Category: Enrique Tessieri

The Finnish Immigration Service asks if you mind being deported

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) has sent at least to students with B residence permits the following letter with the question: Does the person concerned object to being forced to leave the country and being prohibited from entering the country?

You may ask why such a question has been sent.

Migrant Tales to one such student with a B residence permit about the question sent by Migri.

“I was offended,” the person said. “From having one of the friendliest immigration services it has slumped to the same level as Estonia and Germany.”

“So what was my answer,” the person continued. “Of course I object being deported. One human right that I have is freedom of movement.”

Here is the question sent by Migri to a student with a B residence permit in Finland. “Does the person concerned object to being forced to leave the country and being prohibited from entering the country?” How would you answer? Would you mind being deported from Finland?

The letter may be just another example of Finland’s ever-stricter immigration laws. Should we be surprised considering how much the government of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä has tightened immigration laws.

 

Defining white Finnish privilege #35: Case Sampo Terho and the ministry of (dis)culture

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Why are you so surprised that Perussuomalaiset (PS)* Sampo Terho is Finland’s new minister of culture, sport and European affairs? The Swedish-language HBL expresses dismay and there are many others among us who appear just as awestruck by the appointment. 

Terho, and everything that he represents, are the best example of white Finnish privilege and extreme denial. He is a dangerous example of how official Finland plays down racism and bigotry and its impact on our society.

I’m still amazed by how the Finnish media, politicians and other institutions, who should know better, continue to deny and flirt with fascism, racism, bigotry.

Sampo Terho. Source: perussuomalaiset.fi.

Swedish People’s Party chairwoman Anna-Maja Henriksson of the opposition naturally sees Terho as the wrong person to head the new ministry. Terho has led the charge with other groups as chairman of the Association of Finnish Culture and Identity to undermine the role of the Swedish language in this country.

Swedish is the second official language of Finland.

Continue reading “Defining white Finnish privilege #35: Case Sampo Terho and the ministry of (dis)culture”

Facebook Nuor Dawood: Cracks in the system and signs of Finnish police brutality

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales insight: We publish in our blog community a lot of stories about those “voices whose views and situation are understood poorly and heard faintly by the media, politicians and public.” Some of these voices, on occasion, are of asylum seekers who have been allegedly beaten by the Finnish police.

The case below published in Facebook is one such case but there are others. We not only need proof but but a thorough investigation in to the matter.

One such case that Migrant Tales reported last year was about an asylum seeker who was picked up by the police at the Helsinki Railway Station. He was escorted to the squad car and taken to an abandoned area near Espoo. The asylum seeker claims that the police beat him, took his money, which he had a lot of on him, and his cellphone.

Upon being released and after the incident and hoping to get help from the police, the asylum seeker saw a police car from the distance and waved to stop it. It was his bad luck that in the car were the same two police officers that had beaten, stolen his money and cellphone. He was then taken to the police station and locked up in a cell and released the following day.

The asylum seeker met an interpreter by chance who gave him the name of a lawyer. The lawyer and interpreter went to the police to file a complaint about what had happened to him. The interpreter was allegedly told to keep his nose out of the case because it would mean trouble for him.

Is this story true or not? We don’t know but it raises a lot of questions.

Another story about a beating of an asylum seeker was published in Facebook below. 

See original posting on Facebook here.

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Päivi Nerg is “really offended” by the Evangelical Church of Finland’s stance and activism against deportations

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Permanent secretary of the interior ministry, Päivi Nerg, was quoted as saying in Verkkouutiset that she is “really offended” at the Evangelical Church of Finland for mixing and questioning the country’s asylum policy.

According to the story, Nerg, who was briefly a member of the Christian Democratic Party and considers herself to be “fundamentally a Finnish Lutheran Christian,” said that she asked herself if the reaction by the Evangelical Church of Finland was because it questioned Finland’s justice system.

“I don’t think it is the Church’s role in any way [to mix in what the government does],” she said.

Even if the story didn’t mention any members of the Evangelical Church of Finland, Nerg was referring to a pastor called Marjaana Toiviainen, who has been especially outspoken against the country’s asylum policy and who with other protestors tried to stop the deportation of an Afghan family in early April.

