Ahti Tolvanen: NCP’s swing to undemocratic xenophobism

Further evidence of the National Coalition Party’s (NCP) swing to undemocratic xenophobism was the recent proposal by Foreign Minister Elina Valtoen to ban Russian tourists from Europe, ostensibly because of the Ukraine war. This would amount to an administrative reconstruction of the Iron Curtain, something Finland once famously sought to bring down or at least lower in the spirit of the Helsinki Conference of 1975 which championed freedom of movement and family reunification.
To ban travel by hundreds of millions for fear that some of them might be spies is the diproportionate sort of administrative overoppression that most human rights legislation is intended to prevent.
It is likely also that among many Russians who travel to the West are people who are not endeared with their coutry’s militarism and are looking for life chances elsewhere. I does little to serve the Ukrainian cause to embitter these people by shutting the borders to them and seperate them from friends and family in the West.