Category: Enrique Tessieri

Does the Finnish police really care about online hate speech?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

A total of 31 ethnic agitation cases were placed on the desk of the public prosecutor in 2019, which is a 59.2% drop from 76 cases in the previous year, according to Yle.

The number of ethnic agitation cases looks even more somber if we compare them with the cases that ended up in court. In 2016, only 11.9% ended up in court; the corresponding figure for 2017 and 2018 was 16.7% and 58.1%, respectively.


Ethnic agitation cases that ended up in district court in 2018. Even if such cases rose by 138.5% last year to 31, it is still only the microscopic tip of the iceberg. Source: Justice Ministry.
The number of ethnic agitation cases brought to the public prosecutor during 2016-2018.

Like hate crime and ethnic agitation cases, reporting sexual assault cases face the same challenges.

If Green League MP Iris Suomela is to be believed, she said in parliament in September that there are “hundreds of thousands” rape cases in Finland, of which 50,000 are reported annually to Victim Support Finland (RIKU). Of these, the police record about 1,200 cases of which around 200 get sentences.

Yle blames the lack of funding for the sharp drop in ethnic agitation cases investigated by the police.

“One reason is that the police don’t investigate online hate speech as actively as before,” Yle reports. In 2017, funds were earmarked to the police to recruit more police to investigate, among other matters, online hate speech.”

The number of online police officers has been scaled back. Police inspector Måns Enqvist of the National Board of Police of Finland said that there at the most 10 online police officers monitoring hate speech.

In the face of rising hate speech and ethnic friction, it is bad news for migrants and minorities in Finland.

Apart from funding, an important question we could ask is if the police prioritize hate crime cases and if they care. Sure, we can hear all the lip service about how the police have zero tolerance for racism, but in many cases, some of their actions speak louder than words.

Below are some incidents that eat away at police credibility and their standing in our culturally diverse community:

In the light of a drop in funds to investigate online hate crime and the questionable record of the police concerning racism among its ranks, there is only one conclusion: Online hate crime isn’t a high-priority issue for the police that exposes society’s exceptionalism.

The only person who is oblivious to Timo Soini the politician is Timo Soini

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Former Perussuomnalaiset chairperson Timo Soini reappeared from obscurity on Tuesday with the launching of his book on populism called “Populismi.” My initial reaction was that I had not missed at all and his round-about and apologist soundbites and arguments.

He states with his usual poker face: “My opinion about humanity is that every person is valuable irrespective of his race, religion, or ethnic background.”

A good cartoon of Soini would be of him at some Nazi extermination camp where he states in his usual style that he is against all the mass killing of Jews but does nothing to stop it.

Former Perussuomalaiset chairperson Timo Soini got his fingers burned by the very party he helped grow. A politician who is a master opportunist, Soini’s comeback to Finnish politics suffered a fatal blow in June 2017, when Jussi Halla-aho was elected as chairperson of the party. Source: Yle A-studio.

He continues: “I am against any self-indulgent speech and such rumblings about people through hate speech and the like.”

Then Soini puts on his usual they-done-it mask: “[b]ut if people are worried that if tens of thousands of people [Muslims] will do to Finland if they come here, their worries are justified.”

The interesting question to ask about Soini’s resurfacing is why the media, starting with Helsingin Sanomat, treats him with kid gloves. Writes an editorial of Finland’s most important daily: “He’s like a passage of Hameln’s Folk Tale of Fables: When he plays the flute, the media follows.”

It is incredible how Helsingin Sanomat offers in an editorial such a sanitized view of a man that brought populism and racist politicians mainstream politics.

Certainly, Soini’s brand of opportunistic does not directly affect some white Finnish journalists in the same way as Muslims and other minorities in this country.

Just like we bid farewell and good riddance to Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s government, the same wish goes to Soini.

Hollywood endings to racism and other naive toothless approaches to social ills

Posted on by Migrant Tales

One of the reasons why racism has lifted its head with so much confidence in Finland is the far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party, which leads in the polls. If social ills like far-right populism and racism are threats to society, why does it gain ground?

One of the reasons, I believe, is naivety. They believe that the way to end racism in Finland is to hit it with a soft stick. Such a strategy will not make racism go away but strengthen it.

Those believing in Hollywood endings to racism are white people who don’t experience racism but speak on behalf of those that do.

