Category: Enrique Tessieri

19-year-old detained asylum seeker in Tampere “is in good spirits” despite situation

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The person who represents the nineteen-year-old asylum seeker from Iraq thanks all the people who wrote words of encouragement to him during the past days. “He is in good spirits thanks to the emails but angry at the same time,” the representative told Migrant Tales by phone. “He doesn’t understand why he’s locked up [since Friday, December 29] since he’s no criminal.”

The young Iraqi asylum seeker’s case still hinges on a decision from the supreme administrative court.

The asylum seeker’s cell at the Tampere police station.

“We hope to get an answer on Tuesday about [supreme administrative] court’s decision,” said the representative. “They [the police]  haven’t said where they’ll transfer him next if to Metsäkä, Joutseno or another immigration detention center [like Lappeenranta]. They said that it all depends on where there’s space.”

The Iraqi asylum seeker, who converted to Christianity, has received three email death threats from Iraq while in detention.

Migrant Tales will continue to update this story. 

If you want to send the asylum seeker words of encouragement or want to wish him well, send your messages through [email protected] (not the asylum seeker’s email).

 

 

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Finnish identity isn’t a monolithic slab held together by power, privilege, prejudice, and bigotry

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The biggest challenge facing our culturally and ethnically (non-white) community this century is the narrow definition of who we are.  As long as our definition excludes others,  all efforts at “integrating” newcomers and ensuring that they become members of society will fail. The aims of our schools to teach children of foreign parents to become active citizens will fail, too.

Our non-white community will help Finland one day to understand that we’re not monolithic slabs of identity held together by our power, privilege, prejudice, and bigotry. Our Finnish identity, which lives inside all of us, can manifest itself in many ways that deviate from the narrow definition. 

 

 

Another Christian asylum seeker faces deportation from Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales received a phone call today about a young nineteen-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker who was apprehended by the police in Tampere and locked up in a cell awaiting possible deportation. The police offered him two options: Either return to Iraq “voluntarily” or by force. He refused to sign either document.

The Iraqi asylum seeker, who has only two rejections for asylum, is still waiting for a decision by the supreme administrative court.

                                   Another familiar view from a police cell, another sad case of an asylum seeker possibly facing deportation in Finland.

“This is what we are all wondering about,” said a friend, who has a power of attorney to represent the asylum seeker. “How can they deport him if the supreme [administrative] court hasn’t passed sentence on his second rejection?”

Like so many asylum seekers that are facing deportation to “safe” Iraq, he too has experienced near-constant uncertainty for about two years, when he came to Finland as a minor.

“He is a good person who cares for others and he does a lot of voluntary work for the church,” said his friend. “He has converted to Christianity and is really scared about what will happen to him if he’s sent forcibly back to Iraq. He wants to stay in Finland and be a part of this society.”

Migrant Tales will follow this story and we hope that his fate will be similar to another young Iraqi asylum seeker who was detained for 32 days in Lappeenranta but was freed on November 23.

If you want to send the asylum seeker words of encouragement or want to wish him well, send your messages through [email protected] (not the asylum seeker’s email).

The city of Kaajani, Finland, should do more to make migrants feel safe and welcome

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Kaajani is a city of 37,304 people located 560 kilometers north of Helsinki. An African resident whom Migrant Tales spoke to said that she doesn’t feel safe walking alone at certain times of the day in Kajaani. 

“Kajaani is not only a boring city, but it’s not friendly to foreigners,” she said. “Nobody has attacked me, but it’s the looks I get that make me feel unwelcome. When I get a chance, I’d like to move to Vantaa, Espoo or Helsinki because there are more foreigners there.”

You don’t too much about Kajaani. IN 2013, Migrant Tales reported an attack against a black man by a foreigner.

“The mean looks usually come from older people but young people, women, and men, make me feel uncomfortable when they stare or look at you,” she continued. “It’s hard to describe the looks they give. They aren’t friendly.”

The African resident said that all of the migrants she spoke to mention the same thing that Kajaani isn’t a friendly place for foreigners.

Taking into account the #metoo campaign that has empowered women to call out men who sexually harass them, it is surprising that there isn’t a similar campaign against racist harassment.

Politicians and city officials in Kaajani should do much more to help migrants and minorities feel safe in the city.

 

Exposing white Finnish privilege #46: Teuvo Hakkarainen = white racism and sexism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

 Disgraced Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Teuvo Hakkarainen, an Islamophobic politician convicted of ethnic agitation, got off with a light slap on the hand from the PS for forcing a fellow MP to kiss him while drunk. But that’s not all. We now know that Hakkarainen grabbed another woman MP by the hair a year ago while drunk. 

The hair-pulling incident with Christian Democrat MP Päivi Räsänen was kept under wraps and apparently only known to a few like the speaker of parliament Maria Lohela and Sampo Terho, the former PS parliamentary group leader.

Another former Social Democrat MP, Mikael Junger, told the media this week that Hakkarainen had tried to kiss him without his consent at a party.

How is it possible that a white MP can get away with such aggressive behavior that includes drunkenness and sexual harassment in parliament?

Imagine in London if an MP would have acted like Hakkarainen at the House of Commons? Imagine if a Muslim had done what Hakkarainen did in public?Imagine what kind of a lynching we’d see on social media and in print media?

 

Read the full story here.

White Finnish privilege #46

What happened Thursday and the action that the PS took to reprimand Hakkarainen speak volumes about who has privilege in this country.

Continue reading “Exposing white Finnish privilege #46: Teuvo Hakkarainen = white racism and sexism”

Finland’s Perussuomalaiset party and its disdain for #metoo and our institutions

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Racism and Islamophobia are nothing more than pigheaded ignorance. 

