Category: Enrique Tessieri

The Kolari, Finland, asylum recepetion center “is a living hell”

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Kolari is a town of 3,857 people located 166km north of Tornio and about 80km north of the Arctic Circle. The town also has an asylum reception run by the Red Cross that houses about 150 people, or 5% of the town’s population, located 4-5km from the town center. 

Imagine being sent to the middle of nowhere where nobody speaks your language, understands your culture and on top of it you get threatened by the manager of the reception center.

“We’ve been living in this camp for eight months and want to transfer out of this place that is a living hell,” an asylum seeker at the camp said. “The food is also horrible and there is nothing to do here.”

The manager allegedly threatens the asylum seekers at the reception center.

“When I told the manager that I want to be transferred with my family to Tornio he said that he had a document from Migri [the Finnish Immigration Service] that showed that we’d be sent back to Iraq,” the person said. “When I asked him to show me the document he refused.”

The manager, which takes asylum seekers to visit the Finnish Immigration Service in Rovaniemi, charges each person 10 euros for the trip. Ten euros is a lot of money if your monthly allowance is 92.50 euros.

CORRECTED: The reception center doesn’t charge asylum seekers to take them to see the Finnish Immigration Service in Rovaniemi. People who go with the minibus to shop in Rovaniemi or Oulu are charged 10 euros.

UPDATE (May 2): Migrant Tales has learned that the manager charges 3 euros per asylum seeker if they want to play football.

“Once the manager told me to ‘shut up’ and threatened that my file was sent to Migri and that we won’t get asylum,” the person said.

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The Kolari asylum reception center was formerly a hotel. It is located about 5km from the town center.

The other problem that some asylum seekers experience at the camp is insufficient medical attention.

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Racism, bigotry, ultranationalism, neo-Nazism are nothing more than ourselves staring back at us from a mirror

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Why aren’t we surprised and shocked by what we see today in Europe? Populism, racism, bigotry, ultranationalism, isolationism, and fascism spread thanks to the media and the tacit support of many who nod in approval and silence. Colonialism, wars, and exploitation of non-white Europeans through slavery are some of the windfall profits that gave us our present standard of living that is guarded by populism, fascism and bigotry. 

We shouldn’t bite the hand that has fed us for so many centuries, right?

Our implicit gratefulness to slavery and colonialism for our high standard of living today exposes why racism and bigotry in Europe and elsewhere remain largely unchallenged.

A story by Helsingin Sanomat  about the Estonian members of the Soldiers of Odin in Finland is a good example of how the media gives tacit support to white privilege, or doesn’t challenge it strongly enough.

While the reporting appears sound, there is one problem with the story. Helsingin Sanomat doesn’t follow up the article with an editorial.

Too often the Finnish media may write about a far-right group like the Soldiers of Odin. It may express some objection  but we don’t see often enough editorials condemning such groups and how they pose a threat to our society.

How many editorials have you read about the rise of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and how it threatens our Nordic welfare state?

The classic pipedream in Finland is that somehow racists and fascists can “debate” and come to an agreement about “the problem.” Certainly white people debating between themselves could do that but it’s more complex if you included migrants and minorities in the debate.

And have you ever seen a visible migrant or visible minority being interviewed by the media about the Soldiers of Odin?

Should we be surprised that reporting by the Finnish media of far-right vigilante and anti-immigration groups is so selective and one-sided?

If we went to a mirror as a society what would we see staring back at us? That would be far-right and right-wing anti-immigration populism, fascism, ultranationalism, racism and bigotry to name a few.

The fact that we live in denial about our history and the present is the fuel that feeds our selective and bigoted worldview.

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Security guards at Luona’s Pitäjänmäki reception center continue to treat asylum seekers with disrespect

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales continues to hear about how some security guards at Luona, a private company that operates eight asylum reception centers in Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, and Hyvinkää, continue to treat asylum seekers with disrespect. In February, the company’s general manager, Milja Saksi, said that the company will take the necessary steps to address the racist treatment of its asylum seekers. 

“We don’t permit racist or inappropriate behavior [from our staff] towards asylum seekers,” Saksi was quoted as saying earlier this year. “We have made personnel changes if people aren’t suitable to work at our reception centers.”

One source that Migrant Tales spoke to claimed that little has changed concerning how some security guards treat asylum seekers at the Pitäjänmäki reception center.

The security guards were alerted at 3:30am that somebody was suspected of smoking in one of the rooms. When the security guards arrived at the room they asked for six asylum seekers for their IDs. The asylum seekers refused to show it to the security guards. This prompted them to call the police.

In a short while, 4-5 police cars arrived with some 10 police to the Pitäjänmäki reception center. One of the security guards, who was trying to act tough, wouldn’t even give permission to one of the asylum seekers to go to the toilet.

How much does it cost taxpayers to send 4-5 police cars to investigate a minor incident like smoking?

Anti-immigration politicians and vigilante groups like the Soldiers of Odin claim that there aren’t enough police to guarantee security.

Possibly this minor incident above shows how we squander such resources on petty problems that security guards should resolve professionally but can’t because they’re on their personal power and ego trips.

