Author: Migrant Tales

Sampo Terho’s and Jussi Hallo’s political calling to keep Finland white

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Watching the A-studio debate between Sampo Terho and Jussi Halla-aho, the two candidates vying for the leadership of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, was a good example of how low Finland has stooped as a nation.

These two politicians, which have made good careers with the help of social media by spreading hatred, mistrust and hostility towards certain ethnic and religious groups in Finland, parroted their hardline stances on an even tougher immigration policy for the country.

It does seem incredible that a nation like Finland, which claims to be a Nordic welfare state built on social equality, has representatives of a government party speaking of asylum seekers, migrants and cultural diversity as if it were political canon fodder to secure their own political careers and that of the party’s.

 
Watch full debate here.

Terho mentioned that the most important issues facing Finland was the “crisis” brought on by asylum seekers and slow economic growth. Halla-aho was no different: He was worried about EU federalism, immigration and entrepreneurship.

The message of both politicians is clear: Let’s keep Finland white.

Both of them went on record saying that all asylum seekers should be put in detention centers like in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, make Finland officially a monolingual country at the cost of Swedish, and close the borders to asylum seekers even if it meant breaching international agreements.

If these two politicians were able to lead Finland, it wouldn’t take long for it to join the same club as Hungary and Poland, where basic civil rights are being challenged.

* The official translation to Finnish of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party is the Finns Party. In our opinion, it is not only a horrible translation, but one that is misguided. A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Such terms like the Finns Party of True Finns promote as well 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 thereafter the acronym PS.

360° Finland: Truth bubbles, polarization and one-size fits all globalization

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Many people ask nowadays: ”Why don’t we agree on anything anymore?” My answer is: look at the structures!

Truth bubbles

“Truth bubbles” can be characterized as the contemporary “folk disease”.Fingers have been pointed at the algorithms of social media companies such as Facebook for filtering information based on likes in a way that is conducive to creating and enforcing them. Social-media users would see only things they wanted to see in their newsfeed and follow the narratives they already supported. While prejudicial filtering of information is how human cognition functions, and is not alarming in itself, Facebook truth bubbles bring that filtering to the next level. It minimizes the chances that we encounter contradicting information accidentally.

Read the original posting here.

Some analysts claimed that truth bubbles worked in favor of Trump in the 2016 US presidential elections. Trump’s supporters would only see news in their feed that casted his alt-right agenda in a positive light. Some news agencies have exploited the mechanism for maximizing their profits by publishing tailored news articles for different truth bubbles. If you wonder how this works, the same piece of news is published for liberals and conservatives; just some keywords are altered to suit the taste of the target audience. Perhaps even more worryingly, truth bubbles decrease the likelihood that people with opposing views exchange ideas and learn from each other.

Continue reading “360° Finland: Truth bubbles, polarization and one-size fits all globalization”

How the Finnish government, institutions and President Sauli Niinistö pander to anti-immigration sentiment and groups

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Just the way Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s government can give a tacit pat on the back to far-right groups like Suomi Ensin (Finland First), the police give the green light to extremist  vigilante groups, or President Sauli Niinistö give the thumbs up to the Finnish version of the Okie from Muskogee, all of them if they wanted could land a big blow to such racist groups by stating that they are unacceptable and out of touch with our Nordic values. 

Too much complacency and mixed signals from government officials and the president of Finland only feed the ogre and the trolls.

The recent French presidential election was a positive example of how to challenge racism spread by far-right politicians.

Read the full story here.

Emmanuel Macron did not hide his views of Marine Le Pen. He accused her in a national debate of “feeding off” French people’s unhappiness and called her a “parasite” by manipulating voters’ anger usually against minorities and Muslims.

We’ve seen it over and over again. If you are too complacent and try to compete with far-right anti-immigration parties by stealing their rhetoric  you are going to lose. Why would a voter vote for a copy if he or she can get the real thing?

Thus the only way to challenge the onslaught of populist anti-cultural diversity rhetoric polluting Europe these days is by facing it and challenging it head on with little diplomacy, if necessary.

Finland is less of a sad example today of how traditional parties like the Social Democrats tried to use the populist rhetoric of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* before the April 2011 election. Add to the latter a national media that couldn’t tell the difference between racism and its own Nordic Western values and the historic victory of the PS was sealed.

