Enrique Tessieri Archives - Page 214 of 245

UPDATE (Feb. 26): Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism

Posted on February 27, 2015 by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales’2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism will be updated separately. To see other examples of opinionated journalism in Finland about cultural diversity, please go to this link.

Feb. 26

Koraaninluku radiossa nosti raivon – “Sotkee nuorten päät ja vihasoppa on valmis” (Helsingin Uutiset)

What’s wrong with this story? Helsingin Uutiset is a community paper that is distributed for free to Helsinki residents. One of the unfortunate qualities of Helsingin Uutiset is that it is known for its anti-immigration stand. The story below about the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) beginning to read the Koran on air has raised a lot of opposition, which Helsingin Uutiset writes a story about based on anonymous comments on its website, some of which are hostile and Islamophobic. One comment claims that the program “mixes young people’s head and ensures a hate brew to be concocted” while another one says it promotes terrorism. The paper asks its readers to vote if they think it is a good idea to read the Koran on radio. About 80% say it’s a bad idea. Since when were anonymous comments credible? Poor opinionated journalism at its worst.

Where to catch up on news about immigration, immigrants and cultural diversity

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Migrant Tales

Where does Migrant Tales get its information? Apart from getting tip-offs from readers, another important source is Uutiskynnys as well as other social media sites like Facebook (Rasmus and others) and Twitter. We only read racist diatribe on Facebook instead of following hate sites like Hommaforum and Scripta.

Following the latter sites as well as other ones like James Hirvisaari is an absolute waste of time because what they put out only confirms what you read about them over five years ago.

I used to visit Mediaseuranta but stopped going there after it became clear that the editor appears to be connected to the Hommaforum network. We recommend a thousand times Uutiskynnys over Mediaseuranta.

One of the best blogs on cultural diversity in Finland is Uuninpankkopoika Saku Tiimonen, Reija Härkönen, Marian Abdulkarim and Zuzeeko. There are many others that I read like Abdirahim Husu Hussein and Anna Gutiérrez Sorainen.

A “new” blogger on the block is Ozan Yanar, who knows his stuff and writes well.

It’s great to see today that the ongoing debate on our ever-growing cultural diversity is no longer controlled by anti-immigration bloggers. This has been the case for some time but matters are changing.

Other good sites include I Care, which gives you a good picture of what is happening in other countries.

Being informed and having a good network to access and double check information is crucial if you want to take part in the ongoing debate on immigration, immigrants and cultural diversity.

When it comes to the Finnish media, only a few publications get it right most of the time when it comes to migration and cultural diversity. Some of these include Karjalainen, Savon Sanomat, Kainuun Sanomat, Hämen Kaiku and Kansan Uutiset.

Perussuomalaiset Youth claim to have burned EU flag that onlookers never saw

Posted on February 21, 2015 by Migrant Tales

The youth league of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* claims they burned the EU flag on Saturday in the eastern Finnish city of Mikkeli but nobody in the crowd ever saw the flag. If PS Youth sources are to be believed, they shred the EU flag and placed it in a metal cup that was later set alight at the event.

After the PS Youth called off their anti-Islam cartoon competition earlier this year, their latest prank wasn’t well received by the party. PS chairman Timo Soini said he was against burning the EU flag because it wasn’t a part of Finland’s political culture.

Other PS MPs like Mika Niikko and other party members expressed opposition to the event.

PS Youth chairman Sebastian Tynkkynen said that the burning of the EU flag was a symbolic act to promote Finland’s independence. He said in a long speech that Finland should leave the EU and European Monetary Union.

The PS youth members handed out Finnish markka coins at the event.

Christian Thibault, chairman of Rasmus, an anti-racism NGO, said that Soini was finding it ever-harder to lead the PS.

“It must be strange to be a party leader and to have to disapprove of the actions of your party’s representatives and vice versa force your party’s parliamentarians to vote [against same-sex marriage bill] according to your own religious convictions,” he said.

Onlookers never saw the EU flag at the event. Members of the PS Youth assured onlookers that the EU flag was burnt.

Most of the onlookers were member of the PS.

There were about 50 people were at the event.

* The English name of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) is officially the Finns Party. The names adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings.

