Migrant Tales has heard that a Moroccan national has allegedly attempted suicide at the Joutseno immigration removal canter of eastern Finland, according to a source who spoke on condition of anonymity. Two sources speak of three suicide attempts but these are unconfirmed.
It would be good matter if the authorities at the Joutseno immigration removal center make public how many have died while attempting suicide and if the latest case was successful.
UPDATE from another source at 1.33am:
A twenty-one-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker, who was miraculously saved from deportation twice, told about his last ordeal. He remembers a woman police office in Mikkeli who took his lighter and said she would return it in Baghdad.
The police officer took the asylum seeker’s lighter when they were smoking together. He offered her his lighter because the police officer din’t have a light.
“She kept the lighter and said that she’d give it back in Baghdad,” he said, confirming that she still hasn’t returned the lighter to him.
Is this the way the Finnish police acts with asylum seekers who are in shock and worried about their deportation?
A couple traveled to Berlin on a Finnair flight Thursday. The passenger that witnessed a forced deportation on the flight wrote about it on her Facebook wall. Helsinki police chief inspector, Liisa Lintuluoto, denied in MTV3 that anything of the sort had happened on the flight.
Writes the woman who saw the asylum seeker on the flight:
“On Fnnair flight AY1433 from Helsinki to Berlin there was a person who was being deported. There were two men sitting beside the man in the last row of the plane. His hands were bound with a cable tie. The man had blood coming from a wound in his head that was treated in a rudimentary manner. The man was shaking and looked into my eyes and said, ‘Please help me!’ After this, his mouth was taped and his head was placed between the knees, which was how he was detained. The police who accompanied him made it impossible to communicate with the person, who was suffering greatly.
Every person is entitled to being treated in a respectful manner with his human rights irrespective of the situation.
I will never forget that person’s suffering eyes and his pleas for help.”
Migrant Tales knows one of the persons who saw what happened on the Finnair flight to Berlin.
Who do I believe?
The denials of the police in MTV3 are revealing. It’s what they don’t say that incriminates them.
Another culprit is Finnair. It is the national carrier of a country that is criticized by Amnesty International for its human rights violations of asylum seekers.
I will boycott Finnair, and I hope you do the same.
#boycottfinnair!
A supreme administrative court order today stopped Monday’s deportation of an Iraqi asylum seeker in detention cell 208 (detained last year in cell 406). It was in November when the twenty-one-year-old asylum seeker, after being held for 32 days, was released under the same circumstances.
At 4:30 pm sharp a guard at the Joutseno* immigration removal center told him that he’d released shortly.
The joy was evident in the asylum seeker’s voice as he vowed to never return to the immigration removal center.
“I’ll be released again,” he said. “I hope I’ll never have to see this place again.”
* The asylum seeker who was locked up in this cell thought he was in Lappeenranta but in fact he was at the Joutseno immigration removal center located 20km away.
Below are two pictures were taken of a window from the immigration removal center in the southeastern Finnish town Joutseno*. The photo on the left was taken on Thursday and the one on the right in November.
Think about it. An asylum seeker travels hell and high water to come to a country in Finland. The trip is also costly. What are the last images if you get deported? A cell window and an airport.
Amnesty International published today its 2017/2018 report, and it doesn’t write pretty things about how Finland treats asylum seekers.
It states:
“Despite international NGOs raising concern, Finland continued to forcibly return asylum- seekers whose applications were rejected to Afghanistan.”
Forced deportations and the general situation of asylum seekers and migrants in Finland shows how much we have shut off empathy for coldness.
There is today in Finland a moral crisis that also inflicts the rest of Europe.
How can we claim to be a nation that loves freedom and upholds human rights if we deny others such rights?
* The asylum seeker who was locked up in this cell thought he was in Lappeenranta but in fact he was at the Joutseno immigration removal center located 20km away.
Saboora* is a young Iraqi asylum seeker who turns to art to write about her long and painful journey from the Middle East to Finland. In the painting below, which she calls “The moon and me,” is about an asylum seeker, a leafless tree, and the moon.
Saboora doesn’t deny that the person in the painting could be her.
“Since I have no-one to talk to and nobody understands what I want to say,” she said, “the only one I can talk to is the moon.”
*Saboora’s real name has been changed because she is an asylum seeker.
See also:
The story of two asylum seekers in Finland: Aerzo’s and Saboora’s three drawings
Migrant Tales understands that a Moroccan asylum seeker attempted to take his life at the Joutseno* immigration removal center. The man was doing a one-year sentence of which he had served eight months.
In an earlier story, we said incorrectly that the asylum seeker had taken his life. He is allegedly in the hospital recovering.
“He was taken to the hospital Wednesday night after he hanged himself in his cell,” said the source. “He is supposed to be deported [back to his home country].”
* The asylum seeker who was locked up in this cell thought he was in Lappeenranta but in fact he was at the Joutseno immigration removal center located 20km away.
The asylum seeker in detention cell 406, who is a twenty-one-year-old Iraqi, said that he’d be deported on Monday, February 26 from Finland.
“The same woman police officer who said she was going to fly with me to Iraq in October, said that I would be flown back on Monday,” he said by phone. “The woman police told me this when we were both smoking [this morning].”
The asylum seeker couldn’t confirm if the deporation would take place from Lappeenranta airport.
You can read his past stories below:
We heard the sad news about the twenty-one-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker who was detained by the police Tuesday in Mikkeli, Finland.
Imagine going through the same ordeal as last year, when he was detained in Mikkeli on October 23-27 and then sent to Lappeenranta and freed 32 days later on November 23.
“They put me in a second cell [in Mikkeli] which is the same cell I was in |back in October],” he told by phone. “I’ll either be sent to Lappeenranta or Joutseno [immigration detention center].”
In a police detention, it is a bad sign for the asylum seeker if they take his clothes and belongings with him.
“I don’t have many belongings because I’ve moved around so much,” he said.
The asylum seeker said that he was taken to the same cell at the Mikkeli police station. Photo by asylum seeker.If you want to write to the asylum seeker you can send your messages to [email protected] or [email protected]
You can read his past stories below:
“Asylum seeker in detention cell 406,” who was detained in Lappeenranta for 32 days last year was detained by the police Tuesday morning at around 10 am at the Suonsaari asylum reception center, located about 10km from the city of Mikkeli. Migrant Tales understands that the administrative court rejected his appeal for asylum.
“I will go to a court, and they will decide if they deport me or not,” he said on the phone. “Then they will send me back to Lappeenranta.”
The twenty-one-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker was freed from detention on November 23.
“I don’t know what to say because I’m so happy because I’m happy to be free again,” he said back then on being released. “I don’t have any words to describe what I’m feeling. It’s a bit confusing.”
Matters look bleak, but we can’t lose hope.
Migrant Tales will keep you up to date about the asylum seeker’s fate.