyliin, kuin irakilaisista on nyt julkaistu skandaaliotsikoita, julkaisivat lehdet niitä ensimmäisistä maahan saapuneista somalipakolaisista. Vihankylvö onnistui mainiosti, niin kuin se tuppaa tekemään, ja poliitikoista katalimmat jatkavat pahan viljelyä – median avustuksella.

Milloin teemme näistä ajoista tiliä? Kuinka suureksi syyllisyyden taakan annetaan kasvaa?

A letter from a jailed Iraqi asylum seeker in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Instead of making Iraqi Muslims feel at home in Finland, the government of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä is doing everything possible – in the Timo Soini and Jussi Halla-aho spirit – to make their lives miserable. Sipilä and his government are the enthusiastic planters of the seeds of discrimination and inequality of Finland’s Muslim and visible migrant community. 

Spilä’s government would care less for human rights and the suffering of others. He would rather heed to far-right anti-immigrant advice than defend values like human rights.

I wonder what the prime minister and his ministers would say if they were treated in the same way as they treat asylum seekers in Finland?

Below, is a letter from an Iraqi asylum seeker called Mohammed.*

He has been held at the Metsälä immigration removal center since March 22. Like many, he is facing deportation after getting three rejections for asylum.

“I was so happy when I left my country [in September 2015],” he said on the phone, adding that he now faces deportation. “There is nothing I can do now.”

Mohammed writes:

“I used to live with my family in Ramadi until ISIS occupied it. We then moved to Baghdad. My father was a police officer. In Baghdad, I founded a civil NGO to help poor people and refugees until I was threatened. My parents asked me to leave the country and go to Turkey. From there I took a boat to Europe. Forty-eight persons on that boat drowned. I continued from Greece to Serbia, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden till Finland. I applied for asylum, but my plea was rejected. I moved to Helsinki and worked as a baker at an Iraqi restaurant that took advantage of me because I needed work. I worked long hours and was paid little money. After two years and seven months, after my third negative [for asylum], I was arrested and placed in this immigration removal center. I am now here together with thieves, smugglers and drug dealers.”

*The name was changed to protect his identity because he is an asylum seeker. 

QUOTE OF THE DAY: The Finnish media’s hidden racism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

“The fascination of the Finnish media for racist statements by politicians like Laura Huhtasaari is the real culprit behind the spread and normalization of racism in this country. If I had to give a grade to the Finnish media on how it handles stories about diversity and racism, I would give most of them a fail.”

Disagree? Just read all the racist things the media wrote about the Somalis who came to Finland in the early 1990s.

Finland’s media is not more balanced when reporting about stories on cultural diversity. That is a Halla-aho myth.

The Finnish media is more hostile than before. Politicians from mainstream parties like the National Coalition Party, Center Party, and all others contribute to the hostile environment against migrants and minorities in Finland.

Why is MTV so interested in what Laura Huhtasaari says when her minor party* is not in government and her comments are in the spirit of Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán? Source: MTV.

* After the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13 into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. Despite the name changes, we believe that it is the same party in different clothing. Both factions are hostile to cultural diversity.  One is more open about it while the other is more diplomatic. 

A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.

To Finland from a Pakistani family: A second letter about hate crime*

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales (MT) insight: In mid-March, MT published a letter from a Pakistani family. The victim, the father of the family, was brutally attacked on February 23 by three white Finnish youths. The victim and his wife believe that what happened was a hate crime. The police disagree. According to the wife, the police called her the following day after the Pakistani migrant was attacked and stated that it was not a hate crime because “the suspects were intoxicated.” 

I met the family again at the end of last month at noon at the hospital. It was so lovely to see them together: the wife, baby, and their four-year-old daughter in the company of their father, who was recovering and in much better condition since the last time I saw him. 

Since I have two granddaughters, I started a conversation with the eldest daughter about what cartoons she likes to watch.  “PJ Masks and Benny and Holly!” she replied without hesitation.

