Enrique Tessieri Archives - Page 29 of 245

The response to Suddeutsche Zeitung’s Alex Rühle by Minister Wille Rydman’s office reveals contempt for the free media

Posted on August 4, 2023August 4, 2023 by Migrant Tales

The reply by Perussuomalaiset (PS)* Minister Wille Rydman aide to Suddeutsche Zeitung’s Alex Rühle is a clear example of how the minister and his party hold the free media in contempt.

About thirty years ago as the Financial Times correspondent in Finland, a foreign ministry official suggested that I get in touch with him before publishing anything on Helsinki-Moscow relations. I considered it an infringement on my rights as a journalist. A scandal ensued.

It appears that Minister Rydman and his aide, Tuulia Alanko, have crossed a line by telling Rühle which sources he should not use in order to “report correctly” about the government.

I was not able to confirm through Rühle if the two messages published in Suomen Uutiset are authentic. However, Suomen Uutiset is the PS’ official newspaper.

A question emerges: Did Rühle give permission to Rydman’s office to make public these two messages?

In my opinion, the actions and responses to Rühle by Minister Wille Rydman and his office show clear contempt for the free media and frustration that the minister and the PS cannot control what the media writes and reports on.

Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Alex Rühle: “I was irritated by Wille Rydman’s repeated accusation of frivolous and false reporting”

Posted on August 3, 2023August 3, 2023 by Migrant Tales

An email published on Twitter has caused a stir since it implied that Minister Wille Rydman. I got in touch with Alex Rühle to confirm if what he wrote is true.

Alex Rühe is the Nordic correspondent of Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Below is the original email published Wednesday:

“Dear all,

The sentences quoted on Twitter come from a private, confidential email which I wrote to a source in Finnland. This email was not intended for publication. However, the source forwarded this email without my knowledge to the person, who calls herself on Twitter @PistolSolja and whom I don’t know.

She in turn published the sentences – again without my knowledge or consent.

I chose my words in this private mail because I was irritated by Wille Rydman’s repeated accusation of frivolous and false reporting.

In my mail I incorrectly gave the impression that Mr. Rydman had written me an email personally. In fact it had been written by his assistant in response to questions I had sent Rydman in preparation of my last text about the political situation in Finnland for the Süddeutsche Zeitung. I have never claimed that Rydman threatened me nor do I feel threatened or scared by Wille Rydman or his assistant.

Sincerely,

Alex Rühle

For further reading: The daily has covered (in German) numerous scandals of Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s government:

A “special kind of evil” to place pregnant women and children in harm’s way in Finland

Posted on August 1, 2023August 1, 2023 by Migrant Tales

The government of Prime Minister Orop plans to tighten the already vulnerable situation of undocumented migrants in Finland, according to a statement by the ministry of social affairs and health. “Removing the right of illegal residents [undocumented migrants] to non-urgent health and social services and social security…”

In plain English, non-urgent health services include:

children’s health services,
pregnancy and childbirth services
health checks and vaccinations

There are an estimated 3,000 undocumented migrants in Finland, of which 300 are children.

Abdirisak Ahmed is a medic, and he is shocked by government plans.

Finland’s refugee policy returns to the Cold War

Posted on August 1, 2023August 1, 2023 by Migrant Tales

I was surprised again to read a story in Yle about Russian army deserters crossing the Finnish border “without permission.” Without permission?! Understanding that the Russian deserters had crossed the border to ask for asylum in Finland, can we state that there is something “illegal” about this?

A ridiculous claim by a Finnish tabloid. How can a refugee be “illegal?” Source: Ilta-Sanomat

Moreover, another Cold War term used by Yle in the story is loikkari, or defector.

In the 1930s, Finns who moved to the Soviet Union were also called loikkari.

In the face of sensitive relations between Finland and the former Soviet Union, the Finnish authorities avoided back then calling during the Cold War a Soviet citizen an “asylum seeker.”

During the Cold War years, one or two Soviet citizens were granted asylum status in Finland. One of these, apparently, was asked to leave the country after getting asylum.

