Migrant Tales insight: Thank you Hamid Bahadori for the heads-up. We are with you and all those who want to stop Fayaz’ deportation and death in Afghanistan. #Stopdeportations #AfghanistanIsNotSafe
Author: Migrant Tales
Ibrahim’s last chat with me before his departure to Iraq
Ibrahim’s* case, the Iraqi asylum seeker who returned “voluntarily” to Iraq this week, is a case in point of how the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) and politicians fail people. Here are some facts about Ibrahim, who moved to Finland in October 2015: he applied for 25-30 jobs a week; constantly did voluntary work; converted to Christianity; and found employment delivering newspapers during his last months at Posti.
From these facts, we can easily conclude that Ibrahim was an ideal asylum seeker who could adapt pretty rapidly to life in this country.
Juho Kusti Paasikivi, the main architect of Finland’s post-war foreign policy as prime minister (1944-46) and president [1946-56), used the following quote by nineteenth-century British politician Thomas Babington Macaulay: The beginning of all wisdom is acknowledgment of facts.
Instructions on what an asylum seeker can take back to Iraq. After almost three years, Ibrahim’s possessions must fit in two 23-kg pieces of luggage.
Paasikivi used this quote to understand Finland’s difficult geopolitical situation with the former Soviet Union.
Babington Macaulay’s quote sits well for the difficult situation that two-thirds of asylum seekers faced and continue to face in this country.
Continue reading “Ibrahim’s last chat with me before his departure to Iraq”
An active citizen needs to learn at school about two crucial matters: empathy and social activism
If we look at history and today’s Europe and globally, it becomes clear that most people who went to school that too many never learned about empathy and social activism. A positive example of the latter is Elin Ersson, who refused to take a seat on a flight before they removed an Afghanistan deported asylum seeker off the plane.
Veronika Honkasalo, a Left Alliance Helsinki city councilperson, was recently quoted as saying in Kansan Uutiset that in light of the low turnout of demonstrators during the Trump-Putin summit, it would be important for schools to teach their pupils how to exercise their civic rights by becoming active citizens.
In countries like Russia and others where human rights abuses are the norm, their citizens are not left with many choices if they want to express their opinions.
In Argentina, where I was born, living under a dictatorship supported by the United States, gave you three choices in the face of social unrest: stay silent, emigrate or join a guerrilla movement and start killing people.
While all three choices are bad, the latter about killing people for a cause raises a lot of ethical and moral questions. Can you kill another human being and live with such a deed for the rest of your life?
My heroes aren’t Rambo or the Terminator and other creations of the Hollywood culture industry. For me, social activist that changed history were people like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Sophie Scholl of the White Rose Movement, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, James Baldwin, Rodolfo Walsh, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca and many, many others.
All of these latter examples show us that a person can challenge a system that is oppressive and appears invincible.
Migrant Tales will begin to highlight more stories about social activism. One way of doing this is by sharing stories of struggles and social activism.
We hope to hear and publish your story.
Does Ibrahim’s claim about Hepatitis B expose white fragility?
Migrant Tales published a story about Ibrahim’s* “voluntary” return to Iraq after coming to Finland in October 2015. While there were many that felt for Ibrahim’s case, some were more preoccupied with what he alleged, or that he contracted Hepatitis B when going to a Finnish dentist.
In journalism, you run up against a lot of claims. Since we do not know if they are true of not, we sometimes give the source the benefit of the doubt by using the word alleged, which means that he claims but isn’t yet proven.
Sometimes, these types of stories reveal the most surprising things like white fragility.
Guidelines on what you can take back with you to Iraq. After almost three years, Ibrahim’s possessions must fit in two 23-kg pieces of luggage.
It is important to remember that Ibrahim alleges that he got infected in Finland even if we don’t have any proof that this actually happened. Considering the high standard of Finland’s health care system, such cases are unheard of. Even so, this is how Ibrahim sees it.
Continue reading “Does Ibrahim’s claim about Hepatitis B expose white fragility?”
(Migrant Tales July 22, 2014) Anders Breivik: Three years after the horror of 22/7 in Norway
How many still remember 22/7, when mass-murderer Anders Breivik went on the rampage seven years ago killing 77 innocent victims? Who wants to remember the man that carried out the worst attack on Norway since the Second World War?
What will the local papers write about that horrific day, today? What will their editorials say if they grant such attention to 22/7? Will they write about the important role that tolerance and respect play as our societies become ever-culturally and ethnically diverse? Will they make a case for ethnic equality? Or will they sidetrack – as they have done in so many occasions – the issue altogether?
One of the most remarkable matters about the seventh anniversary of the mass killings in Norway is that the years feel like decades.
