Category: Enrique Tessieri

Finland’s Rosa Parks moment and crossing the line

Posted on by Migrant Tales

For those of us who have been anti-racism activists for many years, Tuesday, July 28, offered us something we hadn’t seen before in Finland: A spontaneous 15,000-20.000-strong demonstration against racism and fascism in Helsinki. Was that very important demonstration a Rosa Parks moment and an important watershed to make Finland a more inclusive country? 

Was it a wake-up call that we have a racism and fascism problem in Finland and want to express our revulsion of such social ills?

“The reason why the I have a dream demonstration took place [of July 28] was because we Finns aren’t racists [and fascists],” a teacher told Migrant Tales.

Being a member of the migrant or visible minority community in Finland has been challenging to say the least during the past decade.

A party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, which rose from near-obscurity to become the third-biggest party in the 2011 parliamentary elections, successfully exploited xenophobia and Islamophobia.

Just like Islamophobia before Anders Breivik killed 77 people on 22/7, the PS too thought that it was unstoppable. It’s motto was a simple one: When the party’s popularity falls in the polls just add more xenophobic and Islamophobic juice in the campaign message to lure voters.

If the likes of some PS politicians like Jussi Halla-aho, Olli Immonen, Juho Eerola, James Hirvisaari, Teuvo Hakkarainen and a long list of others were to be believed, migrants and minorities in this country were being victimized by such politicians that we are a threat, social-welfare bums, criminals and rapists.

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Finland: White teenage girls attack physically a 10-year-old and name him “n-word” and “rapist”

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Isn’t it surprising how our country, where racism is supposed to be an insignificant problem, is making headlines and encouraging Finns to challenge this social ill. The latest scandal comes from a playground in Helsinki, where a ten-year-old black boy was harassed in a racist manner by teenage girls, who kicked him and called him n-word and rapist, according to Helsingin Sanomat.

Yes, right, you read it correctly: A group of under-fifteen-year-old teenage white girls attack a ten-year-old boy at a playground, kicked him repeatedly and named him n-word and rapist.

The first question that arises is where did these white teenagers learn this type of anti-social behavior? What motivated and emboldened them to attack such a child?

The evidence is quite incriminating in today’s Finland. Anti-cultural diversity sentiment is so thick in this country that you could cut and slice it and send it to political parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, to silent politicians, our too often toothless media that is in many cases a rubber stamp of the racist things politicians say, and to the countless families and teachers at schools that should know better.

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Media researcher claims Finnish politicians don’t challenge racism strongly enough because they fear losing voters

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Media researcher Anu Koivunen believes that Finnish politicians don’t challenge racism because they fear losing voters, reports MTV3. Koivunen said that reaction would have been stronger in Sweden if the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Olli Immonen scandal would have happened in that neighboring country. 

Organizing a 15,000-strong demonstration at the end of June as a reaction to Immonen’s declaration of war against multiculturalism shows that Finns have the potential to react just as strongly as their neighbors in Sweden.

 

Koivunen reinforces what Migrant Tales has been saying for a long time: There is a lack of leadership among politicians to challenge racism in Finland. This explains why a party like the PS can rise from near-obscurity to become the second-biggest force in parliament with the help of xenophobic and anti-EU rhetoric.

While some politicians may fear challenging racism because it could end their careers, it’s clear that their complacent silence is more an indication of support for the xenophobic rhetoric of parties like the PS.

While Koivunen speaks of politicians, she should also mention the Finnish media, which has been part of the problem with its too often toothless reporting and by giving a voice to racist politicians from parties like the PS.

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MP Olli Immonen, Birkenau death camp, and the PS’ party convention in Turku on August 8-9

Posted on by Migrant Tales
puoluekokous

 See original posting here.

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Defining white Finnish privilege #23: Greater police powers to monitor migrants and minorities

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Finnish white privilege, like any majority culture’s privilege, not only permeates in our institutions but marks the pace of how those with no privilege are treated in this society. Granting the police greater monitoring powers [1] to carry out arbitrary checks on migrants, and subsequently on non-white Finns, is a case in point in white Finnish privilege. 

Writes YLE in English:

New legislative changes came into force in May allowing police and border guard officials to perform immigration checks as part of their everyday duties, without any prior suspicion of crime. The wider powers will allow officers to conduct thorough inspections of business premises as part of their work.

The goal of the legal reform is to clarify the jurisdiction of police and border guards. Previously police were only able to investigate business premises for possible immigration offences if they suspected a crime had been committed.

The Council of Europe, and other anti-racism activists in Finland and abroad, have expressed concern about ethnic profiling by the police.

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The language and actions of anti-immigration parties and groups are based on violence

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Some 40 members of the neo-Nazi Suomen Vastarintaliike (SVL) took part in a demonstration Saturday ended violently, according to YLE in English. Thirty-two people were detained in the central Finnish city of Jyväskylä by the police and charged with rioting and assault.

While the SVL have always been a violent group, the statements that were made after what happened in Jyväskylä are the most surprising.

One of these is by the new National Police Commissioner Seppo Kolehminen, who claimed on YLE that he was surprised that the SVL demonstration turned violent in such an organized manner.

