“Since leaving the White House in 1981, Rosalynn and I have strived to advance human rights in countries around the world. In this quest, we have seen that silence can be as deadly as violence.”
Jimmy Carter
Some sectors of the media and other people like teachers believe that silence is the best response to racism spread by politicians.
One former journalist of the Mikkeli-based Länsi-Savo believed a few years ago that the best way to challenge racism was not to notice it.
Perussuomalaiset (PS)* chairperson Jussi Halla-aho offers us many examples of the racism spread by politicians in Finland. His comments on migrants, especially asylum seekers, reveal a pathological obsession with the topic.
A new case of aggressive and dehumanizing treatment of a black father and his son by a Helsinki Regional Transport Authority (HSL) train ticket inspector and later on by the police, according to Helsinki Times. The reason: Not having a valid train ticket.
Both the father, David Gill, and his teenage son Max were returning from a basketball tournament in Tampere.
The event, which was a traumatic incident that won’t be forgotten for a long time by the father and son, reveals a system and problem on HSL’s transport.
In the last three months, the cases of aggressive and unprofessional treatment by HSL train inspectors or security guards became public on social media in June and July. The latest incident took place on August 5.
The first incident that received wide coverage on social media involved an East African nursing student removed aggressively from the train. In contrast, the following month involved a minor, also black, who was manhandled by the security guards for not having a valid ticket.
In all three cases the victims are black and on HSL-run trains.
In one of the videos below, the father, David Gill, asks the police what they are doing as they detain him. “Why are you searching me? What did I do? I didn’t do anything! I called the police as well!”
The statement by the father that he called the police as well as a sad reminder of what happens when foreigners ask for help. You call for help, and you get detained because the police give the benefit of the doubt to the security guards.
Below is a Helsinki Times account of how the incident developed:
Perussuomalaiset MP Veikko Vallin tweeted an apology for the “mistake” of publishing pictures of children and workers at a nursery school. Even if he is sorry, he stated that his “critical opinion” of women using a chador at nursery schools has not changed.
Vallin’s action of taking pictures of children and workers at a nursing home was unbecoming of an MP. The images not only exposed his racist side, but it also showed how much some politicians, especially from the PS, do to crave their need for media attention.
The PS MP states in the original tweet that the black chador used by a Muslim woman scares him because it reminds him of Isis, which have been pictured in refugee camps in Syria wearing the niqab.
Source: eurodebates.tv
A grown man who is afraid of women wearing a chador?
Give me a break! This Trmp-imitating politician must be even afraid of mosquitos.
Vallin and the PS pulled one of the oldest tricks used by racist politicians:
Make a racist statement or claim;
Say you are sorry or remain quiet if a reporter proves what you said was a lie;
Despite all the commotion, your base will love you for what you said;
The aim is to get media attention and communicate with your base, who does not care if what you said was racist or immoral.
One of the most surprising matters about the story is not what Vallin did, but the deafening silence of other politicians and the media.
Only the tabloids, MTV and a handful of others covered the story.
Few of us will forget the 2011 parliamentary election when an Islamophobic and no-holes-barred racist party saw the number of MPs rise to 39 from 5 in 2007.
Even if the result was a wake-up call for Finland, the reaction to the rise of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) as a major political force. Some shrugged off the election as an anomaly and it would only be a matter of time when the PS would implode, like the Rural Party (SMP) in the 1970s.
It’s been near a decade since 2010 and the PS hasn’t imploded, disappeared but strengthened and influaneced its racist message on other parties like the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus).
Some analysts saw the rise of the PS as a direct answer to mounting social and economic inequality.
It could be a factor, but does growing social inequality turn you into a scapegoating racist?
Certainly not unless you had such issues before.
The most successful party of the 2011 (39 MPs), 2015 (38 MPs), and 2019 (39 MPs) parliamentary elections has been the PS. Even if suffered a hiccup in June 2017, when the party split into two factions, the PS, it has survived and lived to see another day.
When some Finns and parties talk about returning to the “good old days,” they are saying that they’d like to return to the days when foreigners had practically no rights and where racism was king.It was also a time of appeasement to the former Soviet Union, media self-censorship, impunity, and human rights abuses.
One of the most quaint matters about those who want to take Finland back to the good old days is that they weren’t even born during those troubled times.