After coming out initially as a sensible public servant stressing calm in the face of over 30,000 asylum seekers that came to Finland in 2015, Nerg has become the cold heart of the country’s draconian asylum policy. She has gone as far as to ask the Evangelical Church and Finns to not help undocumented migrants in sub-freezing weather because “it sends the wrong message.”

“No one is illegal as a human being,” she was quoted as saying in Helsinki Times in January 2017. “However, I wouldn’t want to create a system in Finland that treats those who are here illegally the same way as those who are here legally. It’d be wrong both to those who live here and to those who have been granted a residence permit.”

 

Read the full story (in Finnish) here.

Like many Finnish officials, Nerg doesn’t mind getting tough on asylum seekers and even fear-mongers occasionally by spreading urban tales about immigrants. She recently warned that Finland could have “no-go” zones like in Sweden, according to Jussi Korhonen’s blog.

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Kärkkäinen: A company that believes racism, anti-Semitism and homophobic views sit well with the Finnish consumer and public

Posted on by Migrant Tales

We have to thank our vigilant contributor Ana María Gutiérrez Sorainen for exposing another underhanded trick by Juha Kärkkäinen to slip through the back door his anti-cultural diversity, anti-Semitic and homophobic views in KauppaSuomi, a advertising newspaper to promote and showcase his company’s products.  

It’s not the first time that Kärkkäinen has showed his racist views. In 2014, an appeals court upheld a Ylivieska-Raahe court ethnic agitation ruling Kärkkäinen for publishing anti-Semitic opinion pieces on Magneettimedia, reported YLE. He has published anti-Semitic writings of Adrian Salbuch, Ted Pike, David Duke and others as well as cartoons that bear a resemblance to the former Nazi tabloid, Der Strümer (1923-45).

A racist passage of the opinion piece that claims that white Finns will soon be overtaken by migrants. Source: KauppaSuomi.

The fact that Kärkkäinen got sentenced for ethnic agitation and continues to publish these types of views raises a questions: Does he believe that by spreading racist views will increase his department store’s sales?

In an opinion piece written in KauppaSuomi headlined, “Schools were turned into political brainwashing centers – who’s to blame?” the publication hits cultural diversity at schools by slamming Nordic values like social equality and labeling asylum seekers as rapist criminals. The opinion piece is homo-, transphobic and anti-Semitic as well.

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Nativist nationalist anti-cultural diversity politician Sampo Terho named as Finland’s minister of culture, sport and European affairs

Posted on by Migrant Tales

What kind of message does the appointment of Perussuomalaiset (PS)* parliamentary group leader Sampo Terho to minster of culture, sport and European affairs send? Does it strengthen our Nordic welfare state values or does it drive a wedge between us? Does it expose our denial of racism and bigotry in this country? 

If there is a government that has done great harm to our welfare state and our Nordic values it is without any doubt Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s government. Apart from targeting the most vulnerable sectors of our society like single mothers, the unemployed and marginalized, the government’s inhuman and obsessive policies have targeted asylum seekers, migrants and minorities.

Read the full story (in Finnish) here.

This isn’t a government that has only tightened laws like family reunification and caused the number of undocumented migrants to soar, but has declared war on our ever-growing culturally diverse society as well.

Spearheading this hostility is the PS party, which has built its political campaign on anti-migration and especially anti-Islam rhetoric.

The new minister of culture, Terho, is no common politician but one that has built his political career and worldview on racist ideology that will end up undermining our Nordic welfare state and values.

Apart from being minister of culture, Terho is the chairman of the Association of Finnish Culture and Identity, an association whose main task is to exclude non-white Finns and minorities from being treated as equal members of society.

In 2007, the new minister of culture published a eugenics-spirited essay dividing humans into three racial groups (Negroid, Mongoloid and Caucasian) on the different races of the world and how the white Europeans were going to become a minority in the face of non-European migrants.

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Finland plans to deport another family with four children aged 1 to 6 years to Iraq

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Even if former Finnish President Tarja Halonen (2006-2012) said today that deportations of asylum seekers should be suspended until the authorities  have updated their security information of Afghanistan, Iraq and especially Syria, according to YLE News, there are plans to deport yet another Iraqi family with four children to their home country on Friday, April 28.  

The youngest child of the family is about a year old and the eldest 6 years.

