Author: Migrant Tales

Publication of the European Islamophobia Report 2018

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Publication of the “European Islamophobia Report 2018” on the European week of action against Islamophobia

21st September is the European day of action against Islamophobia and religious intolerance.  This day makes echoes to the dramatic Christchurch terror attack on March 15, 2019 that made 51 dead, 49 injuries and shocked the international community.

Read the full report here.

In order to help European policy makers to assert the extent of anti-muslim racism, the SETA  releases the European Islamophobia Report 2018. This report investigates in detail the underlying dynamics that directly or indirectly support the rise of anti-Muslim racism in Europe in 2018.

In fact, many surveys such as the EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report (TE-SAT), published by EUROPOL, already point out the growing danger of right-wing terrorism. Yet, they never mentions the anti-Muslim ideological framework working behind this trend. The European Islamophobia Report 2018 aims at filling this gap.

By gathering 39 local scholars, experts, and civil society activists specialized on racism and human rights, the European Islamophobia Report 2018 shows how the banalization of Islamophobic discourse in the European public sphere as well as the constant anti-Muslim discrimination in workplace, education and justice pave the way for violent actions against Muslim and their institutions.

The report is the result of a cooperative work between the SETA foundation, Leopold Weiss Institute, and the European Union that funded the whole project.

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The European day of action against Islamophobia and religious intolerance is the opportunity for all of us to remember that Muslims are among the first victims of the rise of far-right extremism in Europe. In Austria, the Office for Documenting Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Racism recorded an increase of approximately 74% of documented anti-Muslim racist acts in its report for 2018. In France, the Collectif contre l’islamophobie en France recorded an increase of 52%. In the UK, governmental bodies recorded a rise in 2017-18 of religion-specific cases by a staggering 40% (double the figure of 2015/16). Instances of vandalism directed at places of worship also recorded a significant (50%) rise in the same period. In the Netherlands, the Anti-discrimination Agencies (ADVs) announced that 91% of a total of 151 incidents of religious discrimination reported to the police were related to Muslims. The Anti-discrimination Agencies received 304 reports of religious discrimination, two thirds of which were directed against Muslims.

Women constitute the majority of the victims of Islamophobia, especially when they wear headscarves. For instance, the Collectif contre l’islamophobie en France (CCIF) notes that 70% of the victims of Islamophobic acts in France are women. Attacks against Muslim women range from verbal aggressions, denial of access to services, Muslim women forcibly having the headscarf removed, and go as far as attempted rape and physical attacks.

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Islamophobia is not only a threat for Muslim communities established in the European continent but also for the security and the stability of European states. Islamophobic terror attacks illustrates the extent to which anti-Muslim racism promoted in far-right and nationalistic circles represents a concrete danger to human rights, national security, and the European model of coexistence.

In 2018, direct attacks against Muslims led to deaths and serious injuries. In Italy, for instance, a man shot and killed a Senegalese street seller, Idy Diene (54), a well-known member of his local mosque in Florence. In Greece, far-right groups attacked Afghan refugees, including women and children, who gathered and protested in the central square of Lesvos about the delay in getting their asylum cards. During the attack racist slogans like “burn them all” were heard. In total, 28 people were injured and hospitalized during this attack. In Finland, three Finnish youths brutally attacked a Pakistani migrant in Vantaa, stabbed him 20-30 times and repeatedly wounded him with an axe causing, among other injuries, a fractured skull. In the United Kingdom, three young men deliberately drove a stolen vehicle into pedestrians heading into the Al-Majlis Al-Hussain Islamic Centre (Cricklewood, London), injuring three worshippers. In France, several groups planned or called for planning terror attacks against Muslim people such as the AFO (Action of Operational Forces) that was about to physically attack hundreds of imams, Muslim women, and mosques in the summer of 2018.

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On this 21st September European day of action against Islamophobia and religious intolerance, it is time to reflect on this growing threat and to find ways for seriously tackling anti-Muslim racism in Europe. A close reading of the European Islamophobia Report 2018 may be a good start.

