Hannu Järvinen is a Perussuomalaiset (PS)* councilperson from the city of Espoo. One of his big pastimes is speaking badly of immigrants. Like many of his party, xenophobic and especially Islamophobic opinions are his pet topics.
His advice will scare away people from Finland than keep them here.
Järvinen’s solution for migrants: “When you move to live in Finland, you have to learn the language, respect our ways of life and values as well as work for the good of Finland. When you move to Finland, you have to become like a Finn.
While such requests appear outrageous because they have nothing to do with Finland’s official integration program, too many like Järvinen think like him.
In Finland, over 1.2 million people emigrated mainly to North America and Sweden before and after World War 2, respectively, during 1860-1999.
My tweet to Järvinen: “Your point of view shows me that you don’t know anything about immigration. Did you mean that we are supposed to throw away our culture? Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of Finns that have moved away from this country.
Here is a good video that shows what Järvinen means and how it is supposed to happen in real life. In the movie Pane e Cioccolata, an Italian migrant becomes Swiss by dying his hair and rooting for the team that is playing against Italy.
“Walking, walking, walking I go looking for freedom, hopefully I will find my way, so I can keep on walking.”
Victor Jara (1932-73), Caminando, caminando
September 11 marks the 50th anniversary of the bloody coup that overthrew Chile’s democratically elected President, Salvador Allende. Finland’s small but active Chilean community has organized a number of events this year to commemorate the day that awakens in many mixed memories.
Angel Barrientos, one of the 182 refugees who came to Finland from Chile in January 10, 1974, is the first friend I made of this group in the early 1980s. His sister, Silvana, who lives in Coquimbo, Chile, is on the front cover of the book, “Whistling under the snow,” published recently about the Chilean diaspora of Finland.
The Chilean community of Finland is remembering the 50th anniversary of the terrible coup that was made possibly by Henry Kissinger and the Nixon Administration. The book, “Whistling under the snow, edited by Adrián Soto, commemorates those difficult years. It is the first one published on the Chilean refugees in Finland.
How do 50 years change a person’s life in a new home country?
“Adapting to my new home country was a long process marked with different phases,” he said. “After all these years, I feel more at home in Finland than in Chile.”
Angel admits that when he visits Chile, he feels a bit out of place.
“I have difficulty understanding what young people are saying,” he continued. “The language changes rapidly and there are new slang words. I speak to youths, and they just look at me perplexed. trying to understand what I am saying.”
First years in Finland
Just like any person who has been torn violently from his home country, the first years of adaption are rarely easy. For example, Angel says that when he arrived in Finland, it was in winter with -15 °C compared with +26-27°C in Chile, where it was summer.
“Our countries are so different,” Angel said. “At first, the food was a shock and the language was difficult. Even so, I felt human warmth at demonstrations by young people where the Chilean flag waved. There was a lot of solidarity for our cause.”
While the following anecdote isn’t mentioned in the book, cultural misunderstandings could be comical. Finland is well known for its “Ykkösolut,” a low-alcohol beer. A group of Chileans at a bar thought it was the strongest because it had the number “one.”
“They drank and drank that beer, but there was no affect,” said Angel many years ago.
Angel Barrientos during younger days at the Turku Museum Center. Photos: Adolfo Vera.
“Finland gave me a lot. I was able to form a family, have four children, and study to become an interior architect. One of the most important things that this country gave me was peace and a safe space. In Chile, there is always that doubt that they would have probably even killed me like they did to so many. My father and sister were arrested by the authorities.”
Angel mentioned that in November 1973 he snuck into the Finnish embassy in Santiago, where there were 24 others seeking refuge. Tapani Brotherus , a hero for many Chileans, was Finnish ambassador to Chile (1971-76).
“Getting into the Finnish embassy grounds was difficult and easy,” Angel continued. “Some of the guards [Carabineros] at the embassy chose to look the other way while other guards were monsters.
He mentioned that those guards that looked the other way probably wanted to help them.
Homesickness
For many, dealing with homesickness forms part of the process of adapting to a new homeland. How hard homesickness hits one depends on the person.
“The first 10-15 years I thought about returning to Chile,” said Angel. “After ten years, such a move is difficult because you have established a family and children are anchors. I went back and stayed six months in Chile, but it was impossible.”
Finding work that paid enough to live off was one factor that shattered Angel’s hopes of living in Chile.
Even if the over 180 Chileans that fled the dictatorship were a heterogeneous group with different political ideologies, Angel admits that everyone attempted to live in harmony.