Certainly, many of us don’t want to remember what happened on 22/7 because apart from writing a sinister narrative about ourselves, Breivik is also white.
How can a person who was brought up in one of the richest nations in the world, a Nordic welfare state that has social equality as an inalienable value, could not only house so much hatred but translate it into deadly violence?
Despite what forensic psychiatrists originally diagnosed Breivik, he wasn’t mentally insane when he carried out his acts.
The mass killer is an extreme example of why some find a home in racist and Islamophobic parties and groups: narcissism and opportunism, which offer a sense of purpose.
See BBC documentary on Anders Breivik here.
Even if anti-immigration and Islamophobic parties in Europe want to distance themselves from what happened on 22/7, there’s one matter that should be clear to them: no matter how many voters you lure to your party with racism, keeping such a social ill on a short leash is foolish and risky because it can bite back at its master, and hard.
Dutch foreign minister offers excuses for racism and “failures of multiculturalism”
The interview below with Dutch foreign minister, Stef Blok, is another prime example of why racism, bigotry, and discrimination continue to list high on the European shame board. The interview, where Blok tells us how “multiculturalism has failed,” reveals another excuse why racism is deeply ingrained in Europe.
He also forgets to tell us about the history of racism in Holland and Europe and its complicity in the slave trade.
Said Blok in Politico: “Give me an example of a multiethnic or multicultural society, where the original population are still living as well … and where there are peaceful community relations. I’m not aware of any.”
It is odd, but not surprising, that Blok speaks of “multicultural society,” or a society that is culturally and ethnically diverse, as a failure because he’s not aware of any ones where there are good ethnic relations.
Certainly, there aren’t due to the legacy of racism in countries like Holland.
Moreover, many successful economies like the United States build their growth on exploiting migrants as cheap labor.
No, Foreign Minister Blok, you got it wrong. Well-functioning societies – and none will never become 100% harmonious – hinges on social equality and equal opportunities. If you are unwilling to challenge social inequality and racism, there is your answer of what you refer to as the failure of “multiethnic or multicultural society.”
It is not “race” or “ethnicity” but of equal opportunities and inclusion that are key to creating a well-functioning society.
When Blok claims that multiculturalism is a failure, it is only an excuse that reveals a lack of political will to take action against racism and social inequality.
Read the full story here.
Another statement made by the Dutch foreign minister in the interview is that Eastern European countries like Hungary and Poland “will never agree” to EU refugee quotas. He said it was because “colored people” have “no life” in those countries and would be “beaten up.”
Ibrahim of Iraq: “Finland is a never-ending long dark tunnel without light”
Do you remember the patient asylum seeker called Ibrahim*, who applied to hundreds of jobs in Finland and who finally got a job at Posti to deliver newspapers at homes? Well, Ibrahim is so fed up with Finland that he decided to move back to Iraq.
“Even if you offered me a good-paying job, I would not stay in this country,” he said. “Finland is a never-ending long dark tunnel without light. For my own mental health, it is important I leave before it is too late.”
Having moved to Finland in October 2015, Ibrahim was always an exemplary person and has made many good friends during his stay in Finland. I have only seen him angry twice: When he got his application for asylum rejected the first time in 2016 and now.
Guidelines on what you can take back with you to Iraq. After almost three years, Ibrahim’s possessions must fit in two 23-kg pieces of luggage.
Ibrahim, a computer hardware and data centers specialist in Iraq, blames bad luck for his fate.
“For me, it was a big mistake coming to Finland,” he continued. “I was free from diseases. There is a lot of structural racism and as an asylum-seeker, you will always be a second-class citizen.”
Continue reading “Ibrahim of Iraq: “Finland is a never-ending long dark tunnel without light””
Revista Fennia: Paluu mistä olimme
”Joskus menneisyys pelottaa minua.”
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)
Sokea argentiinalainen kirjailija Borges kuvasi levotonta Argentiina 1970-luvulla monella tavalla. Muistan yhä kun silloin eläkkeellä oleva Horacio-setäni lausui yhden Borgesin siteerauksista samana vuonna kun siviilipresidentti María Martínez de Perón syöstiin vallasta maaliskuu 24 päivä 1976.
”Borges sanoi,” setäni kertoi hymyillen, ”että demokratia on tilastojen väärinkäyttöä.”
Tähän lyhyeen lauseeseen oli pakattu kaikki mitä oli vialla Argentiinassa. Borges ja Horacio antoivat ymmärtää, että vallankaappaus oli hyvä asia, koska poistettiin tehoton presidentti joka oli sen lisäksi nainen ja peronisti. Hän, kuten Borges, eivät uskoneet argentiinalaiseen demokratiaan, erityisesti kun sisällissota ja taloudellinen sekasorto vain paheni Martínez de Perónin vallan aikana.
