Author: Migrant Tales

European Agency of Fundamental Rights: Finland has the most racial harassment cases against PAD of 12 EU countries surveyed

Posted on by Migrant Tales

A new study by the European Agency of Fundamental Rights (FRA) reveals that a third of people of African descent (PAD) surveyed have experienced racial harassment in the last five years. That’s not all: Perceived racist harassment was highest in Finland (63%) and least prevalent in Malta 20% (see chart below).

“It is a reality both shameful and infuriating: racism based on the colour of a person’s skin remains a pervasive scourge throughout the European Union,” writes FRA director Michael O’Flaherty in the report’s forward. “…It is a reality both shameful and infuriating: racism based on the colour of a person’s skin remains a pervasive scourge throughout the European Union.”

Finland’s dubious ranking as the highest five-year rate of perceived racist violence against PAD has only ourselves to blame and a result of our lost decade (2011-2019), where we allowed racism and our silence to create the hostile migrants against migrants, especially PAD, today.

Migrant Tales wrote: “Why are the Center Party and National Coalition Party in bed with an anti-immigration and nationalist party like the PS [Perussuomalaiset]?*”

Such a bedfellow has cost Finland dearly in racism, discrimination and hostile environment.

Read the full Guardian story here.

Continue reading “European Agency of Fundamental Rights: Finland has the most racial harassment cases against PAD of 12 EU countries surveyed”

Far-right vigilante group Soldiers of Odin provokes migrants in East Helsinki

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Without anything better to do than to provoke visible migrants, some 30 members of the far-right Soldiers of Odin were at East Helsinki’s Puhos shopping mall on Monday, according to a video by Finnish Somalimedia Warsan.

According to the Helsinki Times, “shoppers and visitors of the mall were frightened by the group and stayed inside the shops. The show off seems to have gone without incidents or violence. Police presence can also be seen In the video, although they do not seem to interfere. ”

While the Soldiers of Odin have not given any statement about their presence at the East Helsinki shopping mall, it’s clear that the far-right group, which has close ideological ties with neo-Nazi groups, is desperate for attention.

Apart from some cities in Finland like Kemi, where the group is active, the original aim of the Soldiers of Odin is to protect Finnish white women and children from Muslims.

The Finnish police’s and media’s ambiguous stand against the vigilante group gave it some acceptance in Finland.

One may rightfully ask why was it so difficult for the police and media to grasp immediately that the Soldiers of Odin are a symptom of a social ill.

The answer is obvious.

See the video here.

The Puhos mall was in the news in February when the police, Border Guard, health officials carried out spot checks at the East Helsinki shopping center.

Migrant Tales wrote back then:  “While it is a good matter that the Helsinki police service is accountable for its actions, the tweets say nothing about the police’s alleged behavior at the mosque. Why did they spot check everyone who entered and left the mosque? What about the police dog and the shoes? There is no tweet about a policeman who allegedly snapped back and said that ‘this was his country’ and that he had a right to ask the person for his ID.”

New York Times: Hillary Clinton should blame European racism, not migrants for the rise of populism

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Hillary Clinton says that migration is the main reason for feeding European populism.

Migrant Tales disagrees. Europe is such a racist region plagued by its colonial and post-colonial history that was and still has its hands drenched in genocide and exploitation.

Don’t blame the migrants, Clinton. Blame European racism for the rise in populism.

 

Read the full story here.

 

 

A Cameroonian national football player’s 18-day detention and nightmare in Finland

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Bad luck and alleged ethnic profiling by the Finnish Border Guard at the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport led to the detention of Christian Heumi Kabon, a Cameroonian who plays for that country’s national team. He ended up detained at the Metsälä immigration removal center in Helsinki for 18 days, from October 30 to November 16.

At the Metsälä immigration removal center, a detained person cannot leave the premises. For many, the removal center is the last place where they are kept before being deported out of the country.

Cyrille Belinga had invited his friend Kabon to visit him in Helsinki. He bought him a one-way ticket to Helsinki from Lisbon, where he had entered the country legally. Portugal and Finland are part of the Schengen area, which means relatively free travel without border controls.

“I told him that I would pick him up at the airport on Tuesday [October 30],” said Belinga. “Cameroonians call each other by their nicknames. This is why Christian did not remember right off the bat my real name when asked by customs officials.”

Belinga claims that the only reason why agents stopped him was because he is black. It is a good example of racism, according to him. Legally, he had a right to travel freely in the Schengen area of which Finland is a signatory.