The treatment of asylum seekers and watching over their rights brings stark memories of the good old days. Take back Finland? Source: Twitter
What kinds of laws were in force back then? The list below is by no means exhaustive:
Finland did not have any immigration act until 1983, or about 66 years after independence;
The Aliens’ Office granted residence permits on a one-by-one basis;
The Aliens’ Office under Eila Kännö functioned like a state within a state;
Even if Finnish women were the first to get the right to vote in Europe in 1906, they could not pass on Finnish citizenship to their born child until 1984;
Foreigners did not have the right to appeal if deported;
Police surveillance of foreigners by the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (Supo) was standard;
Supo had a register of foreigners that showed which demonstrations the person had taken part in and if he or she supported human rights;
Human rights abuses of asylum seekers were the rule;
Soviet citizens were denied asylum in Finland even if they requested it;
Finland returned tens of thousands of Ingrians and Estonians at Moscow’s request;
There were so few foreigners in the 1970s (under 12,000) that the biggest national groups were Finns who were naturalized Swedes;
Racialization was the rule and carved in stone;
Foreigners could not own or publish newspapers;
The Finnish media portrayed asylum seekers from countries like Somalia in an overtly racist manner;
Journalists, except for editors, were not allowed to write about Finland’s special relationship with the former USSR;
Finland was ruled by a strongman, Urho Kekkonen, from 1955 to 1982;
Under the Restricting Act of 1939 (219/1939), which became redundant in 1992, foreigners were not allowed to acquire a majority stake in a Finnish company;
Ownership limits of Finnish firms were 20% normally and 40% under special permission;
Foreigners could not own shares in sectors such as forestry, securities trading, transportation, mining, real estate, and shipping;
Foreigners could not own land;
Most Finns never heard of pizza;
Food markets had very few if any foreign produce.
Does any democratic-loving person who respects human rights want to return to the good old days of above?
Migrant Tales insight: This story was written by a member of the Somali community and edited by Migrant Tales the following week after a young Somali Finn was knifed and killed at the Helsinki Kannelmäki train station. The letter will be published as charges against the suspect will be apparently made public by the police this week,
Many questions abound.One of the most important is if the tragic death of the young man was a hate crime and if not, why? What were the bias motivators? Was it witness perception? Intense violence? Difference between the victim and the perpetrators’ ethnic background? Or was there no other obvious motive, which is also a bias indicator. Some in the Somali community believe what happened was motivated by ethnic background. It is an important question that needs answering.
I first heard of what happened at home celebrating and breaking my fast on Sunday [April 26, 2020] night during the holy month of Ramadan. My mother knows the victim’s parents and they are devastated. Shortly before the death, the mother of the young man suffered another death when her child was born without life.
The death made me first angry, but then I told myself that this was going to happen since I live in such a racist country.
The roots of this tragedy go back to when the mayor of Helsinki [Jan Vapaavuori] labeled the Somalis [on April 14] as those spreading coronavirus. What he did was label us as part of the coronavirus problem of Finland. Anybody could see what was going to happen next. People get scared, and the racists get more aggressive and start targeting you.
Since I was a child, I have experienced racism in Finland. In the early 1990s, I was scorned at because of my skin color, but now it is also because I am a Muslim. It’s a double whammy.
Living in a racist society is scary and especially for our elders who may not speak Finnish well enough to understand or talk back to people who harass them in public.
What happened [in Kannelmäki] reinforced what many of us Somalis feel in Finland. What happened on Sunday could happen to us. And it has, before.
I don’t trust the police that they will bring justice to what happened.
Are the police going to sweep the issue of racism under the rug? Are they going to conclude that the suspects had mental issues? Were under the influence of alcohol or drugs? Are hardened criminals? Or grew up in broken homes?
Everyone should ask themselves why these two men were carrying knives.
When I go out, I have a goal: I go to work, go to the market, or some other place. What purpose did these men have by carrying knives?
For me the answer is simple. To hurt, or in this case, to kill a Somali.
If politicians like MP Ano Turtiainan lived under the Nazi regime, it pretty clear what his view of the Holocaust. The disgraced politician, who mocked George Floyd’s death, now offers his “understanding” for Greece’s decision to secretly round up over a 1,000 asylum seekers and abandoning them on the open sea.
Turtiainen tweets: “It’s a totally natural matter that this happens [Greece abandons asylum seekers on the open sea]. At some point, each country’s [tolerance] reaches a limit.”
We all are well aware of Turtiainen’s racist world view. What is especially worrying about the tweet concerning asylum seekers is the silence, which is a political statement.
In the 2019 European parliament elections, a total of 234 Euro election candidates answered Alma Media’s election compass, a total of 85 (36.3%) of them stated that they either “strongly disagree,” “disagree” or are “neutral” (have no opinion) about the following claim:
“Is it the obligation of the EU to save all those migrants who attempt to come to Europe and who are at risk of drowning in the Mediterranean?”
Not only Islamophobic PS candidates were ready to let people drown in the Mediterranean, but also from mainstream parties like the National Coalition Paty (9/45% of candidates), Center Party (7/35%), Swedish People’s Party (4/20%), Christian Democrats (4/20%) and the Social Democrats (1/6.3%).
