Category: Enrique Tessieri

Dear Finnish Nightmares, are you for real?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Dear Finnish Nightmares,

When generalizing about how some white Finns may react, why is it that all of your characters are white? There are “other” Finns, too. Do you take them into account? Do you ever fear that generalizing a “model” reaction may reinforce stereotypes and as a result promote a monocultural and over-simplified view of the people that live in this country? One of those stereotypes is that there are no such things as “non-white Finns.”

Enrique Tessieri, editor, Migrant Tales

 

Even if some may consider these cartoons quaint, do they promote stereotypes about white Finns? One of the first effective ways to challenge racism is by challenging stereotypes. Source: Facebook.

 

Throwing water and hurling racist insults at black people is ok if you are a white Finn

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales has followed a story that sadly began in the Helsinki neighborhood of Herttoniemi in May 2016. A white woman threw a bucketful of water at three adults and four children from the second floor and started hurling racist insults. Two of the victims were women from Kenya and another one was a white woman from the United States.

Said the victim, Ruth Waweru.Folabit, in Migrant Tales last year: “When another neighbor told the woman to shut up, she called her an n-word lover. She said that she was a Finn, and therefore, nothing would happen to her [for harassing her in a racist manner and throwing a bucket of water].”

Open-and-shut case, right?

Wrong.

Waweru-Folabit got a letter from the prosecutor almost a year later after the incident:

I will not press charges because the suspected crime, when evaluated as a whole, should be seen as minor considering the harm it caused or the degree of guilt of the suspect that it reveals.

This case, and especially the prosecutor’s decision to not press charges, is a disheartening example of how the system drags its feet and plays down racism in Finland.

If a white woman throws water at somebody and starts insulting people in a racist manner it may suggest a hate crime.

What would have happened if we’d switch roles and a black woman would throw water at a white Finn and start insulting her? Would she be charged and forced to pay compensation for damages?

On May 23, 2015 Ruth Waweru-Folabit posted this message on her Facebook wall. Migrant Tales reposted it with her permission.

Migrant Tales spoke with Waweru-Folabit about the prosecutor’s decision.

“I would have at least expected an apology from the woman and that my wet clothes she’d pay for sending my clothes to the dry cleaners,” she said. “I thought by pressing on with this case it could be a warning to others and that they cannot get away with such things. I just wanted some kind of justice for what happened.”

Continue reading “Throwing water and hurling racist insults at black people is ok if you are a white Finn”

The old and new Cadillac model of Finnish PS racism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Racism is like a Cadillac, they bring out a new model every year.

Malcolm X

If you want to see how racism in Finland is like a Cadillac, check out two Perussuomalaiset (PS)* politicians below. One is of a dying breed and another one of a new “Cadillac” model, Minister of Culture, Sport and European Issues Sampo Terho. 

City councilman, Markus Jukarainen, who was sacked Tuesday from the local PS party of Kuopio represents a dying breed. If you look at Jukarainen’s clothing style below nothing could be picture better the old Cadillac PS politicians: black dress, PS and Finnish flag sicker and the Finnish lion chain hanging conspicuously in front of him.

Jukarainen got sacked from the PS for making inappropriate comments on social media after repeated warnings from the anti-immigration party. Considering that the PS bases in large part its message on racism and Islamophobia, it does look pretty bad in your CV that you got sacked from such a party.

The new Cadillac model of racism in Finland is instead of saying things straight out, you have to fine tune your racism and speak in code.

Terho is a good example as is Jussi Halla-aho, who got sentenced for ethnic agitation in 2012 and breaching the sanctity of religion.

Believe it or not, these type of local politicians exist in Finland. Source: YLE.

A dying PS breed above and a new Cadillac model politician below.

Continue reading “The old and new Cadillac model of Finnish PS racism”

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.

Continue reading “Facebook Nuor Dawood: Cracks in the system and signs of Finnish police brutality”

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.

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

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.

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

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.