One of the sources that is trying to help this family and who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the family is in danger in Iraq because their mother could face an honor killing for not having the consent of her parents upon getting married.

“The family has two rejections for asylum and they are staying at the asylum reception center in Pori,” the person said. “I wish our government would follow the law and not return women and children back to conflict areas where they are put in harm’s way.”

The Finnish Constitution doesn’t allow minors and adults to be deported to war zones.

Section 9 of the Constitution guarantees:

“The right of foreigners to enter Finland and to remain in the country is regulated by an Act. A foreigner shall not be deported, extradited or returned to another country, if in consequence he or she is in danger of a death sentence, torture or other treatment violating human dignity.”

Three of the four children of the Iraqi family posing in the picture could be deported from Finland next week.

Taking into account the the number of deportations to countries like Iraq will pick up this year, the Finnish parliament approved in December that children can be locked up like common criminals like in the case of the Iraqi family of nine at the Joutsen immigration removal center.

All the Finnish parties except for the Greens, Left Alliance and the Swedish People’s Party voted in favor of the law, according to a statement by Amnesty International.

 

Defining white Finnish privilege #34: Building a political career on privilege and nativist nationalism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Social Democrat MP Satu Taavitsainen found herself in a lot of hot water this week after she published a picture of herself in Instagram wearing a fake Sámi dress. While this is a no-no because minorities like the Sámi may see it as cultural appropriation, an MP like Taavitsainen should know better. 

But she didn’t, and hasn’t.

She claims that the Sámi dress she published a picture of in Instragram was made by a tailor for her mother and wanted to show it off. However, this is not the first time that the MP from Mikkeli has dressed up in Sámi attire. In the 2015 parliamentary elections, she was pictured wearing a four winds Sámi hat, called ?iehgahpir.

That picture above can no longer be found on her website.

While this whole affair raises a lot of question, why did Taavitsainen want to show off to her many Intagram followers her fake, or feikkigáktien, Sámi dress?

What’s wrong with what she did anyway?

If the SDP MP would have taken a little time to study the history of the Sámi and what they think in today’s Finland, she’d understand why it’s advisable not to do what she did. The reaction against what she did is one of many eamples.

Another problem that should be highlighted is not the physical dress per se but the message it sends about a minority like the Sámi.

For one, Taavitsainen, a white Finn, has the privilege and power to be “a Sámi” for a day if she wishes without carrying the burden of history of these people, which they must endure 365 days of the year.

Continue reading “Defining white Finnish privilege #34: Building a political career on privilege and nativist nationalism”

A member of the Solidiers of Odin carried out attack on #cupofteawithme demonstration in Oulu on April 7

Posted on by Migrant Tales

On April 7 at 4:40am the #cupofteawithme demonstration in Oulu was attacked when three unlit petrol bombs were thrown at the tent. One of the suspects, a member of the vigilante group Soldiers of Odin, was detained by the police, according to YLE. The police found as well two sticks of dynamite at the suspect’s home.

The police are investigating the attack on the demonstration as unlawful threat, an act of vandalism, and illegal possession of explosives.

On March 31, the Iraqi demonstrators were forced to move from the Oulu city center to Torinranta, a worse location since there are fewer people and apparently more dangerous and prone to attacks.

The #cupofteawithme demonstration in Oulu started [on March 11] as a show of support to the #righttolife demonstration in Helsinki organized by Afghans, Iraqis and Finns.

Read the full story here.

Helsinki Times: A rebuttal to Ville Tavio

Posted on by Migrant Tales

An op-ed piece published by the Helsinki Times on April 11 by Finns Party (PS) MP Ville Tavio is a good example of why migrants, minorities and sensible Finns should react and be concerned about the type of country some politicians want to steer Finland towards becoming.

Just as the headline of the op-ed piece is problematic, so are many of the arguments that Tavio sets forth. For example, the PS MP sees the movement of asylum seekers to Europe as an economic factor. He claims that Europe is an “attractive” destination for asylum seekers that “lack the necessary skills for employment and the will to adopt local habits and values.”

Read the full rebuttal here.

For one, somebody should tell Tavio that the vast majority of asylum seekers don’t come to Europe. It is only a minority. Most of them settle in countries like Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and others. Moreover, the underlying reason why a minority of these asylum seekers came to Europe was because of war, as well as our values related to social equality and human rights.

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