“There are still a lot of security guards [working at Luona] who are sons of bitches,” the source said. “They call the police for minor things because they want to show the asylum seekers who is in charge and who has power.”

 

Otavan Opisto: Yhteisöoppimisen merkitys monikulttuurisuuskoulutuksessa

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Otavan Opisto on kansanopisto, joka sijaitse noin 14 km Mikkelistä. Vierailijalle koulu näyttää aivan tavalliselta koululta, joka sijaitsee pienessä kylässä. Koulullamme on kuitenkin poikkeuksellisen paljon monikulttuurisia opiskelijoita.

Mitä tarkoittaa olla kulttuurisesti menestyvä ja etnisesti moninainen koulu? Yksi tärkeä asia on yhteisöllisen oppimisen merkitys ja taitavat, asialle omistautuneet opettajat ja henkilökunta.

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Kuten missä tahansa oppilaitoksessa, työmme on haastavaa, mutta palkitsevaa. Meillä on tällä hetkellä monikulttuurisia oppilaita, jotka ovat eri tasoisia. On sellaisia, jotka ovat oppimassa suomen kielen alkeita ja oppimistaitoja sekä niitä,jotka ovat edistyneet nopeasti ja tehokkaasti näillä alueilla. Kulttuurisesti moninainen koulu, johon ihmiset tulevat monista eri taustoista, ei tarvitse mitään poppakonsteja. Ratkaisut löytyvät opetussuunnitelmasta sekä pohjoismaisista arvoista kuten tasa-arvo ja molemminpuolinen kunnioitus. Kysymys, joka voidaan esittää,  on mistä johtuu meidän koulujärjestelmämme menestys. Yksi tärkeä asia on hyvinvointivaltio, joka huolehtii ihmisistä ja jossa tehdään paljon työtä syrjäytymisen ja sen kielteisten ilmiöiden ehkäisemiseksi. Jos meillä on asiat hyvin yhteiskunnassa, se vaikuttaa myönteisesti myös koulussa.

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How fair is the Finnish media when it reports about racism and bigotry?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

What role has the media played in spreading racism and bigotry in Finland since the 1990s? If it has played a big role, has its reporting improved or got worse? 

The narrative of the media, and that of politicians concerning our ever-growing culturally diverse society, has changed but it still has a lot of room for self-criticism and improvement.

When the media serves politicians and other voices that single out certain groups, victimizing them because they are of a different religious or cultural background, it’s clear that this exercise is costly to taxpayers.

It is ironic that politicians of anti-immigration parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, and the tacit support they receive from other politicians from other parties, want Finland to fail in becoming a successful culturally diverse society.

Why would politicians like MEP Jussi Halla-Aho, MP Olli Immonen and many other in this country would not want to see us succeed in building a successful culturally diverse society?

The answer is simple: They would be out of a political job and career.

Let’s go back to the original question: Is Finland’s media racist and bigoted?

While we can’t claim that Finland’s media is racist they do publish a lot of racist and bigoted things. Many of these stories are in code and serve the anti-immigration narrative. One recent example is of a story by YLE on crime rates committed by foreigners in Eastern Finland.

The YLE story’s headline stated that crime committed by foreigners rose by 179% in the beginning of the year. We find out later in the story that we’re speaking of only 206 suspected crimes, which is only about 1.5% of all 14,923 crimes reported during that period.

A story doesn’t have to be “racist” to be inappropriate. Unfair journalism that is slanted is just sloppy and unprofessional journalism.

While not all police ethnically profile people and while not all journalists are multiculturally challenged, it’s those that have these issues that give these professions a bad name.

Take a look below at some of the ads from the 1990s published by Ilta-Sanomat, a tabloid that continues to publish racist stories about migrants, asylum seekers and minorities. Certainly the stories that Ilta-Sanomat writes today have changed from about 25 years ago. Even so, it’s still the same narrative but in a different context.

Some of these diehard narratives are that migrants are rapists, criminals, social welfare bums and just plain bad people that shouldn’t be trusted.

Check out these Ilta-Sanomat ads below for yourselves.

Na?ytto?kuva 2016-4-24 kello 15.24.10

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YLE of Finland: When the police and journalists use statistics with malicious intent and irresponsibly

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The media plays a decisive role in broadcasting bigotry, sanitized hate speech, and populism in Finland. A recent example of the latter is a story published by YLE where the police claim that crimes committed during the beginning of this year by foreigners in Eastern Finland grew by 179%!

Now that is a very scary three-digit percentage figure! If a person only read the headline, he’d think that all foreigners must be criminals since crimes committed by them soared by 179%.

But let’s take a closer look at the story as Petri Cederlöf did on his Facebook wall below.

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Petri Cederlöf correctly points out above that foreigners (we don’t know how many are tourists) committed 206 crimes out of a total of 14,923. That amounts to about 1.5% of all crimes reported to the police.

Continue reading “YLE of Finland: When the police and journalists use statistics with malicious intent and irresponsibly”

Ethnic profiling reveals a lot about how the Finnish police service and non-discrimination ombudsman see cultural diversity

Posted on by Migrant Tales

While it is a fact that the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman looks into complaints about alleged ethnic profiling by the police service and National Boarder Guard, more questions surround this issue than answers.