Lue alkuperänen juttu tästä.
Jos olet joskus vieraillut pohjoisessa Buenos Airesissa Floresin alueella, saatat törmätä moniin minun sukulaisiini. Näiden 1900-luvun alkupuolella rakennettujen pariisilaistyylisten talojen ja mukulakivikatujen varsilla kasvavien tammien katveessa asuu Horacio-setä.
Argentina’s issues with whitewashing and genocide. Like the crimes committed during the dirty war, they too should be addressed.
When I was young, I remember very well the racism that inflicted the Argentines. A friend of mine from Rosario highlighted this racism in the following example: A porteño (a resident of the capital Buenos Aires) told his friends that when they travel to countries like Peru they state that they are going to visit South America.
The more one reads Argentine history, genocide and whitewashing of Amerindians and Afro-Argentines become clearer.
From social thinker, Juan Bautista Alberdi (1810-84) to former President Faustino Sarmiento (1811-88), their suspicion and hatred of non-white Europeans is more than clear.
Juan Bautista Alberdi and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. Sources: El Intransigente and Organization of American States.
In his most famous book, Bases y puntos de partida para la organización política de la República Argentina (1852), Alberdi states: “The indigenous does us justice by naming us Spaniards to this date. I don’t know of any distinguished person of our society that carries a Pehuenche or Auraucano [Amerindian] surname…[W]ho would want their sister or daughter to marry an infamous Araucanian and not a thousand times an English shoemaker?”
Sarmiento, considered the father of Argentina’s education system, not only despised Amerindians but was an ardent defender of white European racial purity. Of the Gauchos, the Argentine cowboy who were mestizos, he said that their only use was to serve as fertilizer when they died.
Sarmiento wrote in El Nacional of Nov. 25, 1857: “Will we be able to exterminate the Indians? For the savages of America, I feel an invincible repugnance that I cannot cure. Those scoundrels are not anything more than disgusting Indians that I would hang if they reappeared…”
Even today, an argument used by some to justify the genocide of the Amerindians is that they were so few. Thus genocide of the Amerindian was not a major crime because they were so few.
Some estimates place the number of Amerindians living outside colonial jurisdiction in the nineteenth century between 300,000 and 2 million.
Historical guilt
Some Argentines put a poker face to cover up the atrocities committed against the Amerindians with arguments by claiming that we are a melting pot.
Nothing could be further from the truth unless “melting pot” means white European.
Racist comments by some white Argentineans reinforce how racism and bigotry are still alive and kicking in the country. “White” in Argentina means anyone who has a European background. Those of mixed mestizo ethnicity, Europeans mixed with Amerindians, are called disrespectfully cabecita negra, or little black head.
In my research of the Finns of Argentina, who founded a Finnish colony in the province of Misiones in 1906, racism was present in the many interviews I did. When I asked one former late colonist how many races there existed, he responded three: “white, black, and pitch-black.”
The colonist whom I interviewed, admitted that race mixing was good but not with blacks. He said he would never accept his daughter marrying an Amerindian, black or member of the Romany community even if the person “were an airline captain.”
A family working at a corn field in Colonia Finlandesa. The picture was taken in 1978. Photo: Enrique Tessieri
In light of our problematic history with non-European whites, should we children and grandchildren of European migrants in Argentina feel guilty for the genocide and whitewashing that took place?
The answer to that question is clear. Recognizing the injustices committed against groups like the Amerindians and Afro-Argentines is a good start to healing wounds.
Acknowledging and correcting what happened to minority groups is similar to how the country has tried to come to grips with the atrocities committed by military regimes, in particular to those that ruled the country during the dirty war (1976-83).
If we as a nation forget our past atrocities and conveniently brush them under the rug, we are in danger of committing the same crimes again.
A person whom I’ve known since childhood was adopted as a baby by a white porteño family and who came from Amerindian parents. When I met him in 2016, his hatred for Bolivians and other non-white nationals in Argentina surprised and shocked me.
“We got to kick all these Bolivians out of the country,” he said, adding that there are too many of them.
Whitewashing “Made in Argentina”
Throughout Argentine history, we have seen history whitewashed, turned upside down and then right side up again. Consider when Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793-1877), one of Argentina’s most important caudillos of the nineteenth century, went into exile in Great Britain in 1852. His enemies, and they were many, made certain that no plaza or street in Argentina would carry his name until 1989 when his remains were repatriated.
We saw the same happen after Juan Domingo Perón’s overthrow by the military in 1955 with Decree 4161 of 1956, which prohibited people from mentioning the names of Juan Perón and Eva Duarte de Perón.
Looking at the above examples, should we be surprised that so much whitewashing and genocide went on in Argentina?
Not at all.
