The Prosecutor General is expected to announce “within days” its ruling over whether PS MP Teuvo Hakkarainen should be charged for his racist remarks last month, according to the spokesman of the Ombudsman for Minority Affairs.
According to STT, Hakkarainen was quoted as saying in an interview with Helsingin Sanomat that “the country’s borders were awash with “n-words” and went on to mock an Islamic call to prayer.”
The police said Tuesday in a preliminary investigation that bringing charges was unecessary.
This was reinforced a few hours later by the Prosecutor General who said that no charges would be brought against Hakkarainen, accordging to Helsingin Sanomat.
Ricky
Both you and STT could benefit from a short course in Finnish civics.
The Ombudsman for Minorities submitted its complaint directly to the Prosecutor General. As a matter of form, the Prosecutor General always asks the police to investigate the facts of a case where there are prima facie grounds for believing that an offence may have occurred. We can already infer that the Prosecutor General believes such grounds to exist from the fact that an investigation was requested.
Instead of investigating the case, the police appear to have offered a legal opinion in much the same way that sometimes occurs when a member of the public reports a suspected offence. When the police do this, the complainant has the option of referring the matter to the prosecutor directly. If the prosecutor disagrees with the legal opinion of the police, then the prosecutor may instruct the police to investigate the matter anyway.
The slight oddity in this case is that it should not be possible for the police to respond in quite this way when the complaint comes to them via the prosecutor, as the latter must already be understood to have formed an opinion on the legal aspects of the complaint. The role of the police is to gather evidence as to what happened. They may then advise the prosecutor that the facts of the case were incorrectly reported in the complaint or that that there is additional exculpatory evidence.
The present situation of the Prosecutor General is that a legally argued complaint, reported here, that was initially considered sufficient to justify an investigation has now been countered by an opposing legal opinion. The requested factual investigation has not occurred.
The Prosecutor General cannot subordinate its duty to decide on whether to prefer charges. In other words, it is not possible to dismiss the complaint solely on the grounds that the police have a different legal opinion. Instead, the Prosecutor General must form its own opinion.
Hi JusticeDemon, you are right. The story has been corrected.
See now what I was talking about the media being biased? Hakkarainen had not said in an interview with Helsingin Sanomat that the country’s borders were awash with “niggers”. He said something totally different, and its not nice to catch the media lying.
“– Kaverin poika on rajalla töissä ja se sanoo, että neekeriukko tulee ja sanoo turvapaikka eikä osaa sanoa mitään muuta ja heti ollaan sisällä…” is what he exactly said.
Let me try to decipher this.
“Hijo de mi amigo trabaja en la frontera y el dice, que un negro ancio viene y dice “asilo”, no puedo decir nada más, y él inmediatamente se le permite al país…”
So where exactly are the “niggers” awash? The person who translated this from the Finnish original is exactly the kind of “impartiality” the PS gets in media.
Now in this PC day and age it is definitely a gaffe even from a self-proclaimed country hick to use “old negro” in an interview like that, but I would have expected slightly higher standards from STT, let alone a government information service.
–Now in this PC day and age it is definitely a gaffe even from a self-proclaimed country hick to use “old negro” in an interview like that, but I would have expected slightly higher standards from STT, let alone a government information service.
Then I suggest that you get in touch with STT and point this out to them. If it is true, they will put a correction. I don’t think that there is a general conspiracy against the PS.
Allan
So by your understanding the Finnish border guard committed an offence in office by not detaining and turning back an illegal immigrant?
Looks like you missed that one.
The attitude in this story brings to mind the story of how the leading chess grandmaster Viktor Korchnoi became an asylum-seeker after winning an international tournament at Amsterdam in 1976. The incident is described in Wikipedia as follows:
Again by your reasoning Korchnoi should have known how to say politiek asiel in order to apply for permission to remain in the Netherlands on the basis of international humanitarian law, and you would have called him an illegal immigrant as well.