It has taken us in Finland over five years of PS rhetoric and populist arguments since 2011 to understand that the party is nothing but a smokescreen for our own prejudices and racism.

Continue reading “How the Finnish government, institutions and President Sauli Niinistö pander to anti-immigration sentiment and groups”

Finland’s blind spot of bigotry and white privilege is the Perussuomalaiset

Posted on by Migrant Tales

If there is one party that has brought out bigotry, racism and populist far-right ideology as of late it is the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*. But Finland is so much in denial about its bigotry and white privilege that it sees no harm in the PS. This means that the government will do little, except offer lip service on how to challenge social ills like racism. 

That blind spot is costing Finland a lot of problems as the election for new PS chairman in early June  shows. PS MEP Jussi Halla-aho, who was convicted for ethnic agitation in 2012, is the favorite to win the chairmanship of the party against Minister of Culture, Sport, and European Issues Sampo Terho, according to Helsingin Sanomat.

Finland’s face of racism: MEP Jussi Halla-aho and Minister of Culture, Sport and European Issues Sampo Terho. Source: Helsingin Sanomat.

According to a poll, 40% said they would vote for Halla-aho  and 26% Terho. The poll showed as well that 25% of those polled were undecided.

If I were a bigot and voted for the PS, I would certainly support Halla-aho because he’s the real thing, not a watered down version like Terho, who has become at least in image a more diluted version of the latter’s racist views.

Continue reading “Finland’s blind spot of bigotry and white privilege is the Perussuomalaiset”

“Tolkun ihminen” and Finland’s version of the Okie from Muskogee

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President Sauli Niinistö, Prime Minister Juha Sipilä and the deputy head of the Finnish Immigration Service, Raimo Pyysalo, have one thing in common: They believe that the ongoing debate about asylum seekers, immigration and our ever-growing culturally diverse society is dominated by two extremes. 

Moreover, they don’t directly condemn the extremes and rarely, if ever, name which groups form part of those fringe groups.

In the 1970s, when US President Richard Nixon was facing opposition from those who opposed the Vietnam War and civil disobedience, he tried to show that those that were against him were a minority and that the silent majority was behind him.

In the same way, the whole tolkun ihminen debate is pretty much the same thing but in a Finnish context. A minority are apparently debating heatedly while the Finnish silent majority remains passive.

Below is a song about Nixon’s vision of the USAmerican silent majority that supposedly lived in Muskogee, Oklahoma.

We never knew if that small town in Oklahoma represented the voice of the silent majority since the whole matter was more wishful thinking than anything else by then President Nixon.

Pyysalo writes in the Sleep Easy website about how the ongoing debate about immigration and asylum policy needs more voices from the “silent majority,” or sensible Finns who do not belong at the extreme points of the debate.

Continue reading ““Tolkun ihminen” and Finland’s version of the Okie from Muskogee”

Finland’s immigration and asylum policy is only a momentary Pyrrhic victory

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The picture below isn’t from Gaza or some war-torn region but of the playground of the Konnunsuo immigration removal center in Joutseno, Finland, a country that claims to be proud of its social achievements and respect for human rights. 

The view is the one that a family with seven children had for over a month of the playground rudely toward by high walls and barbwire.

But there is good news: The family from Karbala, Iraq, was freed from detention Friday and are now staying at an asylum reception center in Turku awaiting a decision on new asylum request, according to YLE.

This is not a picture of a prison in Gaza but where children are detained for over a month in Finland. YLE

Four years ago, Zuzeeko’s blog brought attention to an Amnesty International campaign to stop the detention of unaccompanied minors in Finland. Even if the seven Iraqi children are accompanied by their parents, the  International Convention on the Rights of the Child – to which Finland is party – outlaws the detention of children, unless as a last resort and for the shortest possible time (see article 37[b]).

Continue reading “Finland’s immigration and asylum policy is only a momentary Pyrrhic victory”

Iraqi asylum seeker: A near-deportation ordeal with the Finnish police

Posted on by Migrant Tales

A twenty-two-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker who was detained illegally by the police three days before he had to vacate the asylum reception center in Pori is now a free man again. Thanks to the efforts of the Lex Gaudius law firm, the district court overruled the detention of the asylum seeker at the Metsälä immigrant removal center in Helsinki, where he was held from April 27 to May 9.