I asked the wife and her husband, if they wished, to write a letter about how their lives had changed after February 23. 

Below is the letter that also includes their feelings about charging the three white Finnish youths of attempted murder. 

What was surprising in the police statement was that the charges had been changed from manslaughter to attempted murder. 

It will be interesting to see how they pin murder charges on the three youths. The only matter that was apparently stolen from the victim was his cellphone. 

________________

Dear Finland,

It is difficult to put into words how this event had changed my family’s life. Change is a small word to describe what happened.

The terrible incident that caused by husband to almost die after he was attacked by three youths has made us extremely uncertain about life and people. We moved to Finland from Pakistan so we could live in a secure country. We did not find security but the total opposite of it.

My [four-year-old] daughter asked me many times when my husband was in the hospital when her father will come home. She missed her father so much. She asked many times what had happened to her father. My daughter hears about the topic a lot when I speak on the phone. At the hospital she would burst into tears every time the nurses injected her father.

My husband feels better and returned to our new home. We moved out of our old apartment in Vantaa because it brought all of us terrible memories and we did not feel safe there.

The attackers used a knife, ax and pointed object to stab and hit the victim. When stabbing the calf muscle, the suspect did not remove the knife but slashed part of the leg in the process. Without getting into more detail, it took four hours to remove the victim’s stitches. The violence of the crime raises questions. Attempted murder? Hate crime? At least no longer manslaughter. Photo: Enrique Tessieri.

The bloodstains of the victim were on the snow 20 days after the attack. Source: Helsinki Times.

My husband said that if anyone has hate in his heart and consumes drugs and alcohol, “intoxication” should not be an excuse for committing a hate crime.

Continue reading “To Finland from a Pakistani family: A second letter about hate crime*”

Islamophobia is the fear that white Christian Europeans will lose power and privileges to minorities. Disagree? Ask a Muslim woman

Posted on by Migrant Tales

A French appeals court upheld this week a ruling that denied an Algerian woman citizenship because she refused to shake the hand of a French official, according to The Local. The woman cited “religious beliefs” for not shaking the official’s hand. The appeals court defended the decision not to grant citizenship because the woman, who is married to a French man since 2010, had “not assimilated into the French community.”

The most recent example of questionable “French assimilation” is not the only one that we could cite. Last year, a French court ordered a store in Paris run by a Muslim to close because it refused to sell pork and alcohol.

In 2010, France denied citizenship to a Moroccan woman because she wore a burqa. The court ruled that this was incompatible with French values because they came from the “radical” practice of Islam.

After the terrorist attacks of 2016, some cities in southern France banned the use of burkinis. Remember the picture of the Muslim women on the beach forced to take off her burkini by French police officials?

France passed a law in 2010 to ban face covering. This law targeted Muslim women who used the niqab or burqa in public spaces.

Below are some tweets from 2016 that highlight the absurdity of such bans.

One of the most prized values of our way of life in Europe, and which the court overruling of the Algerian woman’s appeal exposes as hypocritical, is that European nationalism, deeply embedded in the exploitation of minorities here and abroad through colonization, continues to be the rule.

The crimes committed by Europe in the exploitation, genocide, slave trade and post-colonial world are so grave that Europe has to fear what will happen if a day of reckoning will dawn on us.

I once asked Swedish MP Malcolm Momodou Jallow his definition of Afrophobia.

“It is the fear of the white majority losing its p0wer and privileges to blacks,” he said.

Continue reading “Islamophobia is the fear that white Christian Europeans will lose power and privileges to minorities. Disagree? Ask a Muslim woman”

Three white Finnish youths who attacked brutally a Pakistani migrant are charged with attempted murder, not a hate crime

Posted on by Migrant Tales

After the brutal attack on a Pakistani migrant in Vantaa on February 23, the police investigating the case has deemed that what happened is not a hate crime but attempted murder, according to a police statement. The victim and his wife were adamant about the motive of the crime, which they considered racially motivated. 