Migrant Tales has repeatedly pointed out that one of the main problems concerning ethnic profiling in Finland by the police service, and its monitoring by the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman, is the lack of visible minority representation.

No minorities are working for the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman and only a minute amount for the police service and National Border Guard.

This fact is a problem that should be addressed in Finland, which abides by Nordic welfare value and upholds Section 6 of the Constitution and guarantees that we’re all equal before the law. Equality means as well equal representation.

Now here’s the question: How can the police service, National Border Guard and the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman assure migrants and minorities that they take seriously ethnic profiling if it doesn’t affect their staff directly?

Having no minorities on their staff is the same as having only males defending women’s right or people with no physical disabilities representing people with such challenges.

 

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Read full story here.

Underwhelming representation of minorities is tantamount as well to playing down a problem like ethnic profiling and discrimination.

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Tightening family reunification requirements is like putting a noose around human rights

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Like Europe, Finland is also suffering from a lack of leadership. When we start to fear our ineptness in solving problems, we slide into our shells with the help of populism, simplistic solutions, and wishful thinking.  

The latter can lead us to many unpleasant places like social media lynchings, witch hunts and shelve indefinitely values like human rights.

Everyone knows that the family is a fundamental human right. Article 16 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights states:

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Source: UN.

And here’s one of my favorite articles of the latter Declaration:

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Source: UN.

We have written in Migrant Tales about a worrying trend and how the Finnish government plans to tighten family reunification requirements in this country.

Continue reading “Tightening family reunification requirements is like putting a noose around human rights”

The role of the Finnish media and politicians who spread their racist statements

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The Perussuomalaiset (PS)* is a horrible party for migrants and minorities. They have the dubious “honor” of being the first modern party in Finland to capitalize on voters’ racism and bigoted views. Certainly they couldn’t have done it alone. All the major parties have the same type of politicians who state and write the same kind of things.

Some politicians are pretty straightforward about their bigotted views while others speak in code.

PS foreign minister, Timo Soini, is a politician who usually speaks in code and acts as the “good cop” of racism.

For bigotry and racism to bloom in any society, you need a complacent media, which thinks no differently from such politicians. How else are you going to get your racist and bigoted message to your followers?

The whole so-called debate in Finland on asylum seekers, migration, and migrants is a colossal lie by parties like the PS and others. Its only aim is to scapegoat and shift blame from politicians, who are inept, to migrants and minorities.

Even the president of Finland, Sauli Niinstö, doesn’t get it. He makes wishy-washy statements like the government about racism in Finland. He acts like many closet anti-immigration politicians who play down social ills like racism because he believes it won’t affect him directly.

Wrong.

Ask the Norwegians what happened on 22/7.

Racism is a cancer that spreads in our society with 1 + 1 = 2 arguments. It won’t create jobs, bring innovation, and foster peace in our society but impoverish us and force us to fear even our own shadows. Listening to racists pitch their bigoted arguments is like listening to sexist things said about women. Is it acceptable?

There are some faint positive signs that the media and the Finnish Immigration Service (FIS) are tired of being rubber stamps to such politicians.

This week, PS MP Maria Tolppanen’s blog was taken down for inciting hatred against migrants with misinformation. Even FIS put out a statement rebuffing her false claims that white Finns get less social aid than migrants.

Tolppanen is such an arrogant politician that she’s even threatened to go to the police.

PS MP Pentti Oinonen is another example of how facts are cooked. In January, he claimed that a fifteen-year-old was raped in his hometown of Kuopio by an asylum seeker.

Other masters of deception and bigotry are PS MEP Jussi Halla-aho and former MP James Hirvisaari, both who have been sentenced for ethnic agitation. In 2011 that an asylum seeker had raped a teenage minor that never took place.

But not only PS politicians make up stories about asylum seekers, migrants, and minorities; the National Coalition Party does this too.

Former MEP Eija-Riitta Korhola, who apparently doesn’t like wind power, claimed that she’s heard about “a lot of” animals like sheep and chicken that have died under mysterious circumstances around wind farms. In the tweet below she asked for an independent inquiry into the matter.

Korhola has a Ph.D. Her dissertation, which was defended successfully in 2014, was on “Climate Change as a Political Process: The Rise and Fall of the Kyoto Protocol.”

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National Coalition Party former MEP Eija-Riitta Korhola suspects that wind farms cause animals to die.

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On top of Luona’s poor reputation, the Finnish company is alleged to use informers to spy on asylum seekers

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Do asylum reception centers have informers? If so, what do they inform to the management and how do they make life difficult for the rest of the residents? Migrant Tales has heard of one such alleged case at Luona’s Sokkakuja reception center. 

Residents at the Sokkakuja reception center try their best to avoid contact with the informer. Everyone knows who he is. He usually asks questions from the asylum seekers at the center and keeps an eye out so that the residents don’t step out of line.

Parrot

A child at a refugee reception center is painting the cross of the Finnish flag. Photo: Enrique Tessieri

In Iraq, an informer is called bolbol, or parroquet.

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