Migrant Tales had the opportunity to interview in 2012 one of these former Soviet citizens who was caught crossing the border and returned to the USSR despite having sought asylum.

Article 14 of the UN Human Rights Declaration, reads: “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”

Petteri Orpo’s government of Finland loathes migrants: Is it an overestimation or underestimation?

Posted on July 30, 2023July 30, 2023 by Migrant Tales

By now, after numerous scandals, Prime Minister Petteri Opro may be thinking that getting into bed with the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* was a huge mistake that will have far-reaching consequences for the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) and even end up costing him his job.

If Orpo and PS Finance Minister Riikka Purra had a crystal ball to look into the future, what would they have done differently? Quite a lot, I think.

Prime Minister Orpo got the first sour taste of scandals to hit his government with Vilhelm Junnila, who resigned almost s soon he was appointed as minister of foreign trade.

It could be summed up in two words: overestimate and underestimate.

It’s pretty clear that Orpo and Purra underestimated the Wilhelm Junnila debacle. Or maybe the correct term should be wishful thinking, believing that Junnila’s racist, far-right, and anti-Semitic writings would not raise any questions.

One matter that Purra and her party overestimated was the lure of racism and xenophobia. Like a magic button, the PS can turn to its magic racism button to get votes, and lots of them, and media complacency.

But has this now changed? Are we now seeing, as what PS Interior Minister Mari Rantanen called a paradigm shift migration policy, a change in our perception and acceptance of racism?

Time will tell if my comment was an overestimation or an underestimation of the situation.

Spain’s snap election result is bad news for Finland’s conservative-radical right government

Posted on July 28, 2023July 28, 2023 by Migrant Tales

Instead of only congratulating the National Coalition Party’s (NCP) sister party, Partido Popular, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo should pay close attention to the election result in Spain. True, the conservative Partido Popular, won the election, but the result was disappointing and insufficient to give it a majority.

Social Democratic (PSOE) Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’ snap election gamble paid off handsomely. The PSOE defied all expectations and gave it 31.7% of the vote, the best result in percentage terms since 2008. More importantly, the result broke with Europe’s shift to the radical right.

Source: The Guardian.

The biggest loser of Spain’s election was the far-right Vox, a sister party of the Finnish Perussuomalaiset (PS)*. Support for Vox plummeted to 12% from 15% in 2019, causing it to lose 19 seats to end up with 33 seats in parliament.

Source: Helsingin Sanomat

If Spain can beat conservative and radical right parties in an election, countries like Finland should be encouraged by the result in Spain.

Finland’s government gets ready for another scandal. This time it’s Minister for Foreign Trade Wille Rydman. The party? You guessed it.

Posted on July 28, 2023July 28, 2023 by Migrant Tales

It is ironic that when Perussuomalaiset (PS)* Finance Minister Riikka Purra published Wednesday a blog playing down her racist and violent postings of 2008, another scandal erupted when Helsingin Sanomat revealed a number of racist messages of PS Minister for Foreign Trade Wille Rydman. The messages were written in 2016 between him and his former girlfriend.

Rydman’s anti-immigration views were so well known in his former party, the National Coalition Party (NCP), that he was known as “NCP’s Halla-aho.”

Jussi Halla-aho, the speaker of parliament, is known as the “father of Finnish racism” due to his blog writings on Scripta.

Source: Helsingin Sanomat

In those messages, Rydman called asylum seekers who came in 2015 “desert monkeys” and used other racist words for blacks, Muslims, and Jews. He wrote that a certain flower, the lilly of the valley, spreads and multiplies like Somalis. Rydman said he’d be ready to forbid the person wearing the hijab instead of the veil.

The incident is the sixth scandal involving five PS ministers and the speaker of the parliament.

Rydman ran into problems last year when Helsingin Sanomat published an investigative story where a number of young women, some of whom were minors, claimed they were harassed by him.

The scandal caused Rydman to be suspended from the party. He joined the PS in January.