Enrique – yes there is and if we think of the old game of chinese whispers you become a part of it repeating the biased information. Once it is written enough times over, then quoted into newspapers as say “STT Hakkarainen” brings your page up as a reference top in Google, it becomes the “truth” and can be quoted even in Wikipedia.
–Enrique – yes there is and if we think of the old game of chinese whispers you become a part of it repeating the biased information.
Just for the heck of it, why don’t you write an email to STT and see what happens. I am certain that if they are reporting the story incorrectly, they will put out a correction. It is as simple as that. There is nothing worse that a journalist want is a CORRECT with his byline.
JD, unfortunately the system works that way. Statistically the chances of the man being a genuine political refugee are very slim.
They are reporting the story incorrectly – but the person writing the biased story is the belief to have the right to slander the PS. So why would they do a correction? It battles against their “cause”. Facts remain: STT lies and everyone quoting STTs news is joining in, and the lies become truth when you repeat them enough times.
–So why would they do a correction?
If the reported the story incorrectly they must correct it. It’s very easy, just send an email pointing out what should be corrected and see what they respond. Would the email be [email protected]?
What do you mean “must”? Have you seen the little “creative editing” that Financial Times did on Soini’s letter? Granted, for brevity and style there might be editing, but if the message changes after the letter already has been published… makes things… interesting.
The whole Portugal show is having a lot of wind upstairs, so as I said, follow the money. t5hen you know why I am agreeing there is a definite media bias.
One reason, obviously is, that teh PS has not had much funds to create their own propaganda machine nor are the politicians too versed with media. Add to this most of the reporters are left-leaning and liberal. It is not rocket science.
Oops. Wall Street Journal, I was just reading FT & the euro crisis , my bad.
Allan
Newsflash.
The legality of an applicant’s residence is not based on a statistical assessment of the success chances of the application, but on what the law says about the residence of applicants as such.
You offered the interesting analogy of a person attending the emergency room of a hospital complaining of a headache. Should patient examinations and admissions be based on the statistical likelihood that the reported symptom is genuine and indicates a life-threatening condition? If you were turned away from a hospital and dropped dead a couple of days later, do you think your hommaforum buddies should accept the explanation that “50 per cent of these guys are faking it and 80 per cent are just hung over. Statistically the chances of the man being a genuine patient were very slim”?
No, like the hospital case with a headache the asylum seeker must be handled. But you still see no moral, financial or any kind of problem in that the system is blatantly abused? I do not suggest you try though, unlike the asylum system the hospitals have a very efficient triage in the ER and send fakes packing.
You must really be in cold sweat now JD your livelihood will be dwindling.
Heres some legalese for JD, enjoy 🙂
http://www.ofm.fi/intermin/vvt/home.nsf/files/11-253%20hakkarainen_20110511150449/$file/11-253%20hakkarainen_20110511150449.pdf
–Heres some legalese for JD, enjoy 🙂
I’m happy you are enjoying the four-year tragic-comic play. Are you sitting in the front row?
Unfortunately not. But I am enjoying the massive reactions so far even theres no cabinet and realy no sessions yet the press has been just phenomenal. (OK, the Portugal bailout is the only reason the international media really is interested). So, how long do you think the griping and whining about PS in the blogosphere and media will last? The whole 4 years? Or will it depend totally which way the pendulum swings (cabinet/opposition)? Or will everyone just go on and concentrate on their bellybutton fluff as usual and its Idols and Eurovision that dictate peoples’ interests?
I think Allan as long as people feel disenfranchised the debate is not going to end anytime soon. My biggest gripe with the PS is its anti-EU, anti-immigration and hostility of minorities. If they could do politics with all the nationalist rhetoric I would not have any problems in considering the PS as a “normal” party. With the TNT ideological mixture in the PS, it is now a walking tinderbox.
But that depends a lot on the PS. Maybe the question should be the following: Can the PS gain credibility as a major party in Finland? Do you think that the PS is helped by its Halla-ahos and Suomen Sisu members? Do you think that Hirvisaari can whip the media into obeying the party’s command and every wish? Things have not started too well for the PS: revelations about MPs belonging to “Nazi-spirited” associations, Halla-aho attacking Aamulehti, racist outbursts by Hakkarainen, Tossavainen demanding the Finland should stop taking refugees, Elomaa’s secret relationships and, worse, sitting it out in the opposition. Imagine, it hasn’t been a month since the election and we are seeing quite a “jytky” blowing back in the faces of the PS!
