Category: Enrique Tessieri

Finnish JHL union sees and reacts to the racist government elephant in the room

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Few will deny in the face of racism scandals in the summer of 2023 that the government’s anti-racism plan is a cover-up, according to the Trade Union for the Public and Welfare Sectors (JHL).

“We thank warmly all experts who have participated in the planning of this [government anti-racism Action Plan] campaign for their good work,” said JHL’s Chief Executive Officer Mari Keturi. “Unfortunately, the government’s actions blatantly conflict with the objectives of the campaign. We speak with action…”

The aim of the Action Plan for Combating Racism and Promoting Equality was not to tackle racism in Finland, but to save the government’s skin from all the racism scandals it endured in the summer of 2023.

Read the original statement here.

The Finnish Muslim Forum (Suomen Muslimifoorumi ry) released a statement on the government’s action plan and found the following shortcomings:

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Time has flown past the Perussuomalaiset, it is the party of the past like the National Coalition Party

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Racism is like a diehard stain. It’s tough work to rub it off society.

With Finland suffering from an economic downturn and rocketing health sector costs, it is beyond me how parties like the National Coalition Party (NCP) don’t see the elephant in the room, the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party.

The PS loathes migrants, especially Muslims and visible minorities, but have never justified the reasoning behind their hatred. Why does the PS and the government tighten dramatically Finland’s migration policy during an economic downturn.

Thanks to the Ukrainians, Finland received a net sum of 58,000 migrants last year. That is expected to plummet in 2024 to 30,000 and in 2025 to 15,000, according to the ministry of economy.

Swedish People’s Party Education Minister Anders Adlecreutz suggested that Finland should aim to get annually net 40,000 migrants in order to plug the labor shortage.

The suggestion was given the thumbs down by PS parliamentary group leader Jani Mäkelä, who said that it was a bad idea to bring more people from abroad than newborns, which amounted to 43,000 in 2023, according to Statistics Finland.

Historically, during the cold war, Finland has done everything possible to limit the amount of migrants to Finland. In the 1970s, when thousands of Finns were emigrating to Sweden, Finland decided not to take in foreign migrants to compensate for the shortfall.

With parties like the PS in government dictating migrant policy with the support of the National Coalition Party, it’s clear that these parties and Finland are way behind the times. The shortsightedness of their policies has already caused damage to the country.

The elephant in the room and Finland’s hostile environment against migrants

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Finland’s xenophobic message has been based for years on lies. Instead of lying, why not ratchet up the hostile environment against migrants and minorities? Be honest with yourself. The government is now spearheading these lies to justify their inhumane and counterproductive policies.

Just like in the UK in 2012, Finland is passing laws to make staying in the country as difficult as possible.

Considering Finland suffers from a labor shortage due to its aging population, what is the motive for tightening further migration laws, or as Perussuomalaiset (PS) Interior Minister Mari Rantanen called a paradigm shift?

Another example of the hostile environment was a government announcement in July to prohibit basic health care for undocumented migrants. Source: Yle News

Thank you Ambrosius @ambrowoll for the heads-up!

Pasi Saukkonen, senior researcher at the Urban Research and Statistics unit of the City of Helsinki, said what has been known for a very long time: “Finland has never been a major destination for international migration. The share of the foreign-born population is among the lowest in Europe. Refugee numbers have been low, with more asylum seekers arriving only in the early 1990s and in 2015.”

Historically, we could call Finland a nation of emigration.

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Finnish politicians continue to feed the hostile environment against migrants and minorities

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“Dog whistles win votes but destroy nations.”

Sayeeda Wars, former Conservative Party cochairperson.

To understand the thuggery that happened in the United Kindom, we should set the record straight: They were race riots instigated by mobs of white men. It is not the first time that the United Kingdom has experienced race riots. The first one were the deadly disturbances of 1919 in Liverpool, Cardiff, Glasgow, London, Salford, Newport, Barry, Hull, and South Shields, according to David Olusoga.

In Finland, the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party has made its political mark by attacking and denigrating migrants and minorities. The National Coalition Party, with MPs like Tere Sammallahti, Martin Paasi, Heikki Vestman, Atte Kaleva, and others, has found common ground with the PS’s xenophobic message.

One of the most toxic of the race riots has been Matias Turkkila, editor of Suomen Uutiset, a PS newspaper.

Considering the shameful and simplistic views by politicians who argued conspiracy thories to expalin the violence in the United Kingdom, shows me that we are also setting the groundwork for white men to take to the streets. The government is taking away services right now, not migrants.

Some Finnish politicians justified the race riots in the UK. From left to right: Finance Minister and Chairperson of the Perussuomalaiset, Riikka Purra, with her infamous statement made in 2008, “If you gave me a weapon, [youth with migrant background] corpses would appear on a commuter train, you see.” PS MP Onni Rostila, National Coalition Party MPs Tere Sammallahti and Matin Paasi.

Why haven’t we seen one editorial denouncing these politicians’ distorted views? Where are the OP-ED pieces? Where is the condemnation by other politicians? How long will the lies and bashing go on?

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Finnish justice ministry plans to slash Council for Mass Media’s aid

Posted on by Migrant Tales

A widely criticized decision by Perussuomalaiset (PS)* Justice Minister Leena Meri to slash the Council for Mass Media’s (JSN) aid next year, should not only be seen as another step by the PS and government to undermine the role of the media.