For further information about the chapter on Finland in the European Islamophobia Report 2018, contact ENRIQUE TESSIERI, 040 8400773/[email protected].

Or get in touch directly with the editors ENES BAYRAKLI FARID HAFEZ at [email protected].

An island called n-word that reveals how Finnish racism works and is unchallenged

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In the rural region of North Karelia in eastern Finland, there is an island called n-word in Finnish. Yes, you heard right: n-word, according to Journalisti, a publication of the Union of Journalists of Finland.

But that’s not all.

In Finland, the n-word is inappropriate and racist. The island in North Karelia is not the only example of the n-word in Finnish geography.

The offensive word explains why the Union of Journalists North Karelia (PKJY), which owns the small island, applied to the Institute of Languages of Finland (Kotus) to change the name to Uutiseksi (News).

The proposal by PKJY, which approve the name change at a board meeting earlier this year, turned to Kotus but its request was turned down.

“Even if the n-word is used in a derogatory [and racist] manner today, the name cannot be changed because it makes some feel uncomfortable,” Kotus said in a statement.

Somebody should enlighten Kotus that the usage of the n-word today is racist and offensive, “not uncomfortable.”

The decision by Kotus is a good indication of how Finland deals with racism, or how it does nothing substantial to challenge it.

The island derives its name from lehtin-word, which was what some called journalists and people working for the media in the 1980s.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Teaching integration or institutional racism?

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Finland puts a lot of effort into its integration program. Earlier this year, with the sexual assault cases in Oulu, we saw the then government of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä blame asylum seekers for not integrating and that our integration problem was a failure.

All of these accusations had one matter in mind for then Minister of Interior Kai Mykkänen and the National Coalition Party: the April 2019 parliamentary election. Mykkänen went as far as to suggest giving a test to asylum seekers about Finnish values.

A realistic picture of integration in Finland? Source: Metropolia.

As we all know, the suggestion of giving an integration test is only intended for public consumption. What are Finnish values anyway? Is one of them being a supporter of institutional racism?

What do you think white Finns teach asylum seekers about Finland at integration courses? Some may do a good job but at the end of the day, many teach asylum seekers to accept institutional racism by telling him or her fairy tales about our society. In effect, such teachers are saying that this is the way things are done and you must accept it.

One example is when such courses speak of gender equality. They do not tell women, who are asylum seekers, on how to combat labor discrimination. Moreover, they don’t give the students skimpy information in many cases about changing institutional racism.

If we are serious in turning people into active citizens, we must do away with much of our exceptionalism and superiority complexes we have of other people. Tackling all forms of racism should be a much higher priority.

The next question is why we don’t do that and with greater determination?

Halla-aho’s anti-immigration soundbites and why we should not relax hate speech laws

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Perussuomalaiset (PS)* chairperson Jussi Halla-aho gave us on Yle Ykkösaamu his usual anti-immigration blah blah and why Finland should relax its hate speech laws.

In the interview, Halla-aho, who was convicted of ethnic agitation and breaching the sanctity of religion in 2012, defended the Nazi-spirited Suomen Sisu association and played down PS MP Juha Mäenpää’s description in parliament that asylum seekers are a non-human “invasive species.”

Mäenpää is the same politician who stated in 2015 that “God had answered his prayers” after an asylum reception center was razed by fire.

Read the full story here.

While these types of counterarguments by Halla-aho, who has steered the party in into the far-right ideological lap of leaders like Lega’s Matteo Salvini and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, have no significance because the PS leader would even find arguments to justify the rise to power of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler in 1933.

Helsinki University criminal law professor Kimmo Nuotio threw some cold water on Halla-aho’s claim that hate speech laws have no place in an open society. Apart from pointing out that the PS’ proposal is political, he did not consider the ongoing debate healthy for democracy.