If Soini doesn’t isolate these guys and their idology will continue to spread like a cancer in the PS. They will be one of the biggest liabilities to Timo Soini.
Like you, I am sitting in the front row of the four-year tragic-comic play waiting for surprises that would surpass my wildest imagination.
Allan
I think you are beginning to understand how the expression illegal immigrant should be used, but be assured that I shall take you to task again if you conflate clients of the immigration system with those who seek to evade their legal obligations. The difference is very clear. When public debate in the USA, for example, refers to 11 million illegal immigrants, NONE of these are asylum-seekers.
The medical triage process has its most direct parallel in the procedure whereby the Finnish Immigration Service determines that an application is manifestly unfounded. This occurred in about 10 per cent of decisions made in 2010. The circumstances of such applications are many and varied, as is the fate of those who receive such decisions. Obviously these cases are a nuisance, but their impact is marginal. They are a consequence of the duty to examine applications individually.
To provide yet another analogy, the emergency services in Finland have received call-outs for various reasons, including:
Should we shut down the emergency service because of these illegal callers?
You are making incorrect assumptions about my livelihood.
As I already pointed out, the “nazi spirited association” is bullshit, or “commie slander”. And it is nothing of a secret, you know many politicians belong to freemasons.
What comes to Halla-ahos relationship with the “bullshit commie-slander” media, they started it already 2007. The animosity is mutual.
Elomaa is about as “bimbo blonde” in the media as Karpela was when she started.
And Hakkarainen is stating why he got elected.
So far PS and Soini have shown a rare trait in actually standing by their election promises. Other parties are having quite the shuffle in the wardrobe.
–What comes to Halla-ahos relationship with the “bullshit commie-slander” media, they started it already 2007.
You got a lot of points when you described the media as a “whore” but now you have outdone yourself: “bullshit commie-slander” media. Any person can tell you that matters are going to get far worse when Halla-aho starts boycotting papers in Finland because he thinks there is a conspiracy by photographers against him. Oy vey! He is with his own actions giving the media a wonderful arsenal to blow him back to his former life: keeping his writing least-slanderous as possible and occasional visits to court.
Allan
Thanks for the link.
The main points in the decision of the Prosecutor General are on the last page. This is a typical de minimis decision that is familiar to many motorists. It amounts to being let off with a caution and a word of advice.
Well JD – the 10 % that actually got a refugee status were founded.
Allan
I’m not going to speculate on what you meant by that.
Eh? What do you mean “get much worse” Enrique? H-a had IS and MTV all worked up when he boycotted them when he was running for the city council in Helsinki. Do some googling, it was quite entertaining.
And you honestly claim you dont know that most the journalists in Finland get educated at the pinko bastion Tampere Uni?
There is no neutral media in Finland. Too bad we cant clone Veikko Ennala, he was my hero.
Speculate, JD ,I do not speculate
Turvapaikkaa haki v. 2010 5837 ihmistä, joista myönteisen päätöksen sai 1784 ihmistä. Näistä 1784 ihmisestä vain 181 sai pakolaisstatuksen,
So those 181 people were “refugees” for which the asylum seeker system is designed for.
Allan
For someone who has so much to say about the Finnish immigration system, you really are spectacularly ignorant about how it works.
Please read the following very carefully.
If you managed to get through 7th grade at school and you have taken your Lapinlahti medication today, then you should be able to infer at least the following from this statute:
1. There is a certain type of residence permit issued to foreigners who are in need of humanitarian protection.
2. This type of residence permit is only issued to applicants who do not already qualify for asylum or secondary protection.
It follows from these points that before issuing this certain type of residence permit the issuing authority must first investigate whether the applicant qualifies for asylum. This means that an asylum application must be filed even in cases where an applicant who is in need of humanitarian protection clearly and self-evidently does not qualify for asylum.