The police may have been surprised by what happened in Jyväskylä but many aren’t. What can you expect from a group that openly wants to change Finland into a Nazi state with violence?

The other surprising statement was from Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Olli Immonen, who declared in recent a Facebook post war on multiculturalism states, now claims that he “doesn’t support the use of violence under any circumstances.

The first thing that strikes me about these two statements is their incredulity. Before making such statements as the above, both Kolehminen and Immonen could ask the following questions:

  • Have the SVL grown in recent years?
  • If it hasn’t grown why has coverage of its violent acts become more visible in the media?
  • Is violence only physical? Can words be violent and/or cause acts of physical violence?
  • If a party like the PS constantly victimizes and excludes certain groups from being equal members of Finnish society, isn’t such a stance just as bad as an act of physical violence?

Iltalehti

Here’s one example of how rhetoric can turn in to violence. Tabloid Iltalehti reports that multiculturalism caused tempers rise to such a point that a man shoved a six-year-old.

Apart from posing with a group of SVL members in a picture in June, one could ask what Immonen really meant by condemning all forms of violence if his political career has been based on violent statements against migrants and minorities?

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PS MP Immonen “flees” country in the face of his declaration of war against multiculturalism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The headline in Iltalehti, a tabloid that has for years been responsible for spreading racism in Finland,  writes on the front page that Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Olli Immonen has fled the country in the face of the hostile comments he made against cultural diversity. 

Running away and hiding because of what he wrote shows once again that anti-immigration parties like the PS are inflicted with bravado and cowardice. They cannot be taken seriously.

Tuesday’s mass demonstration in Helsinki for an open and multicutlrual Finland was a clear rejection against Immonen’s declaration of war against what he called the “nightmare of multiculturalism,”

Immonen

 

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Migrant Tales (June 23, 2012): What is the fine line that separates Anders Breivik and PS MP Olli Immonen?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

This week we heard Anders Breivik’s closing statements in his defense for killing 77 innocent victims. In his final tirade of how multiculturalism is responsible for fuelling the Islamization of Europe, the mass killer showed no remorse.

“The attacks on July 22 were preventive attacks to defend the indigenous Norwegian people,” he said. “I therefore demand to be acquitted.”

In a recent column, Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party MP Olli Immonen writes at the same time as the Breivik trial is ongoing:  “…it is clear that current developments [concerning Islamization] will lead to a situation where our Western way of life in Finland and elsewhere in Europe will be threatened. The confrontation between Islamic and Western culture is one of the megatrends of this century.”

Shivers went up my spine when I read both quotes. While they convey the same message, there is a  difference: Breivik went on a killing rampage while Immonen didn’t.

The Norwegian mass killer uses Islamization to justify what he did; Immonen uses the same arguments but to attract media attention and, crucial to his political career, future votes. One is being tried in a courtroom for mass murder while the other is in parliament spreading Breivik’s Counter-Jihadist views.

In many respects, the debate revolving around whether Breivik is insane or not when he carried out the killings speaks volumes about how we want to continue seeing ourselves as a people and society irrespective of 22/7.

The question is an exceptionally tough one: Are Breivik’s thoughts “sane” but what he did “insane?” In other words, is it ok to spread hatred, racism and prejudice of other groups as long as you don’t take the law in your hands and start killing people?

If Breivik were Immonen and Immonen, Breivik, the verdict would be clear: Breivik would be “sane” and Immonen “insane.”

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July 28, 2015: Finland’s Rosa Parks moment

Posted on by Migrant Tales

On December 1, 1955 the late Rosa Parks refused to give her seat to a white passenger on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama. That historically important incident was for many the spark that ignited the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. 

In Finland something similar had happened today, when around 15,000 people demonstrated against racism and Perussuomalaiset (PS)* Olli Immonen’s Facebook post, which encourages Finns to fight against “the nightmare of multiculturalism.”

Well, that battle cry that Immonen made has got him and his party in hot water and didn’t produce the reaction he was hoping for.

Center Party Prime Minister Juha Sipilä condemned what Immonen said.

“I want to develop Finland as an open, linguistically and culturally international country,” he tweeted on Sunday afternoon, according to YLE. “I cannot accept Immonen’s remarks.”

National Coalition Party (NCP) MEP Henna Virkkunen Was quoted on YLE as saying that her party together with the Center Party want to be members of a government with a party that is openly racist and fascist.

RosaParks

Today’s anti-racism rally in Helsinki attracted 15,000 people, according to the organizers.

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Olli Immonen and the PS: I dream of a country that is inclusive, not racist and extremist

Posted on by Migrant Tales

I’ve been traveling during the last weekend until Monday in northeast Argentina, where the Finns established a colony in 1906. I had limited access to the Internet but when I read what Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Olli Immonen wrote on Facebook a cocktail of sadness mixed with concern overcame me.

What is surprising about what Immonen wrote is not what he wrote per se, since we all know that he is hostile to migrants and all minorities that live in Finland, but the complacent silence of his party to what he wrote.

That eerie silence is something that we’ve experienced many times before from the PS.

What did Immonen write?

Näyttökuva 2015-8-20 kello 23.55.24

Here is my response:

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