The rise and fall of the Perussuomalaiset of Finland

Posted on February 21, 2015 by Migrant Tales

As support for the Perussuomalaiset (PS)[1] wanes with parliamentary elections only a heartbeat away on April 19, we are seeing a very different party from four years ago. Back then, PS chairman Timo Soini was self-confident and campaigning confidently. He was the darling of the media, the new kid on the block, the underdog, the only credible anti-EU voice in the country romping opinion polls and sending political shock tremors.

Matters have changed radically from 2011. We no longer see a self-confident Soini but a party that has run out of populist arguments and is scrambling unsuccessfully to repeat its historic election victory. Moreover, Soini doesn’t look even youthful as before but his image is a cause for worry since he has aged prematurely and there are health issues as well.

Happy Flappy Soini is a popular game mocking the PS chairman. You can download the game (in Finnish) here.

The charismatic leader, who helped the PS rise from political obscurity to the third-biggest party in parliament in four years is now in retreat and on the defensive.

What happened?

An article in the New Statesman gives the following reason for the rise and fall of the PS:

In opposition, and rebranded as simply “the Finns”, the far-right revolution began to fade. The Finns soon found they outside of a coaliton, they were powerless. Meanwhile, they suffered a long string of very public controversies. In 2013, their MP James Hirvisaari was expelled for photographing of a friend posing in a Nazi salute outside [sic][2] Parliament, having previously been reprimanded for a series of Islamophobic and racist comments. Another high-ranking Finns Party MP, Jussi Halla-aho, has been investigated several times for inciting racial hatred.

Migrant Tales has always been critical of the PS and their motives. Their anti-immigration, homophobic and nativist nationalistic message is unsustainable politically.

PS MP Teuvo Hakkarainen is one of many good examples of the party’s fall from political grace. Here’s an MP that has issues with alcohol and racism. Hakkarainen has even sent on his work phone pictures of his phallus, among other scandals.

It is incredible that in the age of the Internet, relatively cheap travel and globalization that some extremist groups are still hellbent on excluding others from being equal members of society. Behind all the rhetoric and political malarkey of the PS is its underlying message: Keep Finland white.

Despite Soini’s repeated claims, that his party doesn’t even flirt with racism (sic!), the best example of how it uses a nativist nationalistic message in inciting nationalist fervor, which in turn fuels racism, was his decision to allow MEP Jussi Halla-aho to draft the party’s program on immigration policy.

Soini claimed in 2009 that he’d sack any PS member if they got sentenced for inciting ethnic hatred. Halla-aho did but nothing happened to him. Soini instead defended his decision not to sack Halla-aho on BBC’s HARDTalk.

Another problem with the PS is that it has lost crediblity among voters because it is a volatile mixed bag of ideologies ranging from neo-Nazis and fascists to former communists. It hasn’t done anything in the opposition except whine.

Even if the PS will suffer a defeat in the April elections and even if there is a big possibility that it will eventually splinter and implode, the big question is what will emerge from the wreckage of the PS? Will we see in Finland openly far-right parties like the Sweden Democrats and Danish People’s Party?

That is one of the fears that the demise of the PS raises.

[1] The English name of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) is officially the Finns Party. The names adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings.

[2] Then PS MP James Hirvisaari, who was sentenced for ethnic agitation, took a picture of Seppo Lehto making a Nazi salute inside the parliament building.

PS candidate shows video of “lazy” migrant but does not know how many of them live in Finland

Posted on February 20, 2015 by Migrant Tales

Jari Ronkainen is a candidate from the town of Hollola near Lahti in the April parliamentary elections. Should it surprise us that he his a member of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party? In a campaign video he divides migrants in two groups: those that integrate and those that don’t. Migrant Tales got in touch with the candidate by phone.

Are you serious about the video?

“Yes I am because the aim is to talk about a topic that [politicians and policy makers] try to avoid,” said Ronkainen.

Apart from being a distasteful video because it portrays migrant groups in a racist and stereotypical manner, the PS candidate doesn’t have a clue when asked how many unemployed migrants there are in Finland.

“I don’t know [the figure] but there are a lot of Somalis that are unemployed,” he added.

Even if the video suggests that the “lazy migrant” got his problem sorted out by sending him back to where he came from in the Middle East, the migrants portrayed have a stereotypical resemblance of Mexicans. The insulting video even uses the word “manana,” which is spelled mañana and means tomorrow in Spanish.

