By Enrique Tessieri
Rebecka Holm, the fourteen-year-old who rallied enough courage to write a letter to HBL, asks in an interview on Monday on the Swedish-speaking daily an important question: “If Finland is now the most secure and stable country [in the world], why do people of [different] ethnic backgrounds get attacked every day?”
Holm said that she wrote the letter to the editor because her friends and herself were being harassed too often in public. When asked how often by HBL, she responds: ” I see it happen several times a week and it happens to me personally. I am subjected to [those types of] attacks maybe once a week.”
Like many others in Finland, even an adolescent understands that there is too little debated publicly in society about racism.
We have heard it too often from the you-know-whom politicians: Racism isn’t a problem in Finland. It’s a media fabrication.
As long as adolescents, children and adults get harassed openly in public in Finland because of their ethnic background, the further we will venture from those values that make us proud of those noble values that unite us as a society. In those values racism and prejudice have no place.
Even if they are a minority carrying out these attacks, it is the the apathy and silence of the majority that gives them a tap on the back and whispers: Go ahead.
Ei tässä mitään uutta ole. Valkoiset kiistävät rasismin ja värilliset yrittävät todistaa kokemuksillaan rasismin. Tää alkaa olla iha apsurdia.
Minusta värillisten pitäisi alkaa vaan rakentamaan omaa suomea. Valkoiset saavat pitää omansa kunhan jättävät värilliset rauhaan.
On jo pitkään ollut selvää että värilliset ovat ei toivottuja aina. Ihan sama kuinka suomalaistunut olet. Suomalaisille värilliset ovat aina maahanmuuttajia, toisen luokan kansalaisia
–“Minusta värillisten pitäisi alkaa vaan rakentamaan omaa suomea. Valkoiset saavat pitää omansa kunhan jättävät värilliset rauhaan.”
Uskon, että meillä on pitkä taival edessä.
Kelpaisko teitin hipiallenne Ahvenanmaa, vai pitaisko neuvotella Putinilta Viipuri takaisin?
Allan
Asian osaa suomea sinua paremmin. Onhan se noloa. 🙂
Maybe she could go to Ukraine to study, and then we can define what “harrasment” and ” racism” is
http://observers.france24.com/content/20120126-ukrainian-newspaper-depicts-africans-arabs-monkeys-black-students-ternopil-bar-fight-racism-discrimination
i think in Ukraine they actually have something to complain about.
Allan, another method of anti-immigration groups is to “neutralize” an argument the way you did with your Ukrainian example. Maybe in Hommaforum/Scripta it works all the time but not here. When an adolescent has enough courage to write a letter to the editor and do something about her situation, we can be assured that Finland will be in good hands in the future. That is the whole purpose of education: to empower and to defend those very institutions that protect your human rights.
You should raise your hat to Rebecka Holm. A good example, even to you on how to be an exemplary citizen.
Two words for her GROW UP. Ethnic minorities spend more time worrying about who’s supposedly racist or not then actually trying to better themselves via education or working hard. Grow a thick skin and get on with life. Pathetic! Do women do the same about sexism or old people with ageism? Obviously not as they have more sense.
My advice to her would be people will always take notice of something different, some negatively some neutral some positively. These include extremes in height, weight, disabilities, even dress sense and ofcourse skin colour. Race is no different just makes you stand out from the crowd and not everyone will like it and no matter how much you complain or campaign there will always be people like that. Tough but that’s life, now stop wasting your time worrying and stressing.
By the way Enrique where in Finland does she live?
–By the way Enrique where in Finland does she live?
In Helsinki.
Klay
Would you advise her to change her name as well? Just to avoid standing out from the crowd, of course. Not because she’s ashamed of her background, Oh no!
Well JusticeStupid ‘Rebecka Holm’ is hardly the most foreign non swedish sounding name so maybe she’s already done that.
Klay
Following your lead then.
Yes yes yes, like today theres a huge hedline that a mosque window and postbox had graffiti on them. Unfortunately they added the place, which is a shopping mall with a dozen other businesses and that theres been a serious graffiti problem in the area. But OMG a mosque! Racism! Xenophobia! Quite pathetic really, why didn’t they write of the adjacent herbal therapists shop or the hairdressers?
Klay and Allan
A right pair of jackboots, you two are!
So, you have nothing to say to the adults abusing this girl on public transport?
They don’t have to ‘grow up’. Nope.
Its the victim that has to change. She is not allowed to be angry, to publicise it, to create some debate about it, Nope, she’s not supposed to protest in any way. Just take it, like an adult.
First, she isn’t an adult, so any call for her to ‘grow up’ is plain fucking stupid. It’s about as stupid as me saying to you pair of numb nuts ‘be a child!’
So, if for sake of argument, she was male, 20, six foot six, built like a brick shithouse and black, do you think that these racist Finns on the Metro would harass her? Nope, I don’t think so either. So basically, they are picking on her because she’s small, young, and vulnerable. She isn’t going to fight back. I guess that’s how you like your victims to be, eh, Klay? Allan?
And by the way, it is typical of adults when they are abused in such a systematic way over a disability, or sexism or any other kind of prejudice to bring it to the attention of people. That is quite normal, adult behaviour.
However, telling the victim to shut up when they are being abused is in turn the behaviour of thugs.
But for some reasons of ego insecurity, you pair of flowerpots feel the need to come on here and convince the world that it’s really okay, it’s morally sound, and that really, she should just shrug it off…..it’s for her own good. I mean, how stupid do you think other people are? Do you think that you can be so dismissive of her rights or her feelings and then somehow claim to know ‘what’s good for her’? Are you pair really so fucking dense? It seems so.
What a girl..already a role model, fighting for friends and herself. she will no doubt go far.
Mark – she is a fabrication of the HBL. And even if she did exist, she got her 15 minutes of fame. She still doesn’t get to cut the queue from more important things.
Allan
Source?
Allan, you flowerpot, you are taking denial to the point of distraction…
Here you go, ://areena.yle.fi/audio/1326898338315
So, Yle are making it up too, you racist muppet? 😀
Oh, that’s an interview with Rebecka Holm.
Yes, Mark, but how do we know it’s really her and not someone else by the same name? 🙂
JD
Sometimes this blog shows some real entertainment value 😀
Chinese,
You have been repeatedly told in previous discussions here that racism in Finland doesn’t only concern non-white people. White people who don’t look Nordic enough experience it too. As such, it would be a good idea for you to snap out of it and stop fostering that stupid us-them attitude of yours.