We must remember that the millions of migrants that moved to Argentina in the nineteenth and twentieth century not only brought with them their physical belongings but also their prejudices and racism. Colonial powers like the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, and France reinforced with the examples of colonial oppression, exploitation, mass murder the genocide of groups like the Amerindians.
That racism is ever-present in the treatment of African migrants in Argentina today.
Mauricio Macri and the legacy of racism
Taking into account Argentina’s racialized society and its history of racism, President Mauricio Macri aims at scoring brownie points with the voters by spreading xenophobia and fear of outsiders.
“We can’t allow criminals to keep picking Argentina as a place to commit offenses,” he was quoted as saying in The Guardian. According to the London-based newspaper, the comment was made after Macri signed a controversial and far-reaching executive order that permits foreigners to be deported from Argentina.
Read the full story here.
Singling out and scapegoating certain immigrant groups is the same questionable example found today in the United States and in European countries. Such rhetoric is a slippery slope that can lead to the horrors we saw in Europe in the last century.
Argentina’s Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, who belongs to one of the country’s richest families, didn’t mind labeling and linking crime to immigration like far-right, anti-immigration parties in Europe.
She claimed that “Peruvian and Paraguayan citizens come here and end up killing each other for control of the drug trade.”
Such rhetoric is racist that aims to harm and victimize the good name of certain national and ethnic groups.
Argentina needs today more than ever an earnest debate about its history and how we wronged non-white European minorities.
La Colectiva: Statement on Trump’s and Putin’s summit in Helsinki on July 16
La Colectiva is a group of Latin American poets and artists residing in Finland. Their names are Martina Miño, Roxana Crisologo, Rosamaria Bolom y Ana Gutieszca. For more information about La Colectiva, visit their page here.
La Colectiva es conformada por cuatro poetas y artistas latinoamericanas residiendo en Finlandia. Sus nombres son Martina Miño , Roxana Crisologo Rosamaria Bolom y Ana Gutieszca. Para obtener más información sobre La Colectiva, pueden visitar su página aquí
STATEMENT:
LA COLECTIVA pronounces itself against a position of political neutrality in the demonstrations of July 15 and 16 for the Trump and Putin visit in Helsinki.
We will demonstrate with a clear political position anti-Trump and anti-Putin and not remain in neutrality or complicity with the atrocities and human rights violations directed by these governments.
In this demonstration we will speak out against the rhetoric that positions Latin Americans as second class citizens, drug dealers, rapists, prostitutes,etc from “SHITHOLE COUNTRIES”. We speak out against the kidnapping of 2000 to 3000 immigrant children in the United States, and the brutality, murders and disappearances of women, men, GLBT citizens and discrimination on the grounds of racial or ethnic origin by these governments.
To not take a position against, shows a complicity with the oppressor and not with the oppressed. By not taking a position, there is an acceptance of the criminalization of the solidarity we want to exercise in this protest to support citizens who are in positions of vulnerability around the world.
We have a voice and we are not afraid to demonstrate our discomfort and disagreement with the visit of these two individuals.
While many remain neutral, they are killing us.
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PRONUNCIAMIENTO:
LA COLECTIVA se pronuncia en contra de una posición de neutralidad política en las manifestaciones del 15 y 16 de Julio por la visita Trump y Putin.
Nosotrxs marcharemos con una posición política clara anti-Trump y anti-Putin ya que si permanecemos en neutralidad somos cómplices de las atrocidades y violaciones de derechos humanos por parte de estos gobiernos.
En esta manifestación nos pronunciaremos en contra de la retórica que nos posiciona a los Latinoamericanos como ciudadanos de segunda clase, narcotraficantes, violadores, prostitutas provenientes de “SHITHOLE COUNTRIES”. Nos pronunciamos en contra del secuestro de dos mil a tres mil niños de familias inmigrantes en Estados Unidos. Nos pronunciamos en contra de los asesinatos y las desapariciones de mujeres, hombres, ciudadanos LGBT y la discriminación basada en el origen racial y étnico de las personas por parte de estos gobiernos.
No tomar partido en contra demuestra estar del lado del opresor y no del oprimido. Al no tomar una posición se acepta la criminalización de la solidaridad que queremos ejercer en esta protesta para apoyar a los ciudadanos que están en posiciones de vulnerabilidad alrededor del mundo.
Nosotrxs tenemos voz y no tenemos miedo de demostrar nuestro origen, nuestra identidad , y nuestra condición de migrantes.
Mientras muchos permanecen neutrales a nosotrxs nos están matando.
#HKIagainstTrumPutin #HelsinkiSummit #Helsinki2018 #StopTrump#LatinoamericanosenFinlandia #Wecare #sananvapaus #parisuhde#demokratia #LGBT #NosestanMatando