Migrant Tales asked Ronkainen why is he portraying a so-called Arab as a probable Mexican.

“The video is supposed to portray only migrants,” he said.

Lazy person or lazy bum!! Watch the PS candidate’s video here.

So what does this say about a candidate who speaks out against “lazy migrants” but doesn’t have a clue how many migrants are unemployed never mind how he plans to hand out jobs to everyone in Finland?

“It doesn’t matter if migrant unemployment is today small or big in Finland, we have to make sure that these types of people don’t come to Finland,” he said. “I want to bring this to the attention [of the public] so it won’t be a problem in the future.”

It’s a mystery how Ronkainen plans to ensure us if elected how people at the border will be sorted as “hard-working” or “lazy” migrants.

Ronkainen said that those “lazy” migrants that live in Finland cannot be deported back to their home countries because they already live here.

Intolerance can surely distort a person’s world with the help of brute ignorance. In Ronkainen’s world, Mexicans can be from the Middle East with worms that can utter “manana,” or mañana, tomorrow in English. The medic, who is the PS candidate, gives medication to cure the “lazy” migrant. The medication can be taken as a suppository, or anally, according to the medic.

The more you watch this video the uglier its message becomes.

Timo Soini and the PS: “What goes around comes around”

Posted on February 19, 2015 by Migrant Tales

Perussuomalaiset (PS)* chairman Timo Soini has good acting skills and a poor memory. At a press conference Thursday he told us about the death threats he’s received. I know how he feels because I too have received such death threats possibly from people inspired by the PS’ populist and hateful ideology.

Even if I’ve lived in countries like Argentina and Colombia, I never got death threats. That happened to me for the first time in the early 1990s in Finland, when I was doing a big story for Apu magazine on the refugee center of Mikkeli.

There is a perfect quote that sits well with Soini and the PS in light of today’s press conference: “What goes around comes around,” which means that whether you do good or bad things to other people, the same will return to you.

For some white Finns the PS may be a good party but for some migrants and minorities in this country like Muslims it can be an extremely hateful and dangerous party.

Read full Iltalehti (in Finnish) story here.

While all types of threats should be condemned, Soini forgets that he has with the PS created a monster of his own making that has come to haunt him with his death threats.

How many migrants and visible minorities face racism and hostility on a daily basis in this country because of Soini’s cronies like MEP Jussi Halla-aho and the likes are exercising their “free speech” to disenfranchise them?

Soini has with the PS polarized Finland and encouraged many of his followers to be proud bigots.

All the hate, bigotry and racism that parties like the PS are spreading goes and comes around.

UPDATE (Feb. 19): Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism

Posted on February 19, 2015 by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales’2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism will be updated separately. To see other examples of opinionated journalism in Finland about cultural diversity, please go to this link.

Feb. 19

Soini: Perussuomalaiset ei “flirttaile” rasismin kanssa (Helsingin Sanomat)

What’s wrong with this news story? The Finnish media has asked over and over again Perussuomalaiset (PS)[1] chairman Timo Soini what he thinks about racism. The PS chairman always gives the same answer, claiming with a poker face that his party doesn’t even flirt with racism.[1] What’s wrong with this question and the story? Everyone in the story, the reporter and Soini, are white Finns asking about racism. Why doesn’t Helsingin Sanomat ask a minority living in Finland or a member of the Romany minority if they think the PS is a racist party? If they approached Migrant Tales with such a question our answer would be clear: The PS is a populist anti-immigration, homophobic and especially anti-Islam party that is against cultural diversity. Soini is the last person that will tell you that his party is racist. Therefore, the reporter should find more ingenious ways of showing how the PS has issues with racism.

[2] Soini claimed in 2009 that he’d sack any PS member if they got sentenced for inciting ethnic hatred. PS MEP Jussi Halla-aho did but nothing happened to him. Soini defended his decision not to sack Halla-aho on BBC’s HARDTalk and on top of that gave him the job of drafting the PS’s party program on immigration.

Declassified documents about Somalis shed light on how Soviet asylum seekers were treated in Finland

Posted on February 18, 2015 by Migrant Tales

This story published by MTV3, about a secret agreement to return Somali asylum-seekers back to the then Soviet Union, forgets to bring up a very important question: Was there another secret document with Moscow to return Soviet citizens to the USSR if they sought asylum in Finland?