JSN Chairperson Eero Hytönen said in Journalisti that it was “a political decision by the minister [Meri].”

Read the full story (in Finnish) here.

Hytönen said the original proposal for state aid to JSN by ministry officials was different from Meri’s decision.

Meri has denied Hytönen’s claim.

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Riikka Purra’s dilemma: “Am I Riikka or ‘riikka?'”

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The far-right terrorism and riots in the UK are raising a lot of questions about how the government would react in a similar situation. Some, likePerussuomalaiset (PS)* Finance Minister Riikka Purra, expose schizophrenic behavior. Sometimes she is the heartless finance minister slashing the budget and bringing misery to the most vulnerable segments of the population, and other times she goes in her racist rants.

“riikka” Tweets: “…the development of double standards, the collapse of borders, mass immigration, migrant crime and the over-representation of specific groups of migrants in virtually everything negative.”

“On top of it, the white population pays for the whole self-destructive joke with their taxes.”

To top it off, riikka wants us to read a racist piece published in the PS party’s Suomen Uutiset by one of its MPs.

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Finland’s and Estonia’s bullying of Russians

Posted on by Migrant Tales

With no solution in sight to the end of the war in Ukraine, part of the collateral damage is the Russian-speaking community of Finland, by far the biggest language group outside of Finnish, Swedish, and Sami.

Even before Russia invaded Ukraine, there was a lot of hatred and suspicion of Russians. Even if Finland signed an armistice with the former USSR in 1944, it appears that too many Finns are still in the trenches.

Some, driven by their xenophobia of Russians, would be ready to take away their dual citizenship rights. One of the most enthusiastic is former President Sauli Niinistö. A December survey showed that 34 MPS, mostly of the hard-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and National Coalition Party, would want to prohibit Russians from having dual citizenship.

So great is the hatred of brown asylum seekers and Russia that in June Finland threw its good name under the bus as a Human Rights defender and upholder by lowering itself to the same level as Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania, which deny people the right to asylum.

A study by Hannes Viimarananta, Ekaterina Protassova, and Arto Mutajoki on Russian speakers in Finland, says that such a community is commonly misunderstood.

“Russian-speakers in Finland are framed, firstly, as an immigrant group, alongside other sizeable immigrant groups. Secondly, Russian speakers in Finland are commonly [and simplistically] perceived as representatives of Russia—a powerful, and at times threatening, neighboring country…” the authors write.

The Estonian-Russian border crossing at Narva. Sources: Helsingin Sanomat and Wikimedia.

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Finland’s immigration policy has been for decades racist by design

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Claim: The deportation law has nothing to do with migration policy.

Interior Minister Mari Rantanen, among other Perussuomalaiset* politicians

Migrant Tales: It has all to do with migration policy!

The pushback law has not only brought several pressing questions about how Finland respects Human Rights, its Constitution, and international agreements, but it continues to reveal a decades-long policy on how to keep out certain national groups like Muslims from Finland.

Finland’s migration policy has been enforced to look at outsiders with suspicion. In the 1970s, when thousands of Finnish migrants were moving to Sweden, the government considered bringing labor migrants to compensate for the huge loss in man- and womanpower.

The government decided against such a move and today we are paying a big price for such a decision.

Let’s look at the present government’s immigration policy, with the support of government coalition party members National Coalition Party, Swedish People’s Party and Christian Democrats. The long-term policy has been to keep migrants, especially Muslims and blacks, out of Finland.

Thus especially today the immigration policy of the government is racist by design.

Even if this poster is for the UK, it could apply to Finland. Source: Migrants’ Rights Network.

Karolina Budzisz: Tales of our own

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales insight: Throughout the years, Migrant Tales has received a lot of recognition. The latest one is from Karolina Budzisz, who wrote her thesis on anti-racism voices in Finland. During the past seventeen years, we have kept true to our goal: It aims to be a voice for those whose views and situation are understood poorly and heard faintly by the media, politicians, and the public. Migrant Tales has published 5,293 posts from over three hundred contributors to date. We stopped taking comments a few years ago, but there are 32,172 of them. We are proudly one of the anti-racism voices in Finland fighting against social ills like the Perussuomalaiset, racism, and discrimination.

Recognition of our work is the greatest reward we can get.

Abstract

Immigration remains among the most salient topics in the socio-political debate in a dynamically transforming Europe, which is reflected in the scholarly interest in the theme. However, as this thesis argues, the attention paid to anti-immigration and pro-immigration poles of the debate is not equal and the agency of immigrants in providing knowledge on the issue pertaining to them directly is relatively neglected in academia.

Read the full thesis here.

“Tales of Our Own” strives to explore the characteristics of pro-immigration and immigrant-made discourses and investigate their relationships with the dominant hostile narratives around immigration emerging in the context of the current populist upsurge. The thesis conceptualizes populism as an antagonizing mode of articulation that provides a stylistic framework for arguments inciting the process of othering. Immigrants in these circumstances constitute perfect ‘Others’, excluded through many novel narratives guising straightforward xenophobia under the mask of neoliberal values. Exploring an underdeveloped discursive frontier with regard for its authorship contributes to the study of the immigrant response and substantial argumentation in the debate. Moreover, it follows the objective of reclaiming immigration as it recuperates the voices of the very actors of it – those ‘on the move’.

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