Do we need to know the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP’s track record and what he has said about asylum seekers, Muslims, people of color, and other minorities in the past? His tirade against asylum seekers was so racist that the Left Alliance bloc threatened to leave the meeting if Vallin didn’t stop talking.
Vallin, an avid Donald Trump follower who boasts about how little taxes he pays in Finland because his money is in Estonia, likes to also take pictures of day-care children and women in Muslim attire and publish them without permission on social media.
There is an old saying that goes something like this: I was a liberal in youth so I would not be a fascist in old age.
What motivates a politician to twist and exaggerate facts to stigmatize migrants? National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) MP Heikki Vestman’s speech in parliament Wednesday is a prime example of how some politicians spread Islamophobia to attract attention and gain power.
His unsubstantiated talking points motivated me to write an email to him, which he has not yet responded to.
Moreover, the MP uses code to tell us what groups he is targetting. The term “asylum seeker” usually means Muslim.
“When I heard your speech and rationale Wednesday (20 October), I wondered how a young, apparently intelligent person could house such opinionated and unsubstantiated claims about migrants. If you are honest, would you want to [live and] grow up in a country where this type of discourse is ongoing by politicians seeking power and attention? Read some history and check out how the Finns were labeled in Sweden during the 1960s and 1970s.
Does the phrase “en finne igen” ring a bell?
After North America, the greatest number of Finnish immigrants, or about half a million people, moved to Sweden. In the 1960s and 1970s, Finns had a terrible reputation in the neighboring country. Whenever a crime occurred, Swedes usually responded, “it must be a Finn,” en finne igen.
Here is a question to Vestman: Why are you picking and bullying vulnerable groups of people who cannot defend themselves from your attacks?
National Coalition Party anti-immigration MP Heikki Vestman. Source: Kokoomus
Below are some unsubstantiated claims (that I translated and paraphrased) from Vestman’s speech. He was against loosening family reunification guidelines because the minors, whom he sadly referred to as “anchor babies,” could become a national security threat.
Vestman should know that having a family is a human right.
Islamophobia and other forms of racism are for some politicians their gateway to power and infamy.
Watching part of the firey debate Wednesday in parliament that led to a vote of confidence for the government, one wonders what some politicians, especially with the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party, have in their heads.
The saddest matter was the bullying and false claims about migrants, nothing more than storms in teacups.
Those politicians and parties who only think beyond their noses are doomed to hitting a wall.
They are heading towards such a fate because they believe that Islamophobic and other racist soundbites will help them to have and retain power and influence.
After launching an aggressive campaign and burning up a lot of money in themunicipal elections of June, the PS came in fourth place despite some polls, which showed it to come out on top.
The result was a huge disappointment and the party gasped for air.
If there is a crack line in the PS, their disappointing result in the municipal election is an indication that the public is growing weary of their broken-record scapegoat-migrant approach.
It has been a bad week for Helsinki University with Helsingin Sanomat uncovering an alleged discrimination case by the faculty of theology. The incident comes after the university’s department of geography students dressed up like colonizers of a popular board game, Afrikan tähti (Star of Africa).
The Helsinki University geography department gave Tuesday a public apology concerning the incident.
Surprisingly, Jasmine Fantaa’s Instagram post, which was responsible for the incident of the geography students to go viral, was taken down and could not be accessed Wednesday.
The second discrimination case alleges that theology students of Islam with Finnish surnames were picked to teach at a school over students that did not have Finnish-sounding names.
Giving a Nazi salute at the notorious Dachau concentration camp not only shows tremendous ignorance but is a slap in the face to all the victims of Hitler’s racial policies. According to The Nomad Today, a Spanish ex-pat online newsletter, two Finnish tourists who visited the camp gave a Nazi salute.
Writes The Nomad Today: “The visitors from Finland, men aged 50 and 52 respectively, took photographs of each other at the camp near Munich…All three have been banned from the Dachau site for life, and the authorities are to press charges.”
The publication did not specify what charges were going to be brought against the two Finns.
The Dachau concentration camp opened in 1933 near Munich and was intended to hold political prisoners. Apart from forced labor, it eventually imprisoned Jews, Romani, Germans, and Austrians sentenced as criminals.
The camp was known for its treatment of its inmates that included ill-treatment, flogging, standing cells, and hangings.
James Baldwin (1924-87) is one of the greatest and most insightful writers, essayists, and activists of black USAmerica. With the help of his words, we are capable of seeing the beast that has oppressed and tormented the black.
James Baldwin
His Insights offer as well a glimpse at our monster.
There has been a lot of debate about what is Finnishness and who can claim it.