“My friend could not tell the border guards my real name and to top it off, I had lost my phone on that day,” he continued. “So I could not be reached when the border agent called me.”

As a result, Kabon ended up at Metsälä where he awaited deporation proceedings.

Read the original story here.

Thanks to the efforts of lawyer Miro del Gaudio of Lex Gaudius, the hapless Cameroonian football player was released after complaints and an appeal to the adminisrative court of Helsinki.

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YLE A-studio talk show’s question and image sum up Finland’s migration and demographic challenges ahead

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Monday’s A-studio talk show debated Finland’s low birthrate and what the country could do to challenge the threats of an ageing and shrinking population as well as how migration could ease such woes. Present at the talk show were Left Alliance chairwoman Li Andersson, Justice Minister (National Coalition Party) Antti Häkkänen, and Nordea bank economist Olli Kärkkäinen.

While there was nothing new that said at the talk show, there was one question and one image that summed it up.

Kärkkäinen asked a very important question: “Even if politicians are so much in agreement that we need migrants, especially labor migrants, why has so little been done?”

The host asks the Nordea economist to answer his question.

“It’s easy to speak here [in these talk shows] about students staying to live in Finland and get a residence permit if they search for work,” he continued. “We can slash red tape, give out residence permit faster, but for some reason, there is little progress [in changing the present situation]. Let’s hope that demographic pressures will bring changes [faster] when the next government takes power.”

One reason why the present government has done so little is the Perussuomalaisiet*, and Blue Reform, which are populist anti-immigration parties. The former was in government but after it split into two factions in 2017, the Blue Reform is in government even if it popularity in opinion polls hovers around 2%.

Finland will hold parliamentary elections in April 2019.

Another striking feature of the talk show was the background picture of a migrant working as a cleaner.

Is this how YLE and Finland see migrants? Are they just cheap labor to do menial work that Finns don’t want to do?

Watch the full A-studio talk show here. Can’t foreigners do anything better than work for cleaning companies?

Considering Finland’s ineffective and inhumane immigration policy, and if the migrant gets a residence permit, his or her rights at the workplace are far from satisfactory.

Continue reading “YLE A-studio talk show’s question and image sum up Finland’s migration and demographic challenges ahead”

QUOTE OF THE DAY (Gustave M. Gilbert): “Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy”

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What characteristics unite anti-immigration politicians like the Perussuomalaiset* and Blue Reform of Finland? Captain Gustave Mark Gilbert, the Army psychologist at the Nuremberg trials (1945-46), said what the Nazi war criminals on trial had an incapacity to feel with their fellow men. That fellow men and women are today Muslims, among other groups. “Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy,” he said.

Read the full story here.

* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017, into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. Despite the name changes, we believe that it is the same party in different clothing. Both factions are hostile to cultural diversity never mind Muslims and other visible minorities. One is more open about it while the other says it in a different way. 

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.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: In Finland whiteness calls the shots

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Migrant Tales has written about this before: 

“In Finland, whiteness is so ingrained in the psyche of the nation that children of color hide from the sun in summer because it tans their skin. They understand better than anyone else that the darker their skin the more their classmates will turn their backs on them. It is a case of hostile Othering.”

Finland’s Roma minority will tell you about the hostility and discrimination when you are not white. Photo: Enrique Tessieri

Finland knows that it is in demographic hot water but leaves its future woes to chance

Posted on by Migrant Tales

A new forecast by Statistics Finland tells us what we’ve known for a long time: We are in demographic hot water and our population will start to shrink and get older, according to YLE News. Net immigration will keep up present population levels at 5.6 million until 2035, but will decline to 5.5 million in the 2050s. 

YLE News writes: “In 2010, the average number of births per woman in Finland was 1.87, compared to an average of 1.49 children per woman in 2017 — the lowest level in Finnish history. The overall fertility rate in 2018 is expected to decline to 1.43 and the last time that the birth rate declined as much in consecutive years was in the 1960s.”

As population forecasts show, Finland needs to take steps to increase its low birthrate and lure migrants to the country.

Using the roughly 35,000 asylum seekers that moved to Finland in 2015-2016 as an example, it’s clear that Finland and the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) have shown their usual hostile face to migration.

Read the full story here.

Even if common sense tells us that Finland needs more migrants, luring newcomers to the country is easier said than done.

Continue reading “Finland knows that it is in demographic hot water but leaves its future woes to chance”