Moreover, the number of ethnic agitation cases that reach the courts are still modest as the table below shows.

Ethnic agitation cases that were taken to court in 2018. Even if such cases rose by 138.5% last year to 31, it is still a tiny amount. Source: Justice Ministry.

“Personally, I find this type of discussion harmful,” Nuotio said, “it’s an attempt to undercut the basis for these laws.”

One matter that the Ykkösaamu journalist should have asked is why do we have laws against hate speech? The answer is obvious. Without them, it would be open season for racists and parties like the PS openly harass, attack, label and socially exclude vulnerable groups like Muslims for their political gain.

The argument used by Halla-aho to not open Finland’s labor markets to outside the EU is equally deceiving. Adding the usual fear-mongering that outside the EU there are half a billion people who could come to work, he claimed that such workers would drive down salaries.

Possibly valid to some extent, such people in our labor market like now would force our authorities to do a much better job in regulating markets and ensuring that exploitation does not become the norm.

* The far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017, into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. In the last parliamentary election, Blue Reform has wiped off the Finnish political map when they saw their numbers in parliament plummet from 18 MPs to none. A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.

Finland should wake up to its hate speech, hate crime and racism problem

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Green League MP Iris Suomela raised an essential question in parliament on Wednesday about rape. She said that there are “hundreds of thousands” rape cases in Finland of which 50,000 are reported annually to Victim Support Finland (RIKU).

“The end result of all this is that the police record about 1,200 [rape] cases [annually] of which around 200 get sentenced,” she said.

It is a very good matter that the government is not only changing sexual abuse laws, which include consent but aims to essentially improve how the police handle such cases.

One question that arises when looking at Finland’s present sexual abuse laws is if hate crime and hate speech are also underreported in the same way. If Suomela speaks of annually of about 50,000 rape cases that are reported to RIKU, what kind of ballpark figures are we looking at for hate speech and hate crime?

According to the latest figures, hate crimes in Finland during 2017 rose by 7.97% to 1,165 cases compared with 1,079 the previous year, according to the Finnish Police University College. 

The report states that only 21% of harassment and hate-speech cases in 2016 were not reported by the victims, according to the ministry of justice. If this is the case, we are talking about thousands, possibly tens of thousands of cases annually.


Ethnic agitation cases that were taken to court in 2018. Even if such cases rose by 138.5% last year to 31, it is still a tiny amount. Source: Justice Ministry.

Even if Finland has very good hate speech laws and laws that promote social equality, the question these above figures bring up is what MP Suomela raised: Few victims report such crimes to the police. We need a change in culture and to listen to the victim.

The latter claim is supported by some of the conclusions of a recent European Network Against Racism (ENAR) shadow report. “Most EU Member States [like Finland in the report] have hate crime laws, as well as policies and guidance in place to respond to racist crime, but they are not enforced because of a context of deeply rooted institutional racism within law enforcement authorities,” ENAR said.

See shadow report here.

Apart from institutional racism issues, another practical matter we should ask if there are enough police monitoring hate speech and hate crime in Finland and enforcing the law vigorously.

The Finnish police have at the most 10 Internet police officers who monitor hate speech, reports Yle, citing police inspector Måns Enqvist of the National Board of Police of Finland.

Ten is too few in light of the ever-growing hate speech and hate crime problem in Finland.

Shirlene Green Newball (Part 1/3): A list of some black female writers you should read

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Shirlene Green Newball*

You sure have heard of famous activists like Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks, Daisy Bates, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Coretta Scott King, and Angela Davis to mention are just a few black women who participated in the civil rights movement in the United States of America.

Black women have played a pivotal and heroic role in the struggle of civil rights and the rising of black movements by being activists and writers.

Black female writer’s involvement in literature dates back to the 1950s. Once they were aware of their powers and the liberation of themselves, they used them to depict and expand black literature as an alliance for the fight.