Kati Vera is one of Angel’s four children. Having lived the first years of her life in Finland, she later ended up in Canada where she studied to become a graphic artist.
“I am very proud of my father and all the Chileans that became refugees [due to the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship],” she said. “Being multicultural is a gift that permits you to see the world through different perspectives. For that, I am grateful to my father and mother.”
The Foreign Student experienced life across 11 editions, spanning from January 1981 to January 1982. The newsletter, which was put out by the Foreign Student Club ry of Helsinki, was outspoken on immigrant rights issues. The last issue of the newsletter below, got itself in trouble with the newly elected president of the club, Fadi Kriokorian, who wanted less controversial stories published.
In protest, Enrique Tessieri resigned as editor and that was the end of the newsletter.
The women, who allegedly changed her story and forced an Algerian law student, Adda Lahkar, to be deported from Finland, had changed her story.
During those days, foreigners did not have appeal rights against the decisions of the Aliens Office.
The woman threatened to sue me and the Foreign Student if we did not publish a retraction that “had to be approved by her.”
I told her to go fly a kite and to go ahead and sue me.
The story was originally published on Migrant Tales on June 15, 2016.
Because migrants and minorities in Finland do not have power, we are taught to believe we are rootless and have no historicity. It is not true: migrant and anti-racism activism in Finland was already very alive in the 1980s.
The demonstration in October 1982 demanded basic rights for foreigners in Finland.
“Our dominant classes have made sure that the worker has no history, doesn’t have a doctrine, any heroes or any martyrs. Every struggle has to start from scratch, separated from previous struggles; the collective history is lost, their lessons are forgotten. History appears as if it were private property, whose owners are the owners of everything.” Rodolfo Walsh (1928-77)
The late Argentinean writer and social activist Rodolfo Walsh (1927-77) showed the power of investigative journalism in Argentina when he published Operation Massacre in 1957. The book exposed how supporters of president Juan Domingo Perón were captured and shot by the military junta’s secret firing squad, after Perón was deposed by a military coup. Walsh’s quote, that the worker has no history, offers a good description of the situation of migrants and minorities in Finland today. Even if we too aren’t supposed to have any history, the interesting question to ask is why we are taught to believe that we are rootless and living on the outer fringes of society.
Can anyone really trust Mari Rantanen, the Interior Minister of Perussuoalaiset (PS)* of Finland? All it took to whitewash her far-right racist views was to take down such posts from her social media sites after the election and claim that she does not believe in conspiracy theories.
What a coward! She spreads all these far-right racist conspiracy theories and then does not have the guts to stand by them.
What does that show?
It reveals moral cowardice and bravado.
One of her many infamous quotes is: “We must not be so blue-eyed that soon we will not be blue-eyed.” “Blue-eyed in Finnish means naive.
She has also wished that asylum seekers drown in Greek waters, Europe will turn into an Africa, and that if steps are not taken to halt non-white migrants, Europe is threatened with civil war.
PS Interior Minister Mari Rantanen is proof that far-right racism rooted in conspiracy theories will take you far in politics. Source: X (formerly Twitter).
Looking at Minister Rantanen’s racist track record, it’s clear that she is bankrupt of all credibility. How can you trust a minister who is openly racist and too chicken to stand by her toxic views? How much of an opportunist is she, and how much harm has she inflicted on Finland? A generous amount, I believe.
Her loathing of Muslims and other minorities is clearly evident. Take for example the so-called youth gang “problem,” which is a direct copy from Sweden’s election and helped boost the Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots, to victory.
One of the facts about the government’s anti-racism statement is that it has more to do with injecting trust in a government after it was hit by a string of racism and far-right scandals in the summer. At least for the time being, the statement succeeded at keeping the government from dissolving after the Swedish People’s Party gave it the thumbs up.
The statement also exposes the magic abilities and wishful thinking of the government: the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* isn’t a far-right party; politicians with problematic racist backgrounds are appointed ministers and with the wave of a wand, their racism instantly white-cleaned.
Read the full government anti-racism statement here.
While there was nothing new in the statement except for criminalizing Holocaust denial, Nazi and Communist flags, it was a rehashing of what the government is obliged to do to protect the rights of all people in Finland irrespective of their background.
The statement would have never been drafted if it weren’t for the scandals that the government underwent.
The statement highlights, however, the ongoing problem of racism in Finland: We acknowledge the social ill’s existence but are not willing to challenge it head on.
After many years of writing about racism and discrimination in Migrant Tales, I am always disappointed by Finland’s and Europe’s blind spot of racism. A good example of the latter was a feature by Yle of far-right youths whose only contribution, in my opinion, in the story was their suspicion and loathing of migrants and minorities.