The 1990 agreement, which was never enforced, became public knowledge after after it was declassified after 25 years.

Read full story (in Finnish) here.

While it is important that such documents become public because they shed light on a shameful era, MTV3 should have dug deeper and asked why would the government want to breach those international refugee agreements it had signed in the first place? How was it possible for the then government of Prime Minister Harri Holkeri to consider such a move?

The answer is simple: It’s because they had done this for decades with Soviet refugees and they apparently didn’t like the idea that black people from Somalia were moving to Finland. The hostile reaction of the Finnish media and public to a few hundreds of Somalis seeking asylum at the time reinforces the latter.

Tabloids like Ilta-Sanomat were responsible for spreading and reinforcing racism and intolerance. This billboard reads: Somalis will make Finland their home. The language used by the national media was racist and disrespectful. Source: Migration Institute archive.

Finland foreign population in 1990 was tiny, totaling only 21,174 or 0.4% of the population.

Thanks to Migrant Tales, it was possible to get in touch after over 20 years of searching with a former Soviet asylum seeker who was caught in Finland and returned back to the USSR. Aleksander Shatravka is one of twelve former Soviet citizens are on an Amnesty International list of people who were forcibly returned back to the Soviet Union.

UPDATE (Feb. 17): Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism

Posted on February 17, 2015 by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales’2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism will be updated separately. To see other examples of opinionated journalism in Finland about cultural diversity, please go to this link.

Feb. 17

Suomi pelkää terroristeja vähemmän kuin naapurimaat (Helsingin Sanomat)

What’s wrong with this news story? Today’s front page of Helsingin Sanomat’s online edition has a picture of three black young men with the following headline: Finland fears terrorists less than its neighboring countries. For those interested in semiotics, the study of meaning-making, the philosophical theory of signs and symbols, today’s front page of Finland’s leading daily is a case in point in how the media reinforces stereotypes and prejudices. Did Helsingin Sanomat alert those in the picture that their faces could be connected to terrorism and that the story reinforces suspicion that black people could be involved in terrorism? Is Helsingin Sanomat suggesting that the next terrorist act will be carried out by black and Muslims? Had they forgotten that the biggest terrorist act in the Nordic region was committed in 2011 by a white Norwegian anti-jihadist crusader called Anders Breivik? Why didn’t the paper put a picture of Breivik? A lot of questions and few answers from the national media.

A tragic message from Copenhagen

Posted on February 15, 2015 by Migrant Tales

Violence shouldn’t have any place in our society but neither should we lose sight of why these violent acts occur in Europe today. In a society that defends civil rights such as freedom of expression, violence has no place and should be condemned.

Violence can, however, come in many forms: bombs and killing people in cold blood. You can also use “a silencer” to hide the bombs and bullets and target whole groups in subtler and more effective ways like social exclusion, racism and bigotry.

Both are unacceptable and put at risk our own values.

Even if we still do not know the motives behind the attacks in Copenhagen, is it appropriate to begin labeling whole groups with a single brush?

Here is the message from my Muslim friend Bashy Quraishy in Copenhagen:

Many of my foreign friends have sent me SMS, emails and even called from far away lands to enquire if I was OK. They have heard about the fatal shootings in Copenhagen and were worried about my safety…

While it is absolutely important for all of us to condemn and denounce any act of violence, it is also necessary to do it with clear heart and conscious and not for any populist gains. It is always sad and unfortunate when violence is committed against civilians, resulting in death and injuries.

In my books, it does not matter who commits violence, from what culture, class, religion or ethnicity, the criminal belongs to. Violence is violence and we must distance ourselves from such inhumane acts.

Unfortunately, like it happened in 9/11 and even in Paris attacks, the experts and journalists have quickly started using the terms such as; Islamic terrorist, Jihadi and ISIS sympathizer to describe the lone gunman. The fact is that police has no clue, authorities have not mentioned the religion and media has not seen the person but on TV2, Breaking News coverage, DR2 Deadline and in newspaper Internet editions, Islam is already being dragged in the picture.

On the national TV2 channel, the gunman is described on the screen – from the first moment – as; Arabic looking and with very fair color. Someone must ask these Islamophobes on TV2; what is an Arabic looking person and how do they know he was an Arab?

Some sound thoughts during this moment of grieving.