Tariq* has lived in Finland for over eleven years. If there is a person who has run into complications with the police, Migri (Finnish Immigration Service), and due process, he is one of them. According to Tariq, his citizenship process has been arbitrarily delayed due to a police fine that was canceled. “In March last…
Month: September 2022
Sweden’s nasty surprise comes home to roost
THE STORY WAS UPDATED Incumbent Social Democratic Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson conceded defeat in Sweden’s nail-biter election to the rightwing parties led by the far-right Sweden Democrats, reports The Guardian. The rightwing parties received 49.6% of the votes, with the left bloc securing 48.9%. If anything, it was a long overdue nasty surprise that permitted…
Reija Härkönen: Onko mahdollista väistää äärioikeiston uhkaa?
Me tiedämme nyt, että Venäjän kansaa ei voi syyttää äärioikeistolaisen, demokratian vastaisen hirmuhallituksensa hyökkäyksestä Ukrainaan. Pelko pitää kansan hiljaisena. Vaikka vastustajia olisikin, niin sanotut vaalit ovat jo vuosikymmeniä olleet sellaiset, että oppositiolla ei ole ollut aitoa mahdollisuutta demokraattiseen vallan vaihtoon. Pelko omasta ja omaisten turvallisuudesta pitää suut supussa ja panee jopa puolustamaan hallituksen toimia. Entäpä…
QUOTE OF THE DAY: Francis Fukuyama on Putin and Europe’s far right
In an interview with the Washington Post, political scientist Francis Fukuyama, who authored The End of History and the Last Man (1992), gives his views on the Ukraine War and what it may imply for Russia and Vladimir Putin. He argues that the rise of far-right parties in Europe and Donald Trump in the United States…
Fares Al-Abaidi: “I was very disappointed [with the sentence, and] it was a very, very bad decision.”
Fares Al-Abaidi got a hard lesson on Wednesday from the Southern Ostrobothnia district court on Finnish justice: only one person was convicted after a group of white Finns attacked him in June 2020. That person, PV, was forced to pay Al-Abaidi about 3,900 euros for his suffering. “He got away with only a fine while…
Sweden’s election is now a nail-biter
“The figures show the Moderates, Sweden Democrats, Christian Democrats and Liberals winning 175 seats in the 349-seat parliament against 174 for the center-left,” Reuters reports. The final results are expected by Wednesday.
Social Democrats’ left-green bloc emerge as victors but so did the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats
Sweden’s center-left bloc led by the Social Democratic party is set for a narrow victory over right-wing opponents in today’s parliamentary election, according to Yle. The biggest upset was the dismal showing of the conservative Moderate party, which slipped into third place after the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats. In light of the boycott against the Sweden…
The election result Sunday will expose nasty things about Sweden and the Nordic region
Sweden will elect 349 MPs of the Riksdag (parliament) today, and the big question is how well the far-right Sweden Democrats will fare. According to various opinion polls, the Sweden Democrats are seen coming second after the Social Democrats. The biggest upset would be the Sweden Democrats doing better than the conservative Moderate party. Just like…
The Musta Barbari and Fares Al-Abaidi cases deal a further blow to police credibility in Finland
Two rulings in two important cases involving ethnic profiling and suspected hate crime are a further stain on the credibility of the Finnish police. One of these took over six years to get a just ruling by the Supreme Administrative Court, and another one just slapped the hand of the suspect lightly. Ethnic profiling, which…
Two stories that reveal a lot about racism in Finland
Two stories that expose injustice and denial in Finland became public this week: First, the Supreme Administrative Court of Finland ruled Thursday that the police ethnically profiled singer Musta Barbari’s mother and sister in July 2016. The other news is about an Iraqi youth who white Finns violently attacked in July 2020. Both cases are not only…