Riikka Purra plays the victim and plays down her racist blog writings of 2008

Posted on July 27, 2023July 27, 2023 by Migrant Tales

Perussuomalaiset (PS)* Finance Minister Riikka Purra’s defense rests on playing the victim and underplaying her racist and hostile blog postings she wrote on Scripta in 2008, where she used the n-word, Turkish monkey, threatened to kill youths of migrant origin on a commuter train, among other anti-social postings.

On the right, a self-confident Riikka Purra. After the scandal broke, her image changed (left).

Scripta is a blog written by Jussi Halla-aho, who was convicted in 2012 for ethnic agitation and for breaching the sanctity of religion. Halla-aho was appointed in June speaker of parliament.

You can access some quotes from Halla-aho’s blog here.

A warning: Scripta is littered with Islamophobic, racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, and misogynist writings.

A good example of how an Islamophobic party like the PS covers its hatred for Muslims. In the top picture, the PS claims that Muslim women are oppressed because they wear certain Muslim attire. In the second cartoon below, the PS gives its real opinion: “Why don’t you go back to where you came from? That dress has no place in Finland.” Purra made a comment in 2019 of a woman with a “black sack” which she hasn’t apologized.

One of Purra’s main defenses of her racist, homophobic, and hostile writings is that they were written 15 years ago and eight years before she entered politics. She wrote that the writings were “15-year-old comments made on the Internet 15 years ago.”

If I had to break down her defense:
One third playing the victim
One third blaming others like the media
One third defiance

Even if Purra doesn’t mention it in her blog, she was 31 years old in 2008 and a university researcher.

Her second defense argument is that her racist postings were done as “insider humor and sarcasm.”

Radical Right Interior Minister Mari Rantanen tries to erase her racist past

Posted on July 26, 2023July 26, 2023 by Migrant Tales

Radical right politicians like Mari Rantanen, the new interior minister of Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s government, claimed with a poker face in an Uusi Suomi interview that she does not see any racism or far-right issues in her party. “I don’t know then what we are supposed to renounce,” she added.

For those who have not been following the government crisis due to the Perussuomalaiset’s (PS) links with the far right and racist postings, National Coalition Party (NCP) Prime Minister Orpo has promised to set strong guidelines against racism and commitment to equality and non-discrimination.

To many who have observed Rantanen in the opposition, some may conclude that her views of migrants are racist and based on conspiracy theories. Before the April election, she posted (now taken down) on her website the great replacement theory: “We mustn’t be so naive [naive in Finnish means being ‘blue-eyed’] that soon we won’t be blue-eyed.”

Other PS politicians who have spread this conspiracy theory are Riikka Purra (finance minister and deputy prime minister), Leena Meri (justice minister), and Wille Rydman (minister for foreign trade).

Interior Minister Mari Rantanen. Source: Uusi Suomi.

Apart from hoping in a comment that asylum seekers would drown in Greek waters before reaching safety, her racist views, like on the great replacement, are littered throughout her Internet history.

22/7: A day of infamy we must never forget but returns

Posted on July 22, 2023July 26, 2023 by Migrant Tales

It is a creepy coincidence that during another 22/7 anniversary when a mass murderer in Norway killed in cold blood 77 victims in 2011, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark are ruled by governments that are hostile to people from outside the EU.

In Finland, we have two far-right terrorist investigations suspected of planning attacks against migrants.

Source: Yle

The same language that the Norwegian killer used to justify his actions was used in Finland by Riika Purra, the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* finance minister and deputy prime minister, to denigrate migrants. Like the Norwegian killer, who warned about Muslims taking over Europe, Purra lashes out in her Scripta writings against Muslims, gays, the Romany minority, and Africans.

Apart from spitting on beggars, Purra threatened to use a gun on a commuter train to kill youths of migrant backgrounds.

Two images of PS Finance minister Riikka Purra: Confident and beaten after the revelations of her racist and violent blog posts of 2008 came to public light. Sources: BBC and Iltalehti.

Scripta is an Islamophobic, xenophobic, and homophobic blog written by Jussi Halla-aho, who was convicted in 2012 for ethnic agitation and for breaching the sanctity of religion and is the speaker of parliament.