What do you do if an Islamophobic MP called Teuvo Hakkarainen gets so drunk in parliament that he picks a fight with other MPs from the rival Blue Reform party by throwing bottles at their meeting? What about if that same MP, convicted for hate speech, grabs a fellow woman MP and forces her to kiss him? 

All of this happened on Thursday.

What about if an aid for the PS got so drunk the same day at a Christmas party in parliament that he was carried out and taken to a hospital in an ambulance?

 

Teuvo Hakkarainen on his first day in parliament in 2011.

What about if the leader of the PS, Jussi Halla-aho, believes that exposing this type of inappropriate behavior is synonymous with “undermining trust” between politicians and the media?

Continue reading “Finland’s Perussuomalaiset party and its disdain for #metoo and our institutions”

Mike Hofman: Media censorship in Finland during the Cold War

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The thesis below published in 2014 by Mike Hofman. It is a comprehensive report on how censorship and self-censorship happened in Finland during the Cold War. It is surprising how Finland has sidestepped this issue and thrown it in the dustbin of history. 

As the old saying states, if we don’t know or deny our history are condemned to repeat it.

Even during the height of the Cold War, when media censorship and self-censorship were endemic in Finland, I never heard of the police searching a home of a reporter without a court order as happened Sunday,  according to  YLE News.

Read below Hofman’s thesis (in Dutch) and my interview in English.

Read full thesis (in Dutch) and a synopsis in English here.

Below is the interview in English that Mike Hofman had with me. There is only one correction in the interview. I worked for Bridge News, not British News.

 

Continue reading “Mike Hofman: Media censorship in Finland during the Cold War”

Finland’s standing in global press freedom ranking likely to suffer another downgrade

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Finland’s standing in global press freedom rankings will take another blow this year after the police carried out without a court order a Helsingin Sanomat reporter Laura Halminen’s personal and company phones, computer and iPad, and a large number of USB flash drives, reports YLE News. The search was carried out after Finland’s biggest daily published leaked classified documents from the secretive Defense Forces’ Intelligence Research Center. 

Writes YLE News: “During the search, which was carried out without a court order, police seized Halminen’s personal phone, her company phone, her personal computer, and iPad, as well as a large number of USB flash drives. Police also reportedly searched through her bookshelves and kitchen ventilation, but did not search her children’s room.”

 Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom ranking list.

 

Halminen was obliged to destroy the hard drive of her computer to protect her source(s).

“By destroying the device,” she was quoted as saying in YLE News,  “I wanted to ensure the confidentiality of my sources as well as possible.”

Continue reading “Finland’s standing in global press freedom ranking likely to suffer another downgrade”

Finland’s lost decade flirting with racism, fascism and the Perussuomalaiset party

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Sampo Terho, minister culture, sport and European affairs, was elected on Saturday to chair Blue Reform, a Lilliputian party that split from the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* after their plush ministerial jobs were on the line after Jussi Halla-aho was elected PS chairperson in June. 

Even if the PS imploded into two factions, the Blue Reform party continues in government despite its roughly 1% backing in the latest polls.

Terho admitted Saturday that the new party’s aim is a long and challenging one. He said that the final goal is to become the biggest party in Finland.

The new chairman of Blue Reform can fantasize about the future. The PS’ opportunity came in the 2011 and 2015 parliamentary elections but was dashed by power struggles and infighting.

Finland has paid a high price to learn today that parties like the PS and Blue Reform are a deception because the only thing they like to do is offer simplistic solutions to complex issues, scapegoat and never offer effective solutions.

The lies and the fantasies coming out of Blue Reform appear never-ending. Terho said that his party helped salvage Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s government and thereby ensured that the country’s anti-EU stance and anti-immigration policy would continue.

“Finland has a more sensible immigration policy [now] where the economic burden of granting residence permits on humanitarian grounds, uncontrolled immigration and security risks are checked,” he said, adding that one of the government’s accomplishments, thanks to Blue Reform, is putting an end to “asylum tourism.”

Fact check: It is questionable whether there was any economic burden of Finland for granting residence permits on humanitarian grounds. The Finnish Immigration Service’s numbers speak for themselves: 2016 (50 cases); 2015 (6); 2014 (4); 2013 (11); 2012 (112); 2011 (143); and 2010 (654). 

Exaggerating and feeding fake news to the public is nothing new by politicians like Terho, who loathes cultural diversity. He also wants through the Association of Finnish Culture and Identity (Suomalaisuuden liitto) for Finland to remain white and ensure our history is thoroughly whitewashed.

Continue reading “Finland’s lost decade flirting with racism, fascism and the Perussuomalaiset party”

Exposing white Finnish privilege #45: Do blondes have more fun?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

In the 1960s, there was a brand that dyed your hair blonde and asked if blondes have more fun? 

Considering all the sexual harassment charges going on these days that have exposed a pressing social issue, being blonde could be hell for a woman.

Sexist Lady Clairol alleges that blondes have more fun.

In Finland in 2017, blonde, blue-eyed women are used in ads to personify racial purity. One Islamophobe, who indulges in racism and bigotry, Laura Huhtasaari, embodies white Finland to the point of ad nauseam.

Why is she obnoxious?

Apart from her racism, whiteness for Huhtasaari is all about power and privilege. Her image and persona constantly remind us which ethnic group calls the shots in this country.

The ideal blonde in Finland appears in a Finnair ad.

Continue reading “Exposing white Finnish privilege #45: Do blondes have more fun?”