Kansainvälinen Mikkeli sai tieto, että kuusi poliisipartioautoja oli saapunut Suosaarenvastaanottokeskukseen hälytysvalmiudella maanantai iltana n 22.15.
Näyttää siltä että poliisit saivat vääränhälytyksen henkilöltä joka kenties halusi tehdä pilaa veronmaksajien kustannuksella.
We have commented that President Donald Trump’s erratic and autocratic style may be a curse on the US but a blessing for Europe since his style may scare away potential voters who don’t want far-right politicians like Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, Frauke Petry, Jussi Halla-aho and others.
The latest news coming out of the White House is a direct attack against the First Amendment by barring the Guardian, New York Times, Politico, CNN and others from a press briefing.
Ever wonder why Trump likes Vladimir Putin? See what the Russian autocrat has done and what Trump is doing to shut press freedom.
If there is a party pooper in this year’s centenary celebrations it’ll be ourselves: the politicians, the urban tales, prejudices, racism and suspicion that has raised its head with ease in Finland as of late.
The names and the parties of these killjoys are well known to us: President Sauli Niinistö, the Jussi Halla-aho crowd of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, ministers like Paula Risikko, Center Party Prime Minister Juha Sipilä, white Social Democrats and socialists, Migri (Finnish Immigration Service), bigoted groups like Suomi Ensin, Suomen Sisu and a long list of others.
Like the United States under Donald Trump and post-Brexit Europe, Finland too has seen the rise of a hostile political force called populism. Like a cancer, it spreads scapegoating migrants and minorities. Populism always fails and ends in disaster because it offers simple unworkable solutions to complex problems. It’s like offering a terminally ill cancer patient aspirin to relieve the pain.
What happens when a government and country starts to believe in its own prejudices? For one, it causes unneeded suffering on people.
Take for instance one of the government’s favorite justification for tightening immigration policy: pull factors like social welfare. But is that the real reason why asylum seekers come to Europe?
Studies have shown that it’s not the main cause. Many asylum seekers come from countries where there is no social welfare and therefore don’t have a clear idea what it is. If social welfare was the main pull factor, why do some migrants go to the United Kingdom, where there is lower social welfare than France which is more generous?
One of the most ignorant and populist claims parroted by some politicians is that asylum seekers should be taken care of in camps near their home countries. Interior Minister Risikko, who should know better, reinforced this misconception when she visited a Suomi Ensi gathering last week.
Continue reading “How racism and suspicion have ruined Finland’s centenary celebrations of 2017”
Hussain Kazemian is from Afghanistan and visited the Iraqi asylum seekers at the Helsinki Railway Square on Tuesday and Wednesday morning. He is from Keuruu. Kazemian shares with the readers of Migrant Tales what he saw at the demonstration, which celebrates today its 12th day.
My observations of the demo on February 22:
Asylum seekers have a tent close to the rail station. Some Finnish people come and bring some food, cloth and other things that refugees need.
They have the possibility to cook and make tea there.
If you go inside of the tent, you will find candles around the main space of the demonstration. There might be an asylum seeker making some demands as well. And those Finns that visit them, most of them women, go there because they have sympathy for them. They ask questions wanting to know why they are there and what is their situation.
But if you look at things from outside the tent ( as I mentioned people drinking tea, cooking and having a snack ), the demo looks like some Midsummer festival or any other festival that may take place in Finland. Most of the refugees talk but do not flirt with the ladies but show respect. The communication is good with some demands made to Migri. The atmosphere is that of refugees laughing, talking casually with the ladies, eating and drinking something…the first impression one might get is that these people don’t have any problems because they look and sound so happy.My suggestion to them is not to cry and complain too much about their situation. But since Finns are a logical people, they should find the right balance of maybe not being too happy and not too sad. Otherwise it may give the wrong impression to Finns.
During the 11 days when the demonstration began, there have been some articles written in Finland about the demo but how much does the demo affect the media in Finland? Are the organizers of the demo able to persuade the international media to write about them or broadcast their voices?
A saying states that if you cannot shock or wake up politicians from their nap in 11 days, you maybe wasting your time.
I believe these asylum seekers are not wasting their time with this demonstration. Some claim it’s soft protesting and demonstration! Wrong. I would do whatever I could if I were a refugee.
Here’s a show of respect and admiration for the Iraqi asylum seekers protesting in cold February in Helsinki against the harsh asylum policies of the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri), which is an extension of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s government.
Nour M Jamal is one of the many Iraqis that have taken part in the demonstrations demanding a change in asylum policy and deportations by the police service.
“We feel disappointed with the authorities even if [Interior Minister Paula] Risikko and the head of Migri [Jaana Vuorio] visited us,” he said. “Both of them didn’t say anything new.”
Jamal said that one of the nice things about the demonstration is the support they have received from the Finns.
“People that pass by have shown their support to us giving us money, clothes and even demonstrating with us,” he said. “We are grateful to them and appreciate their support.”
The picture above shows a large number of demonstrators including children and women.