“[After this ordeal] I still find it hard to believe that I’m free,” he told Migrant Tales by phone.

The asylum seeker’s detention began at the school in Pori where he was studying Finnish. The police visited the school to detain him but he went and hid from them. On returning, apparently the principal, called the police and the young man was detained.

 

Proof that the asylum seeker was illegally detained by the police three days before he was supposed to vacate the asylum reception center in Pori.

“I was taken by the police to Rauma and then to Turku, where I was locked up for two nights and three days before a judge decided that I could be deported [to Iraq] and send me either to Joutseno or Metsälä [immigration removal center],” he added.

The asylum seeker said that his first impression of Metsälä was “shocking” because there “are criminals and crazy people.”

“It’s the same place [Metsälä] where an Iraqi tried to hang himself when I was there,” he continued. “At Metsälä you cannot go outside and it’s like a prison. I shared a room with another Iraqi who was deported from Denmark back to Finland.”

An Iraqi asylum seeker at the Metsälä immigration removal center being taken away on a stretcher after attempting to take his life. Source: Facebook.

The Iraqi asylum seeker, who has now submitted a new application for asylum to the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri), said that he went back to school to learn Finnish upon returning to Pori. “All of my classmates where happy to see me,” he said.

He said that he came to Finland in search of a better life and to escape war.

“I will be killed if I return to Iraq,” he concluded. “I hope people in this country can feel in their heart our suffering and reread their history, when hundreds of thousands of refugees came to Finland [after World War 2].”

 

 

Finland to deport an illiterate, 70-year-old asylum seeker to Iraq

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales has learned that a 70-year-old Kurdish woman will get deported from Finland within 30 days. The woman, who is illiterate and came to Finland in 2015, got three rejections for asylum. 

The woman lives in the central Finnish town of Keuruu and after problems with Isis fled with her adult children to Europe.

If deported back to Iraq, the woman has no social networks and is said to be suffering from health problems.

The Finnish Immigration Service has cut her monthly allowance by 50 euros to 90 euros.

The 70-year-old woman face deportation from Finland.

How a story in Migrant Tales was incorrectly judged as “hate speech”

Posted on by Migrant Tales

A news story I published Saturday about two black and one foreign woman who were insulted and threatened in a racist manner got taken down in the Rasmus forum. It was the first time ever that this has happened to me in Facebook. 

Facebook only gave me a note stating that the story didn’t abide by its community standards.

So what did my “hate speech” story say?

A year ago a white Finnish woman threw a bucketful of water at three women and four children below and started to insult and threaten them in a racist manner.

Said the victim, Ruth Waweru.Folabit, in Migrant Tales last year: “When another neighbor told the woman to shut up, she called her an n-word lover. She said that she was a Finn, and therefore, nothing would happen to her [for harassing her in a racist manner and throwing a bucket of water].”

After a year the three victims get the following decision from the prosecutor:  “I will not press charges because the suspected crime, when evaluated as a whole, should be seen as minor considering the harm it caused or the degree of guilt of the suspect that it reveals.”

I will not go into all the details of the story because they are already published, but it’s quite incredible that a white person in Finland can do something like this and get away with it. I just wonder what would have happened if the person who threw the water, insulted and threatened three white people was black.

“I’d probably get deported,” said one of the victims.

Suvi Tanninen, who complained to Facebook about the story, claims that I was guilty of “hate speech” because I wrote demeaningly about white Finns.

In the posting she calls me “a mental retard.”

One look at her Facebook page “likes” reveals who this person is: Tanninen “likes” far-right online trash publications such as Nykysuomi, MV, vigilante group the Soldiers of Odin, Suomen Sisu and Finland First.

All of the above are responsible for fueling and maintaining hate speech against migrants and minorities in Finland.

Here is the official complaint that Suvi Tanninen gave to Facebook about the article, which she claimed was hate speech (sic!). Facebook should do it’s job better and not just censor people in the way the story was today.

UPDATED (13.5): You still see people who think racism is ok and don’t mind advertising. Even so, why don’t they learn how to spell the word “racist” correctly?