Margaret Walker, Ntozake Shange, Gayl Jones, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, June Jordan, Toni Cade Bambara, Alice Walker, Mari Evans, and others were part of the writers that built black literature in the USA to tackle topics such as gender, race, sexuality, violence, patriarchal, misogynist, immigration, and others.  

It may be endless to compile in a single list all the distinguished black female writers because they are so many. However, after reading some of these writers listed below, I decided to extend my research for new ones and ask my friends for their recommendable black female writers.

How much literature written by black female writers have you read? 

This list below contains 20 badass black women writers from different generations, countries, and continents who have influenced me because; there are women of the same race, have similar experiences like mine, and evoke emotions. I hope you can read one or more because they are all worthy of your time; choose your favorites, do your research, and share this list with others.

Ayòbámi Adébáyò (1988) was born in Lagos, Nigeria (Africa), but shortly her family moved to the state of Osun, located in the southwest.

In 2017, the Canongate Books published her novel Stay with Me that immediately was listed by Wellcome Book Prize, Baileys Women Prize for Fiction, and the 9mobile Prize for Literature.

Many of Adébáyó’s writings have been printed in magazines and anthologies.

The New York Times once wrote about her,  “She writes not just with extraordinary grace but with genuine wisdom about love and loss and the possibility of redemption.”

This young writer studied with Margaret Atwood and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977), who is one of the most known black female writers globally.

She was born and grew up in the east of Nigeria, Africa, from an Igbo family with six children. She studied in the United States of America where she said:  “My roommate had a single story of Africa, a single story of catastrophe and there was no possibility of being similar to her in any way.”

Her work has been translated nearly into thirty languages. She is the author of The Thing Around Your Neck, Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah, and We should all be Feminist. She also had publications in big journals such as The New Yorker, Financial Times, Granta, etc. She had received distinguished awards such as Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, National Book Critics Circle, Women Prize for Fiction, and others.

A year earlier, Zadie Smith (1975), also won the prestigious literary Women Prize for Fiction (the same Adichie won). Sadie Smith, her given name, is a contemporary novelist, essayist, and story writer born in the northwest of London from a Jamaican mother and an English father. She has four siblings.

Smith’s first novel was published in 1997; titled White Teeth followed by The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW, and Swing Time. She also has a collection of essays Changing My Mind.

She received the Whitbread First Novel and Guardian First Book Award among many others. She has been twice listed for the Granta 20 Best Young British Novelists and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Smith’s novel NW was produced into a BBC television film. Likewise, two of Nigamerican writer Nnedi Okorafor (1974), works also have been adapted into short films.

She calls herself a Nigamerican (Nigerian-United States of America) writer because she is a descendant from Igbo parents that migrated to the USA and could not return because of the Nigerian Civil War.

Okorafor was diagnosed with scoliosis at teenage witch demanded intense therapy for her recovery. However, after she regained the ability to walk she was unable to continue with her passion for sport, so she took a creative writing class and published her first novel.

In her collection of novels and stories, she reflects West African heritage and her life in the USA. Some of her books and comics are Binti, Who fears Death, Zahrah the Windseeker, Awata Witch, Lagoon, She Shadow Speaker, Amphibious Green, Kabu Kabu, Hello Moto, Black Panther: Long live the King, Shuri, and others. 

She has obtained remarkable awards such as The Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa, Africana Book Award, Carl Brandon Parallax, Andre Norton, Golden Duck, World Fantasy, among others.

Alike writer Audre Lorde’s (1934-1992), parents also were immigrants from the West Indies to New York, the USA where they procreated three daughters, she being the third.

Her career was fervent in voicing out sexism, racism, homophobia, gender, and classism as an instrument for action and change. While still being in high school, her first poem was printed in Seventeen Magazine.

Lorde is the author of The First Cities, Cables to Rage, From a Land Where Other People Live, Coal, The Black Unicorn, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, The Cancer Journals, A Burst of Light, etc.

