Author: Migrant Tales

Migrants’ Rights Network: The challenges facing migrants’ rights campaigners in 2017

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Fizza Qureshi*
MRN’s new Director, Fizza Qureshi, welcomes the New Year and the major challenges it brings. The picture may look bleak, but that’s no reason for pessimism. It’s a spur to building alliances and campaigning harder for a rights-based approach to migration.

It is a great honor and privilege to be taking the helm of MRN, following in the footsteps of Don and working with an incredibly passionate team. Although I wish it were during better times and not with the current focus on immigration being the hot political potato again.

This climate reminded me of a song I recently heard, The Temptations “Ball of Confusion”:

“…Segregation,

Determination

Demonstration

Integration

Aggravation

Humiliation

Obligation to our nation

Ball of confusion

Oh, yeah, that’s what the world is today”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns5YnHI2N54

The world is in a ball of confusion; fake news, a post-fact world, along with knee-jerk reactions and emotions whilst those fleeing horrendous circumstances are being ignored, unless it feeds into a greater agenda. So, how can we overcome the aggravation, humiliation, segregation and start to make sense of things?

Over the coming year below are some of the key issues that we at MRN will be focusing on.

Will Brexit mean Brexit?

Top of the agenda this year will be Brexit with the initial hurdle being the decision of the courts and then the triggering of Article 50. Although, this will partly depend on the number of cases taken against the government’s unilateral decision-making process. While the UK organises its separation and divorce from the EU, there will be little reassurance to the 3 million EU citizens waiting anxiously on what deals will be made to secure their position in the UK.

It would serve the UK government well, if it begins to understand the ridiculous nature of leaving so many people in limbo, and forcing them to undertake the prolonged, and sometimes unsuccessful residency application. While some EU citizens wait patiently for a decision on their rights, some will continue to be subjected to administrative removal, a piece of legislation we need to campaign hard against. MRN and others will be waiting with baited breath for the decision of the judicial review.

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Disingenuous Islamophobes like speaker of parliament Maria Lohela want you and I to forget where they came from

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Prime Minister Juha Sipilä, who has gone from one scandal to the next, got booed by a large crowd in Helsinki on New Year. Perussuomalaiset (PS)* speaker of parliament, Maria Lohela, who has built her political career by spreading Islamophobic rhetoric, states on her Facebook page that the Finns have lost touch with their good habits by booing the prime minister. 

Lohela, like her populist anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam party, the PS, couldn’t be more out of touch with Finland and reality. Politicians like her, who are very selective and suffer from political amnesia, are outright deceitful.

Lohela finds herself in “good company” in the Nuiva manifesto in 2010. She is one of thirteen people who signed the manifesto with three PS politicians (MEP Jussi Halla-aho, former MP James Hirvisaari and Kotka city councilman Freddy van Wonterghem) who were sentenced for ethnic agitation as well as others who have made their political careers by attacking migrants. Some of these are MP Juho Eerola, MP Olli Immonen, Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo, PS party secretary, and seven others.

Other Nuiva manifesto signatories are MP Juho Eerola, MP Olli Immonen, Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo, PS party secretary, and seven others.

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Seven months and no justice yet after a Kenyan woman was racially insulted and splashed by a bucket of water

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Remember when a Kenyan woman was sitting outside her home in the Helsinki neighborhood of Helsinki one Sunday afternoon on May 22 and a white Finnish woman splashed a bucket of water on her, her children and their friends after shouting racist insults? Well, nothing has happened since then even if Ruth Waweru-Folabit pressed charges against the woman and complained to the non-discrimination ombudsman seven months ago.

Migrant Tales wrote back then: What is most upsetting about the story is that the police didn’t bother to ask her if she wanted to press charges against the woman that insulted her in a racist manner in public and threw a bucket of water on her, her two children and friend’s children.

Waweru-Folabit wrote to me on November 7 that she still hasn’t heard from the police service and non-discrimination ombudsman regarding her case. “I have tried my best to put this behind me for my kids’ sake,” she wrote, “but some kind of justice would be good.”

How long will it take for justice to take its course?

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Will Halla-aho be the PS’ savior or the party’s political grave?

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A while back I asked a friend what would happen if the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* implode as we’ve seen in the polls. What will emerge from the ruin of that xenophobic party? Will we see another party that is more sinister and more dangerous to cultural diversity?