“To those that claim wrongly that we left our women and children behind,” continued Jamal, “we tell them that they can speak to the women who are with us in the tent.”
Some are asking with manifest unease if this will be the year of the far-right populists like Dutch Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen of France and Frauke Petry of the German Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The first test will be in Holland on March 15 followed by another nail-biter in France on April 23 and May 7.
Wilders doesn’t hide his hatred for Moroccans by calling them in the video below “scum.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3AkiWhvCYs
Emboldened by US President Donald Trump, the far-right in Europe believes that it’s now or never as far as elections are concerned.
But there is a problem: What about if Trump’s chaotic and volatile style of leadership scares voters away in Europe from voting for people like Wilders, Le Pen never mind AfD and possibly in 2018 for Italy’s Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement?
One may rightly ask how is it possible that an Islamophobic politician like Wilders is the favorite to win in March after being sentenced in December for hate speech? How can he be accused of calling Moroccan migrants “scum” and still be popular with the voters?
Green Party Chairman Ville Niinistö correctly criticized Interior Minister Paula Risikko Saturday for stating that Iraqis concerned about being deported to their country as “extremists” that are in the same league as racist bigot groups like Suomi Ensi.
The conservative National Coalition Party interior minister’s rhetoric derives from President Sauli Niinistö’s claim in May of last year that only extremists debate while the silent majority is silent.
Such a simplistic analysis by the president is how disgraced former US President Richard Nixon wanted to capitalize on a song called Okie from Muskogee that was supposed to depict, among other things, that most USAmericans weren’t against the Vietnam War and didn’t take drugs.
President Niinistö’s comments and views about Finland’s ever-growing culturally diverse society have revealed his suspicion. Certainly eyeing reelection in 2018, the Finnish head of state has made statements in the same way as anti-immigration politicians do. He first makes them and then retracts.
Here’s a good example:
“At some point, someone has to recognize that, here and now, we cannot fulfill all of our obligations under international agreements,” according to the Helsinki Times.
And then retracted in Helsingin Sanomat:
“I never said anything like that [ditching international agreements]. What I said was that it’s difficult here and now to meet all the obligations [of such refugee treaties].
Tweets Green Party head Niinistö about Risikko putting asylum seekers in the same group like bigots:
He states: “Unacceptable that Risikko equates an asylum seeker family that is worried about its life as extremists like Suomi Ensin.”
Below are two public figures that are treated differently by the Finnish media. Both are way off in their views. The one on the left is Johan Bäckman, who gets scorned by the national media for his pro-Russian and pro-Putin stances, while Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MEP Jussi Halla-aho, gets a more benign reception despite the fact that he’s Finland’s number one public racist.
Contrary to Bäckman, Halla-aho, who was sentenced for ethnic agitation in 2012, Helsingin Sanomat saw his racist diatribe before 2011 as a strange expression of “freedom of expression.”
There is nothing wrong with protecting freedom of expression but there is a problem when journalists cannot distinguish between an important human right and racism.
Halla-aho, who like other far-right European politicians are pro-Russia, gets a much better reception from the media despite his extremist views of immigration and Muslims.
Why is Bäckman shunned by the Finnish media while Halla-aho has some acceptance, even tacit understanding?
Farrah* is an Iraqi woman who came to Finland in September 2015 with her then one-year-old child. She left Turkey in the hope that she’d get a residence permit and would be able to bring her husband and two children in Turkey, aged 10 and 12.
“They [Finnish Immigration Service] didn’t renew my [one-year] residence permit which expired on January 17,” she said sounding as if out of breath on the phone. “I haven’t seen my family for [almost] two years.”
Since it is no longer possible to give residence permits to people like Farrah and her three-year-old child for humanitarian reasons, they face a bleak prospect: deportation from Finland.
A picture posted on Farrah’s Facebook page.
Farrah and her child are perfect examples of how Finland’s harsh immigration policy rubs salt on people’s lives. Before April, residence permits were granted for humanitarian reasons but that was scrapped in vote that MPs of the ruling parties [Perussuomalaiset (1), National Coalition Party and Center Party] and opposition Social Democrats and Christian Democrats approved.
Even if Farrah would have been able to get her residence permit renewed, there is no way she could bring her family in Turkey because of tighter family reunification guidelines.
“I came to Finland [almost] on foot from Greece believing that this was a humanitarian country that gives residence permits [asylum] to mothers and their children,” she continued, adding that she is today “very confused” and worried because she didn’t know what is going to happen to her.
Continue reading “Farrah and her three-year-old child: Don’t deport us back to Iraq from Finland!”
We’ve been watching, like all of Finland, the brave asylum seekers who are standing up since the weekend to a government and Finnish Immigration Service that cares little to nothing for their fates.
These pictures that they are taking and the stories of defiance they are telling form part of the ever-culturally diverse history of Finland. We will look back on this protest like many others as milestones in our history.
This is how social movements ignite thanks to injustice, incomprehension and the steadfast courage of those who believe in our cause.
Migrant Tales salutes all of you brave people in Helsinki.
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