In other words, the statistic that you cited is merely a direct reflection and consequence of the way in which the asylum system is organised in Finland.
If you disagree, then please explain precisely how it is possible to get the residence permits specified in sections 88 and 88 a of the Aliens Act without also and primarily applying for the status specified in section 87 of the Act.
The logic here should already be familiar to you from your street brawls with the other knuckledraggers in your political faction. This is why the first line of the charge sheet reads attempted murder when all you did was punch some foreigner’s lights out after a night on the piss. As the investigation proceeds, the various counts on the charge sheet (attempted murder, aggravated assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, common assault etc. etc.) are progressively struck out until the type and severity of the offence becomes clear.
An asylum application is effectively a request for a residence permit on generalised humanitarian grounds. The type of permit issued will depend on the merits of the case. It is therefore incorrect to view an asylum application as abusive simply because it did not result in the issuing of asylum. This is like assuming that you did nothing wrong because you only went down for aggravated assault and not for attempted murder.
No I am not. It is as Hakkarainen says. That 88a is the final loophole letting anyone in who appears at the border. The person is not a refugee rather than a displaced person and as far as I can tell theres no war in Russia or Sweden so what makes these people appear on the Finnish border? Estonia has asylum seekers in the tens, not thousands. Their laws are the same, only in Estonia there is no welfare.
Allan
May we take it that you have grudgingly accepted that your conclusions from asylum statistics were incorrect owing to your own ignorance of the Finnish asylum system? Or are you still maintaining that there is some way to claim humanitarian protection without claiming asylum?
Transportation has been modernised since you were sectioned, my friend. They have magic machines that fly though the air directly from distant lands and not all ships reach us via Stockholm nowadays.
However, the bottom line is that Finland does not return people to places where their lives are endangered.
An applicant arriving from Sweden can usually be returned to Sweden under the Dublin Regulation. I would be interested to hear how you would persuade Russia to admit a non-citizen. Perhaps Mr Hakkarainen’s diplomatic skills would be well-employed in pursuit of such an aim.
The most amusing thing in all of this is that nobody in the PS camp has so far come up with any original ideas at all in relation to asylum, but they have also lacked the courage to campaign for outright disengagement from Finland’s international treaty obligations. They have not even flatly proposed that Finland should adopt double standards by rigorously implementing some international promises (e.g. enforcement of arbitration awards) while foot dragging in other areas such as international humanitarian migration law. What they really dream of is a return to the 1950s when selective implementation of solemn promises was possible because Finland was small, little-known and unimportant in the grand scheme of international relations. The Paris Peace Treaty was a case in point, with many promises not delivered until Finland joined the Council of Europe some 40 years later.
An honest and consistent approach would be to recommend that Finland should adopt an insular and mean-spirited approach to all international relations. If it takes a decade to examine an asylum claim in Finland, then it should also take ten years to enforce a foreign arbitration award and so on.
You are the one who is ignorant. You think I can not see the truth? There is no reason why anyone should come to Finland without papers, you do not get into the magic machines without paperwork. Nor the ferries in Tallin. People do not teleport magically in front of the police station. Therefore, destroying your papers is an intent to hide your route and identity – and honest people would not hide any of the facts now would they? I am not ignorant – the system is corrupt and rewarding those who abuse it and the people who benefit from human trafficking.
Allan
This thread is really turning into a new edition of International Refugee Law for Dummies and you really deserve an Oscar for you performance in the title role.
It’s amusing how you skip from topic to topic without ever acknowledging that your views are based on little more than malicious gossip. First it was a general characterisation of asylum-seekers as illegal immigrants. After this was refuted you shifted to the view that most asylum applications must be bogus because they rarely result in de jure refugee status. Now that this in turn has been shown to be based on a feature of the asylum system, you shift to the marginal phenomenon of falsified and destroyed travel documents.