It is sad that the media continues not to see its blind spot of racism but perpetuates and spreads hatred and stereotypes about migrants.
Even if such a toxic narrative may bring you fame and power as a politician, even a ministerial position, it is a perilous path that can lead us to the slippery slope of the pyramid of hate.
The Holocaust and other genocides offer red-flag warnings.
Historian Stefan Lehnstaedt hit the nail on the head about our blind spot of racism through his analysis of the Holocaust.
Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle) published Saturday a story about two far-right youths belonging to the openly fascist and racist Blue-and-Black Movement (Sinimusta liike), and one to Suomen Sisu, which the authorities named in 2011 as “a Nazi-spirited association.” Thanks to the Yle article, the reader can read how much these so-called “radical nationalists” hate migrants.
Pyry-Lii Soinio is a twenty-two-year member of the Blue-and-Black Movement. He does not hide his loathing for outsiders. “I don’t think immigration should be restricted,” he said, “but [foreign] people should be deported altogether. I don’t care whether immigrants are good citizens or taxpayers. What matters to me is whether they are Finns.”
This is the third article that Yle has published on far-right members in the last three years. The first one was in 2019 by TV host Sean Ricks on far-right youths, followed by Suomineito in 2022.
Both stories received their fair share of criticism.
Plans to pay migrants less social welfare planned by Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s government are a wet dream that spans back to 2016, when then Social and Health Minister Hanna Mantylä aimed to pass legislation that would grant migrants less social welfare than native Finns. Fortunately, such a law did not see the light of day since it was unconstitutional.
The unconstitutionality of such a law rests on Section 6 of the Constitution: “Everyone is equal before the law. No one shall, without an acceptable reason, be treated differently from other persons on the ground of sex, age, origin, language, religion, conviction, opinion, health, disability or other reason that concerns his or her person.”
Thus, if you are going to pay less social welfare to a group, the measure must apply to everyone in order for it to be constitutional.
Efforts to get foreigners to get less social welfare than native Finns, was brought up again in 2018 by Finland’s Nobel Prize in economics, Bengt Holmström. He said that white Finns must not share power and privileges with migrants and their children. In other words, they should get lower salaries and social security benefits so that it does not irritate Finns.
According to Statistics Finland’s Working Paper series published in 2014, Finland is no land of opportunity for migrants, according to Pekka Myrskylä. He claims that the employment level of Estonians and Thai citizens matches that of white Finns. The majority of migrants, however, live in poverty in Finland because they make less money, according to him.
I have tweeted to Riikka Purra about her suggestion not to pay social welfare to foreigners. My question to her was: If social welfare is left to a minunum, does it mean that foreigners have to pay taxes?
Surprisngly, she did not respond to my tweet.
National Coalition Party MP Pia Kauma is another politician who has been hellbent that migrants should be paid less social welfare.
Perussuomalaiset on villi kortti, joka on valmis tuhoamaan Suomen hyvinvointivaltion ja demokratian. Hyökkäykset mediaa vastaan ovat tuttu strategia Donald Trumpin pelikirjasta.
Liikenne- ja viestintäministeri Lulu Ranne (ps) sanoi Helsingin Sanomissa tänään ”jotain rajaa” uutisointiin perussuomalaisista.
”Minä olen sitä mieltä, että tämä on mennyt aivan överiksi,” hän varoitti.
Kuvittele, että ministeri kertoo tiedotusvälineille, miten ne voivat tehdä työnsä. Mistä he saavat kirjoittaa.
Jos Suomi ei varo, PS ei miettisi kahdesti Kokoomuksen kanssa kansalaisoikeuksien ja demokratian heikentämistä.
Krooninen rasismi ja valheet sivuutetaan, mutta suurin niistä on Riikka Purran lupaus siitä, että pienituloiset eivät kärsisi leikkauksista.
Takinkäännös ennätys!
Suosittelen, että jokainen katsoo tämän videon ja jakaa sen eteenpäin vaikka omille persu tutuille. Tämä on takinkäännön SM-ennätys. Saat mitä tilaa? pic.twitter.com/xaZm8EN0nh
PS ei ainoastaan hyökkää tiedotusvälineitä vastaan vaan kieltäytyy puhumasta toimittajille. Tämä on vaarallinen strategia, ja sen pitäisi olla punainen vaate.
Purra ei ole vielä antanut medialle haastattelua rasistisista kirjoituksistaan huolimatta Helsingin Sanomien kaltaisten tahojen vivahteikkaista pyynnöistä.
