Migrant Tales will publish all of the eleven issues of the Foreign Student, the newsletter of the Foreign Students Club of Helsinki. The March 1981 issue continued to test the waters by speaking out for foreigners’ rights.
Writes the Foreign Student: “Foreigners in Finland are taking a new stand concerning their rights here. All of us are asking: why such a tough stand concerning us while the Finnish Authorities are hypersensitive about the way Finns are treated aboard, as for example in Sweden?”
The February 1981 issue was the second of eleven newsletters that came out. The Foreign Student played an important role in giving migrants a voice during a period when foreigners were supposed to remain quiet about their civil rights.
Published in 1981, I wouldn’t have used today words like “Gypsy” and “Lapp” to refer to the Roma and Saami, respectively.
The second issue tried to speak about immigration and question Finland’s very restrictive policy towards foreigners.
Migrant Tales will begin to publish the Foreign Student, the newsletter of the Foreign Students Club of Helsinki. The January 1981 issue was the first newsletter, which came out 11 times until January 1982. The Foreign Student played an important role in giving migrants a voice during a period when foreigners were supposed to remain quiet about their civil rights.
When the Foreign Student was published about 11,000 foreigners lived in Finland. Most of these foreigners were Finns who were naturalized Swedes.
It also helped to drive up membership of the club and gave the foreign community a needed voice.
The Islamophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party has had a long love affair with Denmark’s anti-Muslim immigration policy, one of the toughest in Europe. With loaded guns in government, the PS must be happy that they can adopt, with the blessings of National Coalition Party (NCP) Prime Minister Petteri Orpo and the two minor coalition partners, the Swedish People’s Party (SPP) and Christian Democrats (KD), that country’s harsh immigration policy.
The Danish People’s Party (DPP) used to call the anti-immigration shots in government but in recent years their support has declined abruptly. In the 2022 election, the DPP lost 11 seats to remain with five seats in parliament, which is a far cry from the 37 seats they won in 2015.
The fortunes of the DPP have been undermined by the Social Democrats who have adopted and succumbed to the same hardline immigration policy and rehotirc of the far-right party.
While some are debating if a radical right party becomes more moderate when in government, Denmark offers us an answer: it radicalizes other parties who must adopt more hostile stances in order to survive and not be devoured by a populist party.
Apart from the government’s immigration policy that disenfranchises migrants by weakening more their civil rights and making them vulnerable to exploitation by employers, one wonders how far the PS – with the blessing of the NCP, SPP and KD – will go in order to make life difficult for migrants.
in Denmark, the DPP went as far as to force migrants to speak only Danish at home and deport whole families if a member is convicted of a crime. When will we see the following aims below in Finland?
Spearheading these radical changes in Finland’s immigration policy is PS Interior Minister Mari Rantanen. She recently announced plans to speed up the asylum process to four weeks. The asylum seeker will wait for the decision at the border.
Thanks to Agnieszka Holland’s “Green Border” we can now get a terrific glimpse of the suffering of asylum seekers who were used as political pawns by Belarus and Poland. Since it would have been impossible to film the movie in Belarus or Poland, Holland created a movie with actors to debict these people’s suffering.
Writes the Guardian: “Green Border, a feature film by the celebrated director Agnieszka Holland, won the special jury prize in Venice last month. It tells the story of a Syrian family trying to get to Europe via the Belarus-Poland border in 2021, and the brutal treatment they receive at the hands of Polish border guards.”
The movie also exposes the hypocrisy and racism of Europe towards such people.
“The end of the film makes the explicit comparison between the two refugee crises,” the daily continued, “and the different receptions granted to Ukrainians and to the much smaller number of darker-skinned refugees from Africa and the Middle East received at the border.”
In Finland, Perussuomalaiset* Interior Minister Mari Rantanen announced a tightening of asylum procedures in Finland by speeding up the process to four weeks. The asylum seeker will wait for the decision at the border.
If there is a big divide and mistrust between the media and the Muslim community it was exposed by a scoop the tabloid ilta-Sanomaton a secret “mosque” in a Helsinki nursery. Throughout the years, some Muslim imams and other members of the community have expressed apprehension of the Finnish media.
For those who may not know, Finland has only one mosque built in the 1940s located in Järvenpää, a short drive north of Helsinki. All the rest of these mosques without a minaret are, in fact, prayer rooms.
Finland’s only mosque with a minaret is located in Järvenpää and was built in the 1940s. Source: Helsingin Sanomat.
True, some Muslims call prayer rooms mosques.
While many will disagree with Suomen Muslimifoorumi’s Aladin Maher about his views on gay marriage and the great replacement conspiracy theory, the underlying message of the stories written about the “mosque” reveals a deep-seated mistrust of Muslims that is amplified by politicians from parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*and National Coalition Party.
The story about the mosque awoke Finland’s Islamophobic hardliners like Interior Minister Mari Rantanen, Justice Minister Leena Meri, Minister Wille Rydman, MPs like Atte Kaleva, Joakim Vigelius, never mind the thousands of hostile comments on social media.
All of these politicians and ministers had something bad to say about the mosque and Maher and exposed their hypocrisy.
We shouldn’t be surprised the these hostile comments came mostly from the Islamophobic PS and National Coalition Party.