Could a second Holocaust or systematic mass murder happen in Europe again in the face of ethnic and racial “purity?”
Turtiainan’s tweet and silence of Finland’s politicians, coupled with EU inaction on effective immigration policy, are worrying signs about our propensity for systematic mass murder.
Here is something to remember what Captain Gustave Mark Gilbert, the Army psychologist at the Nuremberg trials (1945-46), said about the Nazi war criminals on trial. All of them, according to him, could not feel with their fellow men. He said: “Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
Parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and some of its MPs like Mauri “Perkele” Peltokangas, Riikka “You Will Not Replace Us” Purra, and Juho “Mussolini” Eerola are signs of an old Finland that is disappearing in the dustbin of history.
These politicians and their racist party represent the worst of this country and its society. But what can you expect if Finland has been in denial about its racism and done its best to whitewash its history?
Life must be easy for these types of opportunistic politicians. Just spread fake news about migrants and you’ll get elected. Your followers will even encourage you to ratchet up your racist discourse,
Even if these PS politicians are smiling, they are the face of a dying Finland that represents the worst of this society. Peltokangas tweets: “Start the party! Finland is a good country. It is the best country for us Finns. It is worthy of being defended, and its only defenders are Finland’s people.”
For us Finns?!
Sorry Peltokangas, Purra and Eerola, this country never was and will never be white. Too many Finns, over 1.2 million to be exact, emigrated to other parts of the world. They mixed and continue to be proud of their Finnish roots.
And let’s not forget our ever-growing culturally and ethnically diverse Finland growing before you.
We are proud of our difference and happy to know that these politicians are a dying breed.
An article in The Guardian on an asylum seeker who asks, “‘Why can’t I be legal anywhere?’ Exploited and left stateless by Sweden.” His story is not an anomaly but reveals what is happening to stateless persons, even in countries like Finland.
Helsingin Sanomat and Migrant Talespublished a story about the column. The author, Paavo Teittinen, hits the issue right on the nail:
“The source of human trafficking and similar type of exploitation in Finland is not inevitable. It has been allowed to happen. Criminals can run their [businesses] fairly freely due to the lack of information, resources, and [police] interest.”
In The Guardian article, the stateless person Rahman* tells about the exploitation and hopelessness of his case:
“It was a time when no matter what Rahman suffered, the legal right to remain in Europe eluded him. His lack of status enabled appalling crimes to be committed against him, and it left the criminals unpunished. He has been exploited and deported but his dream of Europe endures. He has found his way back to the continent but the future is uncertain.”
Here is the question: If the Finnish authorities turn a near-blind eye to human trafficking, it suggests that the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri), police service, and other state-run regulatory bodies give their tacit approval to this type of exploitation. What role does institutional racism have in the issue?
Who has heard or read in Finland that the present immigration policy and toxic debate surrounding asylum seekers and migrants are the sources of the exploitation in the labor market?
The reason why we are not hearing anything, or hardly anything, is because racism and complicity encourage us into inaction.
*Rahman is an assumed name to protect his identity.
Migrant Tales asked in April after the tragic death of an eighteen-year-old Somali Finn in Helsinki on April 26 is treated by the police as a hate crime.
What is equally surprising is the total news blackout on social media by the police as if communities affected by what happened don’t have the right to express their mourning and outrage.
The young Somali who was stabbed and died in April was Keyse Abdifatah Macalesh.
Even if there is some indication that the motive of the fatal stabbing may have had a bias motivators like ethnicity, the Finnish media is more interested in reporting about the suspect’s criminal background instead of how ethnicity may have played a role.
One Somali Finn that I contacted after the fatal stabbing stated:
“The death first made me angry, but then I told myself that this was going to happen since I live in such a racist country.
The roots of this tragedy go back to when the mayor of Helsinki [Jan Vapaavuori] labeled the Somalis [on April 14] as those spreading coronavirus. What he did was label us as part of the coronavirus problem of Finland. Anybody could see what was going to happen next. People get scared, and the racists get more aggressive and start targeting you.”
A hate crime comprises of two factors: the crime + bias motivation. Thus a hate crime is determined by bias, which includes: victim perception, organized hate groups, crime pattern, intense violence and specific targetting, timing, the difference between the victim and perpetrator, and by no other obvious motive.
The latter category, no obvious motive, is also relevant because it suggests that the crime was motivated by bias.
Indeed, people who commit a hate crime will do their best to play down or claim amnesia when it comes to determining their bias motivation.
One of the most critical questions about the death of the young Keyse Abdifatah Macalesh is why the police service mustn’t play down or overlook hate crime.
One of the most obvious reasons is so that they will not encourage the spread of similar crimes from happening.
My question to the police: Are there any bias motivators taken into account in Macalesh’s case?