She also wrote periodicals for Amazon Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Red War, The Black Woman, The Village Voice, The Iowa Review, and a lot of others.

Among awards and honors she earned the National Book Award for Poetry, National Endowment for the Arts Residency Grant, Woman of the Year Award, New York State’s Poet Laureate from 1991 to 1993, and Broadside Press Poet’s Award, etc. 

Lorde was a lesbian openly known same as Roxane Gay (1974), who is bisexual, a unique writer, commemorator, professor, and editor who was born in Omaha, Nebraska (USA), from Haitian ancestries.

Her career began at age 12, as a consequence of the sexual harassment she experienced. Gay is the author of novels and essays An Untamed State, Bad Feminist, World of Wakanda, Difficult Woman, Ayiti, Hunger, and Not that Bad. 

Her works have won awards such as Pen Centre USA Freedom to Write, Eisner, Lambda Literary, and others.

Gay’s writings appear in The Guardian, Best American Mystery Stories, Best Sex Writing, Tin House, The New York Times, and others.

In partnership with Medium platform, she created Gay Magazine and recently she started the production of a black feminist podcast labeled Hear to Slay.

Maya Angelou (1928-2014), is a renowned poet, storyteller, auto-biographer, playwright, journalist, and actress born in St. Louis, Missouri (USA), also shared a passion for radio journalism. She was a strong activist who contributed to the civil right movement and worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

She published volumes of poetries, essays, and plays, as well as many children, cook, and picture books.

Her work includes seven extraordinary autobiographies: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas, Gather Together in my Name, The Heart of a Woman, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, A Song Flung Up to Heaven, and Mom and Me and Mom.

Moreover, on January 20th, 1993, at the presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton, she recited her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” this recitation is the second time at a similar event that something of this kind was done. (Robert Frost recited “The Gift Outright” at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration).

Several of her writings received merited awards and honors from over seventy universities like the University of Arkansas, Ohio State University, Atlanta University, and others.

*Shirlene Green Newball is an Afro-Nicaraguan journalist and feminist who lives in Finland.

Bibliography

Angelou, M. (2007) I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. London. Virago Press.

Adiche, C.  (2017) Half of a Yellow Sun. London. 4th Estate..

‘Afeto fértil, fértil poema: a líria de Jenyffer Nascimento’. Literafro, 10th July 2007. Available at: http://www.letras.ufmg.br/literafro/resenhas/poesia/1059-afeto-fertil-fertil-poema-a-lirica-de-jenyffer-nascimento

Corriols M. & Rossman Y. (2014) 1st. edn. Hermanas de tinta: Muestra de poesía multiétnica de mujeres nicaragüenses. Managua.

‘Courageous Zimbabwean writer whose books addressed the taboos of her society’, The Guardian, 27th April 2005. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/apr/27/guardianobituaries.books

Chambers Website. Available at:http://www.veronicachambers.com

Evans, M. (1984) Black Women Writers ( 1950-1980). The United States of America.

Gay’s Website. Available at: https://roxanegay.tumblr.com

Habila, H. (2011). African Short Story. 1st. edn. Granta Publications. London.

Hurston, Z. (1998) Their Eyes were Watching God. HapperCollins Publishers. New York.

Henry, P.  ‘Great Expectations: An Interview with Ayobami Adebayo’, El Paris Review 8 August 2017. Available at: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/08/08/great-expectations-interview-ayobami-adebayo/

Morrison, T. (1993) The Bluest Eye. Plume. United States of America.

Nndi’s Website. Available at: http://nnedi.com

Olaya, J.M. (2015) ‘Lucía Charún-Illescas, la primera novelista afroperuana’, Personajes afrodescendientes del Perú y América. Available at: https://afroliteratura.lamula.pe/2017/01/19/lucia-charun-illescas-la-primera-novelista-afroperuana/afroliteratura.lamula.pe/

Smith, Z.  (2017) Swing Time. Penguin Books. United Kingdom.