If the ongoing hostile comments are anything to go by, it shows that any meaningful dialogue between some sectors of Finnish society and the Muslim community is light years away.
Rejection by the media and certain politicians of Muslims ensures that nothing will change.
Monen mielestä hallitsematon maahanmuutto alkoi vietnamilaisten venepakolaisten saapuessa 1970 luvun lopussa. Vielä enemmän säikähdettiin, kun ensimmäiset somalipakolaiset tulivat v. 1990.
Hallitsematon maahanmuutto lisääntyi nopeasti 2000-luvulla. Päivittäiseksi ongelmaksi asia nousi Jussi Halla-ahon myötä n. vuodesta 2006 lähtien.
Vuonna 2008 hallitsematon maahanmuutto oli jo täysin sekoittanut Helsingin asuntomarkkinat.
Jytkyvaalit 2011 olivat jo mennä täysin persujen piikkiin. Lupaavat kokoomusnuoret sentään keräilivät osan hallitsemattomasta maahanmuutosta Kokoomukselle. 14.3.2011
Timo Soini on yksi taitavimmista hallitsemattoman maahanmuuton käyttäjistä. Jos joltakulta puoluekaverilta siinä sivussa ihan vahingossa lipsahtaa kiihottaminen kansanryhmää vastaan, Timo on aina päässyt pälkähästä lauseella: ”Itse en sanoisi noin.” 12.10.2015
Sauli Niinistö on puheissaan jatkuvasti hyödyntänyt hallitsematonta maahanmuuttoa, vaikka ei haluakaan leimautua sen enempää kokoomuslaisiin kuin perussuomalaisiin kannattajiinsa. 3.2.2016
The Finnish Swimming Teaching and Lifesaving Federation (SUH), in collaboration with a representative from the University of Jyväskylä and the Finnish National Agency for Education, conducted a nationwide swimming proficiency study in 2022 (SUH, 2023). The study revealed that a staggering 45% of sixth-graders either lacked sufficient swimming skills or couldn’t swim at all. Reports submitted to the Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency (Tukes) indicated that children’s insufficient swimming skills led to serious water-related incidents and accidents.
Finland has witnessed several cases related to racism and anti-immigrant sentiments in swimming pools and other public spaces. These incidents underscore the need to combat such behavior and provide better training and guidance to staff to effectively address hate speech and racism. Promoting water safety and ensuring the safety of all residents in aquatic environments is crucial, considering Finland’s strong cultural focus on lakes, seashores, and saunas.
In the summer of 2023, Liikkukaa – Sports For All Ry conducted a case study related to swimming pools. The study is part of a larger research project undertaken by the EU Erasmus+ Monitora program. The research consists of 20 interviews and 2 case studies in each partner country, coordinated and evaluated by the
The impact of National Coalition Party (NCP) Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s government (Perussuomalaiset PS*, Swedish People’s Party and Christian Democrats) on Finland will be devastating. It will be a regression into the darkest corners of nationalism, xenophobia, chest-thumping, and bravado.
With the help of these social ills, there are plans to displace Finland’s liberal roots that gained force after it became an EU member in 1995. A lot of good laws were drafted at the end of the 1990s such as the new constitution, which guarantees that everyone, irrespective of their background, are equal before the law.
PS Interioir Minister Mari Rantanen speaking at A-studio, where she wants to give police rights in certain neighborhoods to stop and frisk people even if they are not suspected of crime. The proposal has raised concern about its legal problems. Rantanen states that such a model is being copied from Denmark, which is considered by some the most Islamophobic countries in Europe.
Plans to turn migrants legally into second-class members of society is one of the many threats by the government like paying foreigners less social welfare. There is a concerted plan to disenfranchise migrants.
Apart from the latter, Finland’s most right-wing government since the 1930s will do all it can to erect monuments to forgetting racism and worsening social inequality.
The racism scandals of summer are a case in point. They give us clear insight on how the government white-cleans its past.
A seven-point guide on how to create a new image and appear as a “normal” politician despite your racist background:
To part is to die a little, What you love dies: You leave a little of yourself At any time and in any place.
Edmund Haraucourt (1856-1941)
In Your Eyes is a documentary about migrants in Europe by Sandra Alloush, a Syrian refugee, journalist and documentarist, in collaboration with Enrique Tessieri, editor of Migrant Tales, a community blogfounded in 2007.
The documentary is funded by the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) as a part of the #makeracismhisotry campaign in collaboration with New Women Connectors and Migrant Tales.
The documentary’s first screening will be in Utrecht, Holland, on 15 October and will be followed by different screening events in Europe.
In Your Eyes not only aims to be a powerful and honest documentary exposing racism in Europe, but how migrants and refugees survive in an ever-hositle continent. All the people in the documentary are true survivors. Europe needs more inclusion, not less.
Sandra Alloush
Sandra is a Syrian refugee who has lived in Strasbourg, France, since 2015. She makes documentaries and news reports about migrants and refugees in Europe and has won international awards for her work. Her journey from Syria to France was marked by danger and uncertainty. “After a very brief wedding, we left Syria in a bullet-proof car,” she said.
Apart from the suffering of refugees and migrants, one of the most difficult matters for Sandra is parting and witnessing how the family fragments to pieces when you become a refugee.