With PS MEP Jussi Halla-aho’s decision to challenge Timo Soini and run for chairman of the party could well mean the birth of an ever-radical anti-immigration party in the same league as the Islamophobic Danish People’s Party.

Will Halla-aho be the lifesaver of the PS’ problems and succeed at bolstering the embattled party’s poll standings? If we read PS politicians like MP Laura Huhtasaari, the Islamophobe with the white kindergarten teacher smile, the answer is a confident yes.

According to her, “Finland needs Perussuomalaiset values, Jussi is a pioneer, a nationalist who defends our rights. He doesn’t vacillate. He’s not afraid of being labeled because he believes in what he says.”

When watching the news about Halla-aho and how the media reports about this MEP, who was sentenced for ethnic agitation, it’s amazing to note how much fascination and interest there is in a politician who has built his political career on insulting minorities and spreading racism.

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Why did Finland allocate so much money on asylum reception centers that treated in too many cases refugees like “livestock?”

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Who watches over, never mind defends, the rights of asylum seekers?

The Supermen*

In 2015 and 2016 some 38,000 asylum seekers [1] came to Finland and scores of asylum reception centers sprung up rapidly throughout the country to house these people. Even if the government’s answer to the ever-growing number of asylum seekers was “to make Finland unattractive for asylum seekers,” these people did a service to Finland by helping expose our ineffective and costly immigration and integration policy.

Disagree? How is it possible that it takes for some migrants 5-7 years before they can knock on the door of an employer and ask for a job?

Why is migrant unemployment many times higher than the national average?

Why do migrants get paid on average 25% less than white Finns?

It’s clear that there’s a lot of work to be done to lessen the pay gap between migrants and white Finns and lower high unemployment levels.

Fabrication or the truth?

An anti-racist colleague at the recently held Golden Family Awards in Helsinki exposed an interesting problem about our reporting of asylum seekers this year.

“When I started to read [the first] stories [from January] about that abuses that asylum seekers were suffering at reception centers, the first matter that crossed my mind was if they are true because they were so unbelievable,” the person said. “How could people in our country treat others in such a terrible manner?”

For Migrant Tales, 2016 was the year of investigative journalism. We published 128 news stories on asylum reception centers, interviewed scores of asylum seekers, and got in touch with many newspapers. Our efforts helped us to get the deputy manager of the Kolari asylum reception center fired.

Asylum seekers who are minors wrote a letter to Pitäjänuutiset in the fall explaining why they are seeking asylum in Finland.

Our network of sources involves comprises of a journalist and Arab-speakers who know the asylum-seeker situation in Finland as well as the back of their hand.

In the beginning, nobody wanted to write about such abuses never mind read about the terrible stories we started to expose to the public. When Migrant Tales approached Helsingin Sanomat in January,  the reporter at Finland’s largest daily gave little importance to the carefully investigated story we sent showing abuses at Luona, a private company controlled by Barona that managed back then reception centers in Helsinki, Vantaa, Espoo, and Hyvinkää.

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A naturalized Finn and businessman cannot open a bank account at the only bank of Pertunmaa

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Pertunmaa is a small town of 1,800 inhabitants 18km off Highway 5 that takes you to Mikkeli. The owner of Pertunmaan Pizzeria, which opened its doors this month, has had trouble opening a bank account for his business at the only bank of the town. 

According to the owner, Rasoul Khorram, who has lived in Finland for six years and is a naturalized Finn, was told by the Osuuspankki savings bank manager Jouko Isokuortti turned him down when he wanted to open a bank account.

“He [Isokuortti] said that I couldn’t open a bank account at his bank because I was a customer of Nordea [bank],” he told Migrant Tales. “He said I didn’t speak Finnish well enough and should take more classes [to learn the language better].”

Khorram protested and said that it wouldn’t be practical to open a bank account at the nearest Nordea branch office which is Mikkeli located 57 kilometers away.

“When I told him that I’d like to get in touch with his manager, he ordered me to leave the premises,” he said.

Considering that Khorram is a Finnish citizen, it’s pretty clear that the Osuuspankki manager’s decision to not let him open an account is arbitrary and discriminatory.

While the interview for this story was made in Finnish with Khorram, the fact that he is a naturalized Finn should be sufficient proof that he can speak the Finnish language.

Pitäjänuutiset, the local newspaper that is read in Pertunmaa and Mäntyharju, wrote a story on the problem.

