Author: Migrant Tales

Silence can be very revealing. It’s not what you say but what you do not say. Your inaction and silence in the face of racism, specifically against institutional racism, speaks volumes.

This fact is one of the biggest challenges to Finland during this century.

Believe it or not, some principles and teachers working and representing culturally diverse learning institutions don’t believe in cultural sensitivity. They are the fake know-it-alls on racism. They don’t need to update their racist views because they are exceptional people.

EU Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović expressed concern about the human rights of asylum seekers after parliament amended Section 16 of the Border Guard Act. The amendment allows Finland, in emergency cases, to close the border and severely restrict the rights of asylum seekers to seek refuge. 

I still don’t understand how Finland can close all the border crossings and keep one open: the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport. How are refugees supposed to get to the airport? By plane?

Another big question looming over the law is what would trigger such a draconian measure and under what circumstances. How can border guards ensure that the rights of vulnerable people seeking refuge aren’t breached?

See the full letter here.

Writes Mijatović to Finland’s Minister of Interior Krista Mikkonen: “I also want to highlight the situation of people who may need to flee the Russian Federation through the Finnish border, including those who might be persecuted on grounds related to their opposition to the war in Ukraine, their sexual orientation or gender identity, their work on human rights or other grounds. It is crucial that specific attention is paid to the needs of this group, which could be particularly affected by the proposed measures.”

US Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri announced that he would vote against Finland’s and Sweden’s membership in Nato. Finnish Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Jani Mäkelä pleaded with him to change his mind. Good luck.

The January 6 hearing last week made a horse’s ass of Hawley, one of former President Donal Trump’s avid followers who believes that the Democrats stole the election. On that shameful day, he raised his fist in solidarity with the mob that Trump had sent to the Capitol on January 6.

Later, he was videotaped running away from the mob that had stormed the Capitol, which he had incited.

An example of the same cowardice and political opportunism that is parroted near-constantly by Makelä and the PS.

How can you respect a politician and party that constantly bullies vulnerable people like asylum seekers for political profit?

You can’t.

We could look at the video in several ways. One way is that Holley is not running away from a mob in Washington but from Finns and Swedes.

Hungary’s strongman denounced in a speech Saturday “mixed race” nations. While there was outrage in Europe about his racist comment, there was silence from some political circles like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, which are Orbán’s admirers.

He said in Romania over the weekend that migration had split Europe and that Europeans who mix with non-Europeans “are no longer nations: they are nothing more than a conglomeration of peoples.” He added: “In the Carpathian Basin [region shared by Romania and Hungary], we are not mixed race. We are willing to mix with one another, but we do not want to become mixed race.”

When analyzing Finland’s media on reporting about Orbán’s claim, one important matter is what was left out of the story.

Although I have published several posts about racism in Finland, two of them published in 2008 and 2014 are still valid. After living over 40 years in Finland and having a Finnish mother, racism is a problem that not only hinders the country from finding its potential but retards and stunts careers.

Some of us asked in the early 1980s, when we were newcomers, if there was racism in Finland and who its victims were. We usually concluded that the darker the skin, the more racism you’d suffer in Finland.

That is true today, and there are many studies to prove it.

Matters have moved slowly in Finland, and the Finnish media is giving more voices to migrants and minorities on this shameful topic.

While dailies like Helsingin Sanomat write stories about this social ill in Finland, they are still too few. Despite some improvement, I wonder why they write so few editorials on why discrimination continues to be a big problem in the labor market.

Thanks to a Facebook page and a story in Helsingin Sanomat, I became on Monday, a member of a group called “Do I look Finnish?” Nothing wrong with that, but if the page attempts to reinforce stereotypes about Finns, then something is rotten in Denmark.

Understanding how far-right groups like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, Suomen Sisu, and too many politicians from parties like the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) attempt to define a Finn in narrow terms by excluding minorities, such a Facebook page should get the thumbs down. In other words, it is only a place where some people who have lost their Finnish culture after many generations as USAmericans cling to their last hope: whiteness.

My debut in the group started with this comment:

A sensible question, no?

The rise of hostile populism and white supremacy politics in the US and Europe is no coincidence. But a reminder of how little historical psychoanalysis we have done to overcome our bigotry, racism, and hostility towards people who are different from us.

While some may disregard these facts as something minor or untrue, they will lead us to that same dark place in our histories drenched in the blood of genocide, exclusion, exploitation, and neoslavery.

Europeans brought slavery to the United States and the New World, thus relegating them into a moral crisis that would never set them free but forced them to whitewash and try to forget their history.