The authors of the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention were fully aware that people suffering official persecution could not turn to their persecutors to supply the documents that are required in order to escape from said persecution. Anne Frank could not pop into Amsterdam police station to get a passport to take to the Swedish embassy for endorsement with a visa so that she could jump on the Trans-Europe Express like any ordinary Interrail backpacker. If she made the journey at all, then it would probably be in a packing crate or hidden in the false bottom of a lorry
Article 31 of the Convention accordingly provides that Member States may not penalise undocumented asylum-seekers, provided that they claim asylum promptly. In other words, an undocumented alien arriving in a packing crate becomes an illegal immigrant only after passing up the opportunity to claim asylum. Normally this means no more than a few days after undocumented entry.
Cases in which an applicant has lodged an application under an assumed identity (this includes cases involving destruction of travel documents) fall within the category of manifestly unfounded applications, which we have already noticed to be both a marginal and unavoidable consequence of the duty to examine applications individually. If you have some magic formula for reliably identifying these cases more rapidly, then I’m sure that Migri would be delighted to hear it. Otherwise, you are offering nothing new.
I would really like to hear your views on how to deal with applicants whose identities and countries of origin cannot be determined. People of this kind (who may be correctly described as illegal immigrants) cannot be removed from Finland because there is no receiving State with a clear duty to accept them (if you can’t be sure where the person came from, then you equally can’t convince another country that the person came from that country). Please don’t complain about the costs of the system if your answer is to lock such people up indefinitely. Perhaps I should also remind you that torture and other inhumane treatment are off the menu, on account of those pesky constitutional and international commitments.
You will find an interesting example of this kind of situation here. This case concerns a failed asylum-seeker who cannot be returned to Iran because he obstinately refuses to co-operate in the redocumentation process that the government of Iran requires in order to recognise his Iranian citizenship. You may bawl about abusing the system until you are blue in the face, but my question is: what would you do in this case?
“which we have already noticed to be both a marginal and unavoidable consequence”
“Turvapaikkaa haki v. 2010 5837 ihmistä, joista myönteisen päätöksen sai 1784 ihmistä. Näistä 1784 ihmisestä vain 181 sai pakolaisstatuksen, ”
That 5656 people is marginal? Only over 90% of the cases.
JD – problem is Anne Frank never came to Finland, however François Bazaramba and Abdigadir Osman Hussein did.
“marginal phenomenon of falsified and destroyed travel documents”
And please stop lying :
http://www.asianajajaliitto.fi/viestinta/tiedotteita_ja_lausuntoja/lausunto_sm_n_identiteettiohjelman_loppuraportista.html
Or you claim 80% is marginal?
Allan
Are you functionally illiterate in English, or do you just learn very slowly?
I know that PS is a party for the kids that sat at the back of the class at school, but forgetting what you have already acknowledged only a couple of days ago is dumb even by that standard.
You have already agreed that those statistics are a consequence of the structure of the asylum system in Finland, which requires applicants to request asylum even when they are only displaced by war and environmental catastrophe. The relevant statistic for your purposes is the proportion of cases that are manifestly unfounded, which was about 10 per cent of decisions made in the first instance in 2010. Even this figure is not final.
You completely failed to see the point of my explanation concerning the ability of Anne Frank to get travel documentation for a journey to any other destination than the place where she died. Again, that’s not because my explanation was in any way unclear.
You didn’t understand that statement from the Finnish Bar Association, which merely refers to the same travel documentation issue. Perhaps you should explain where people should go for travel documents when their government has collapsed due to civil war. Do you have a magic solution to this? Have you set up your own passport service in Mogadishu, Arbil and Benghazi?
You really shouldn’t post before you take your meds in the morning.
Mogadishu? http://www.waryatv.com/read/article/8409
Allan
Now please explain why this is news from Somalia.
Please explain to me why there are ” Finnish citizens” on vacation in Somalia?
http://www.hs.fi/ulkomaat/artikkeli/Zahra Abdulla Mogadishussa Kukaan ei tiedä kenellä on valta/1135223948928
You might be functionally naive, but if you can go hplidaying into the country I fail to see the need for humanitarian permits.