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Migrant Tales (December 27, 2011): Immigration laws reveal what kind of society we are

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Migrant Tales insight: This opinion piece was published exactly five years ago. Check out what we wrote back then and how immigration law in Finland have tightened. If immigration laws reveal what kind of society we are, what do our immigration laws reveal about ourselves?

Last year, 32,476 asylum seekers came to Finland. While many of us received them with open arms, that welcome eventually turned into suspicion and a sinister wish that they’d leave our country as fast as possible.  

The attitude of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s government, after he offered asylum seekers his home in September of last year, not only exposes hypocrisy but reveals moral cowardice in the face of a challenge. 
________________________

Tell me what your immigration laws are and I will tell you what kind of society you live in. Show me how those laws defend minorities and encourage cultural diversity and I will show you hypocrisy.

There is a saying that a person’s true character is not exposed during good times but when there is great adversity.

The global financial meltdown of markets in September 2008 and the euro financial crisis today is testing our “good will” to breaking point.

Far-right, populist and even right-wing conservative groups in countries like the U.S. have succeeded in making  racism sound fair, according to Colorlines.*

There are worse examples of how the spirit of the laws and that of deeds show how our societies are flirting and have succumbed in some cases to the ways of despotism.

A case in point is Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County in Arizona, who got his wings clipped after the Obama Administration’s Department of Homeland Security stripped him of several federal tools for immigration enforcement, according to Police Patrol. *

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A letter of apology for the disgraceful treatment of asylum seekers in Finland by the government

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Dear Asylum Seeker, 

The cartoon below by Ville Ranta could apply to Europe as well. Instead of having politicians like Perussuomalaiset* Defense Minister Jussi Niinistö, Prime Minister Juha Sipilä and other government ministers stating that “you can’t come in because there’s no room for you,” it’s our hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy that has been exposed to the tee. 

Even if some may curse your present, I welcome it. Thanks to you, the over million asylum seekers that came to Europe in 2015, you have exposed our hypocrisy and our exceptionalism.

Aminkeng A. Alemanji wrote in his doctoral dissertation a very good description of how our exceptionalism works:

“The imperfection of the other is used to establish and maintain the hierarchies that put the dominant group [white Finns and Europeans] at the top and the Other at the bottom. [T.] Coates [2015, 105] reminds us that “a mountain is not a mountain if there is nothing below”, and in Finland it is the Other as a result of his/her imperfection that is below – the valley necessary for the mountain [the dominant group] to be a mountain.”

This is an old cartoon from last year but still topical. See the original posting here.

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Is Christmas a time of joy and hatred towards Muslims?

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An asylum seeker in Finland sent Migrnat Tales this picture at a bus stop in Mikkeli, located about 230km north of Helsinki. Finland is gearing up for the Christmas spirit as some racists post posters full of hatred towards Muslims. We apologize to our Muslim friends for posting such a horrible poster. 

The question about this poster is pretty simple: How come a person can easily place such a poster at a bus stop? Why didn’t they stop such a person? Why didn’t they tear down such a poster?

The people who posted this poster below are the same ones who will tell you with a poker smile that there’s no racism in Finland. They justify their hatred by believing in ethnic fairy tales.

Just taking down these types of posters in silence isn’t enough. Politicians, as well as other civil leaders and the general public, should go public and condemn such racist and Islamophobic diatribe.

Remember when PM Juha Sipilä offered his home in Finland to asylum seekers?

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In September 2015, Prime Minister Juha Sipilä offered his home in Kempele to asylum seekers. Even so, the tone and position of the prime minister and the government changed by December when Sipilä said that he couldn’t offer his home to asylum seekers any longer because his hometown in northern Finland wasn’t safe for refugees.

Yes, you read right: The prime minister admits that his small town in northern Finland isn’t safe for asylum seekers. If Kempele isn’t safe for refugees, it isn’t safe for any visible migrant and minority.

It’s incredible that a prime minister admits that he cannot guarantee the safety of people in this country and, worse, does nothing to address such a problem.

The sequence of events in fall-winter 2015 tell it all: kind words by Sipilä to asylum seekers coming to Finland; a rape takes place in Kempele at the end of November, one suspect, who is an asylum seeker, is detained; Kempele residents come out like a lynching party to protest against the asylum reception center in the town, which moves to an undisclosed location.

Read story and watch video here.

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