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 year, the police was called by some security guards for resisting arrest,” Tariq said. “In the first place, security guards cannot arrest you. The police came, they did not hear my side of the story, and they slapped me with a fine.”
Each migrant who survives in Finland deserves a medal for heroism.
Tariq alleged that the security guards had hurt his hand. He wanted to go to the hospital but was not taken there.
“At the time [of this incident], I was applying for Finnish citizenship [a second time],” he continued. “Due to the fine, Migri stopped the application process until the issue was resolved.”
Tariq inquired about the fine around the end of August and found out, to his surprise, that the police had canceled it.
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 a far-right Islamophobic party to gain power in Sweden. Today, all Nordic countries have large far-right Islamophobic parties spreading fear and hatred against vulnerable migrants like Muslims and people of color.
While it is unlikely that the Sweden Democrats may hold ministerial posts, the new government led by the Moderate Party may resemble what happened in Denmark. In Denmark, the far-right Danish People’s Party (DPP) supported minority governments in return for tightening immigration policy
In the lowliest of political stunts to gain power, the Social Democrats in Denmark took up the rhetoric of the DPP and won the elections in 2019. The Danish Islamophobic party saw its popularity nosedive by 12.4 percentage points to 8.7% (16 MPs) from 21.1%(37 MPs) previously.
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 me suomalaiset, olemmeko me tänä päivänä missään vastuussa poliittisen ilmapiirin ja kovenemisesta ja äärioikeiston noususta Suomessa? Kuinka pitkään annamme äärioikeistolaisten öykkäreiden toimia eduskunnassa, kutoa seittejään hallintokoneiston ympärille, hankaloittaa demokraattisten päätösten toteutumista ja halvaannuttaa yhteiskuntaa? Onko äärioikeiston nousu valtaan mahdollista myös Suomessa?
Ilmapiirin koveneminen voi olla kiinni hyvinkin vähäiseltä tuntuvista, lähes huomaamattomista seikoista. Nettikeskustelun sivistymättömät öykkärit ja puolueiden julkirasistit ovat toki näkyviä, mutta heillä ei ole kykyä kääntää koko kansan mieltä. Kerronpa esimerkin isällisestä hivuttamisesta, millä kansakuntaa liikutellaan:
Kansallissankari Teemu Selänne jakoi v. 2016 kaverinsa Aleksi Valavuoren kanssa maahanmuuttajia törkeällä tavalla mustamaalaavaa tekstiä, vaati maahanmuuton rajoittamista ja väittipä maahanmuuttajien joukkoraiskanneen ystävänsä tyttären. Rikosta ei ollut poliisitutkinnassa eikä Selänne suostunut myöhemmin todistamaan väitteitään. Mitään seuraamuksia tuollaisesta kansanryhmää vastaan kiihottamisesta ei ollut. ”Tolkun ihmiseksi” presidentti Niinistön suosiollisella avustuksella nostettu Selännehän sai puhua, mitä rasistinen sylki suuhun toi. Aärioikeistolainen väki hurrasi. Kun on rasismin hyväksyvä presidentti kaverina, on lähes koskematon.
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 have received fuel from Putin. He mentioned a few of these politicians but leaves out Jussi Halla-aho and the Perussuomalaiset* party.
Francis Fukuyama: “I think Putin represents something very sinister in the minds of many people in the West.
A lot of people in Western democracies see that in their country, there’s a right–wing nationalist politician that is either supporting Putin or acts a lot like Putin. Matteo Salvini in Italy; Éric Zemmour, Marine Le Pen in France; Viktor Orban in Hungary. And Donald Trump.
So I do think there is a kind of awareness of more liberal-minded people that this alternative also exists in their country.”
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 my life changed completely,” he said. “I was very disappointed [with the sentence],” he admitted. “It was a very, very bad decision.”
Al-Abaidi said that his lawyer had appealed the court decision.
Some questions arise when looking at the case.
Its long 26-month length;
Not all of the suspects were questioned by the police;
No hate crime charges were brought; racism had nothing to do with the cause of the incident;
The district court judge gave his sentence on the same day as the trial began, which is extremely rare in Finland.