Writes Eddie S. Glaude Jr. in his biography of Baldwin (Begin Again) that “No matter what (US)America said about him as a black person, Baldwin argued, he had the last word about who he was as a human being and as a black man.”
One’s identity is a personal matter. Those that impose identity labels on you are using their power and privilege to exclude you.
“…the white man’s motive (to retain power and superiority) was the protection of his identity; the black man was motivated by the need to establish an identity.”
The latter quote speaks volumes about the plight of second-generation Finns.
The Perussuomalaiset (PS) are known to make a lot of promises to their voters and many of these are snow jobs.
Tightening Finnish immigration policy will be challenging because it is already quite strict.
Purra has said that for her to form a government with another party, the main requirement would be tightening “significantly” immigration policy.
Even if her predecessor, Jussi Halla-aho, offers his voters anti-immigration pipedreams, it is highly improbable that his aim for Finland is to ditch its international commitments like the Geneva Refugee Convention, the EU, and UN Convention of Human Rights is far-fetched.
Even if the PS’ aims of halting asylum seekers, leave the EU, and give social inequality a thumbs up are improbable, we should never underestimate and leave their hateful words to get away with the accomplice of silence. Where are those journalists and editorials asking the PS some hard questions?
Purra plays the same game as Halla-aho. She wants to give an image of a tough and heartless politician obsessed with her ethnonationslist white worldview.
It’s been a week full of mistakes for the police. Firstly, the police admitted a big mistake in their sexual crime statistics by tabulating a single suspect of assaulting his wife 141 times. Each assault was recorded as a single person. The latest bungle came when the Helsinki police admitted it failed to correctly assess the security threat at by the Elokapina climate demonstration, according to Yle News.
In the latest fumble, the police overreacted to the presence of demonstrators and escorted President Sauli Niinistö, ministers, and other officials to exit the building through alternative routes.
Faces turned red when President Ninnistö was quoted as saying in Helsingin Sanomat that he was not directed to follow a different exit from the government palace.
“I was not shown another exit than the one that I have always used,” he said. “I never use the main door [to enter the building].”
I got to know Amir* in 2016 when he was living in the Kolari asylum refugee center. Thanks to his help and those of others, the asylum seekers of the reception center organized a demonstration that ended with the deputy manager, Jari Sillantie, getting sacked.
Amir, an Iraqi, came to Finland in 2015 like so many of his countrymen.
He writes:
I’m sorry I didn’t send you a long time ago; I spent all these years in poor condition and full of stress.
I’m tired and have suffered a lot from 2015 to 2021; psychological pressure and my nerves tight. There is no such thing as mercy or humanity [here]. We have suffered a lot of stress and other things. We cried so much that we got sick to the point where we could never sleep normally again.
Asylum seekers demonstratingat the Kolari asylum reception center in May 2016.
We have been interviewed by the authorities several times and have received rejections on asylum for trivial reasons. The reason is that they don’t want to help us. If they wanted to, they would do so. Once in an interview, my wife threw herself on the floor and urinated on herself. There was no mercy or humanity despite what happened.
I have many problems in Iraq, and I even submitted papers to the authorities proving this. I was the reason why they killed two people who were with me. My friends accused me of being part of the group that killed my friends, but they were wrong. They still don’t believe me.
We had a lot of problems when I lived with my wife in Iraq. My wife’s brother got injured in a demonstration, and they burned down his house.
An asylum seeker demonstrating in Kolari in May 2016.
We started to go to a church in Finland for a while because they gave us some food and aid. My children liked going there, but something unexpected happened. One day, when we were returning from the church, another brother of my wife called. My son answered the phone, and a big problem emerged when my father-in-law, a Muslim, overheard the conversation that we had gone to church.
My father was a Christian, and I had many problems because of this in Iraq. When my father-in-law overheard us, he started to curse and curse until he began threatening us. He stated that he’d kill his daghter and me because I deceived his daughter to change religion. The threats did not stop. He started to spread them in Iraq, vowing to kills us.
All the suffering my wife has endured has caused her to commit suicide more than once. I have visited many psychiatrists and taken a lot of medicine. My wife, even my little son, went to see a psychiatrist.
We don’t have anyone here or in Iraq who would care for us. And on top of this, the police are now telling us to leave and go back to Iraq. They have threatened to cut off all financial aid, housing, everything. I asked them where we were supposed to go with three young children.
I have thought many times that I have wasted seven years of my life in Finland. I was given an ultimatum together with my wife’s children to go back to Iraq. They gave me 30 days to decide. Next week I’ll be expelled from the refugee center, and I don’t know what will happen to us after that.
*Amir is an assumed name used to protect his identity because he is an asylumseeker. The story was lightly edited.