The police raised the charges from suspected manslaughter originally to attempted murder.

If the wife of the victim is to be believed, the fastest conclusion that the police made on the following day after the attack was that what happened was not a racist crime. They claimed that it could not racially motivated because the three white Finnish suspects were intoxicated.

If you ask some members of the nursing staff at the hospital where the Pakistani was treated, they will tell you that they have never seen such a case of brutal violence in their careers.

Without getting into detail, it took four hours to remove the victim’s stitches.

The lack of understanding in the area of ethnic relations to the plight of a visible migrant has overshadowed this case by the police and social workers. Even if the victim’s wife asked such officials repeatedly, the blood stains of her husband were visible on the ground outside of their home for 20 days after the attack.

This is an ongoing story that will be covered during the weekend.

 

Read the original statement here.

France overturns again transferring asylum seekers to Finland for fear that they will be deported and put in harm’s way

Posted on by Migrant Tales

France has done it again and put Finland’s draconian asylum policy into the light of day for what it is: inhumane and politically guided.The Administrative Court of Appeal of Lyon has upheld a decision against transferring an Afghan family to Finland for fear that they could be deported to Afghanistan. 

The decision followed a similar one in January when a similar administrative court in France upheld a ruling against transferring an Iraqi asylum seeker back to Finland for fear that he could end up deported and sent to Iraq.

Writes the European Database of Asylum Law about the decision by the Administrative Court of Appeal of Lyon:

“However, it upheld the lower court’s understanding that there is, in Kabul, a situation of indiscriminate violence as a result of the internal armed conflict in Afghanistan. Therefore, by not deciding to take responsibility for the asylum application and ordering the transfer of the applicants to Finland, where they could then be returned to Afghanistan, the transfer decision was unlawful and had to be quashed.”

The asylum policies of the Finnish Immigration Service are so extreme that they are turning against Migri and the government of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä.

We saw something similar in the early 1980s, when the head of the Aliens Office,  Eilä Kännö’s arbitrary and hardline policies against migrants backfired and forced her to retire.

Migri considers parts of Afghanistan and Iraq to be safe to deport asylum seekers.

Read the full statement here.

Continue reading “France overturns again transferring asylum seekers to Finland for fear that they will be deported and put in harm’s way”

Another case of an Iraqi asylum seeker married to a Finn with a five-month child who may face deportation

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Just like Abdul, the Iraqi asylum seeker who is married to a Finnish woman expecting their child in September, Ibrahim* is the latest case of another asylum seeker denied a Finnish residence permit by the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri). The Iraqi asylum and his Finnish wife Inna have a five-month-old child.  

It took a year of waiting for Ibrahim to get his residence permit rejected in January by Migri when his wife applied for family reunification.

“We have appealed to the administrative court the rejection which is unfair,” said Ibrahim’s wife Inna*.

Other legal matters concerning Ibrahim’s residence have fueled uncertainty for the family. One of these, are seven appeals to overturn Ibrahim’s deportation orders from Finland after being rejected twice for asylum by Migri.

Migri has the power to ask you anything they even if their questions are humiliating like, question #48, “You[r] spouse is pregnant. Who is the father of the child?” What about this one, question #41: “Will your spouse turn into a Muslim” or  question #40, “How do you feel about your spouse’s religion?”

Inna stated that she worries and fears near-constantly that the Finnish police may come any day and deport her husband back to Iraq.

“We live on the fifth floor,” she said, “sometimes when I hear the elevator or people knocking at our door, I fear that it may be the police that has come to deport my husband. We thought it would be a good idea if Ibrahim would attend swimming classes with our newborn but we decided against it because of fears that the police may apprehend and deport him.”

Continue reading “Another case of an Iraqi asylum seeker married to a Finn with a five-month child who may face deportation”