Were all these factors due to limited police resources?
Fares Al-Obaidi’s car after it was vandalized in June 2020. The police did not rule out a hate crime back then. Source: Migrant Tales
He said that only one person was sentenced because he was the only one who admitted to hitting him.
“Nobody else admitted anything,” he added. “I don’t know why the police chose to charge only one person. I told my attorney that it wasn’t only one person [who attacked me]. There were more than one.”
“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.
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 Democrats, the Moderate party changed its tune and was willing to form a government with the anti-immigration party with neo-Nazi roots.
The lesson? Don’t copy the rhetoric of xenophobic parties. Voters can vote for the real thing instead of a poor copy.
In Finland, the best example was when the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* split into two parties in 2017. There was the old PS and a lighter version called Blue Reform.
The PS survived as a party, and Blue Reform disappeared from the political map.
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 far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)* in 2011, the Sweden Democrats scored their best election victory in 2010 by almost doubling their support to 12.9% (+29 MPs to 49MPs) from 5.7% (20 MPs) in parliament.
Even if Sweden Democrat chairperson Jammie Akesson assures us that the party has moved away from its racist and neo-Nazi past, some are not convinced.
Up to now, all mainstream political parties in Sweden have blocked the party from forming part of a government.
Why all the commotion and support for the Sweden Democrats?
It’s the same story in all of the Nordic Countries: migration.
In Finland, the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* plays the same toxic tune as in Denmark (Social Democrats today and formerly Danish People’s Party), and the Progressive Party (FrP) of Norway.
In Denmark, the Islamophobic narrative has taken hold of the country’s political environment, and the same is happening in Finland and Norway. A big victory for the Sweden Democrats today could shift matters in the country for a long time.
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 the police have vehemently denied in Finland, saw its date in court after a long, winding, and painful process for the victims.
The legal path of singer Musta Barbari’s mother and sister to the Supreme Administrative Court:
They were stopped on July 9, 2016, by plainclothes policemen in the Helsinki city center on suspicion that they were prostitutes;
The mother and sister refused to give their ID and were found guilty in December 2017 by the police of disobedience;
An appeal was made to the National Non-Discrimination and Equality Tribunal, which found the police guilty of ethnic profiling and ordered them to pay a conditional fine of 10,000 euros to Musta Barbari’s mother and sister;
In April 2021, a Helsinki Administrative Court overturned the National Non-discrimination and Equality Tribunal’s decision;
On Thursday, the Supreme Administrative Court of Finland overturned the Helsinki Administrative Court’s ruling.
The ruling in favor of Musta Barbari´s mother and sister is another sad example of how Finland shuts its eyes and ears to the social ill of institutional racism. You can seek justice if you are very patient and willing to take a beating.
“I’m no longer engaging with white people on the topic of race. Not all white people, just the vast majority who refuse to accept the existence of structural racism and its symptoms. I can no longer engage with the gulf of an emotional disconnect that white people display when a person of colour articulates their experience. You can see their eyes shut down and harden. It’s like treacle is poured into their ears, blocking up their ear canals. It’s like they can no longer hear us.”
While, after much suffering and waiting, Musta Barbari´s mother and sister saw justice, the Fares Al-Obaidi case was just starting.
The Southern Ostrobothnia Administrative Court of Seinäjoki fined and sentenced only one person when a group attacked Al-Obaidi in June 2020.
Migrant Talesspoke with the prosecutor in July. According to him, there was no hate crime case because the attack against Al-Obaidi wasn’t due to his ethnicity.
Al-Obaidi disagrees. He said that they immediately called him derogatory, racist insults like mamu and the n-word when they started to argue. Moreover, only one person was convicted because the others remained quiet.
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 concerning but revealing. Ethnic profiling and suspected hate crime cases drag their feet in Finland’s legal system. Musta Barbari’s mother and sister finally saw justice after six years, while Fares Al-Obaidi’s case was decided by a court two years and two months later.