Are Finnish policy-makers and politicians naive when it comes to dealing with social ills like racism? Are their expectations of a Hollywood movie ending when everything turns out fine? See the trailer here.

Kenneth Sikorski, a writer who has written a lot about antisemitism and radical Islam in Finland, was quoted in the Jerusalem Post as stating that the approach to the latter issues is “extremely blue-eyed.”

“Successive Finnish governments could be accurately described as extremely ‘blue-eyed,’ especially during the last decade or so in their relations with Iran,” he said. “Part of the problem seems to lie with Finnish politicians who truly believe that having a dialogue – any dialogue, regardless of who is on the opposite side of the table – is better than having no dialogue at all. So you can easily end up with the equivalent of a businessman trying to reach an agreement with Al Capone.”

This is the wrong approach. Defend your institutions tooth and nail. Source: Reddit.

It’s time to smell the coffee: Far-right parties that are racist and populist are a threat to our Nordic way of life.

Kotoutuminen* #7: How do we deal with our prejudices and exceptionalism?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

One of the reasons why so many integration courses are a failure is because those teaching them to believe that teaching “culture” and “adaption” are simple matters that any person can do.

Wrong.

In 2008, I came up with this adaption guide for Russians who move to the Kymenlaakso region. Have perceptions changed since then?

Those who study culture like sociologists and anthropologists understand that culture is a complex matter.

Even so, it appears that in Finland, anyone who is a teacher no matter how many prejudices – or tools to understand the latter – can teach migrants how to integrate in Finland.

Thus the aim is not to integrate but in most of cases to assimilate (one-way adaption).

Note: Finland has good teachers who understand cultural sensitivity and have come to grips with their white fragility and society’s racism and prejudices.

Here are some of the questions I have about those who teach integration courses to migrants:

  • How many have training in cultural diversity and cultural sensitivity?
  • What is their opinion of Finnish culture? Is it exclusive and exceptionalist?
  • Who regulates their teaching?
  • Are the vast majority of people who teach integration white Finns?
  • What tools do we give teachers to come to grips with their prejudices and racism, which they’ve learned since childhood?
  • What does integration (two-way adaption) mean in practice? How is it supposed to happen in everyday life?

Any answers?

See also:

*Kotoutiminen is the Finnish term for integration.

The arguments used by the PS are deceptively aimed to hide their hostile agenda against migrants and minorities

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Perussuomalaiset (PS)* First Vice-President, MP and ethnonationalist alarmist Riikka Purra is at it again. In her latest tirade, she blames the government of Prime Minister Sanna Marin for looking the other way concerning the exploitation of migrants in the labor market.

This is a total snow job. PS MP Riikka Purra expresses concern about migrant labor market exploitation. She would not care an iota for migrant workers. All she and her party want is to keep migrants from entering the Finnish labor market.

If we want to understand why Purra and other PS politicians want to raise a fuss about this type of exploitation, one matter is for sure: It has nothing to do with helping migrants in the labor market.

The PS believes that migrants come to Finland and work for lower-than-average salaries, thus driving down wages paid to white Finns.

Instead of blaming migrants, why don’t parties like the PS state that the authorities and unions should do everything possible to protect the rights of migrants in the labor markets?

They don’t because it is the same argument they use for Muslim women: We want to prohibit such women from using Muslim attire because we want to “liberate” them.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The last matter that Purra and her ilk want is to “liberate” Muslim women so their whitewashing process can begin. The same goes for migrant labor rights.

Exposing white Finnish privilege #68: The party that injects Finland’s Islamophobia with steroids and other hate-enhancing drugs

Posted on by Migrant Tales

One matter is clear: Opinion polls, which place the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* as the most popular party, have not only encouraged the party’s far-right stance but given it the hubris to spread and implant with its hatred social ills like racism.

Finland is, alas waking up to the threat of the PS.

In his New Year’s speech, President Sauli Niinstö pointed the finger at Halla-aho’s party, which prompted a knee-jerk reaction from the PS’ head. He stated that the president should mind his own business.

“Online shaming and hate speech are new concepts in public debate,” said President Niinistö. “However, our legislator has been far-sighted. For example, incitement to ethnic hatred and offenses against personal reputation, dignity or privacy of the individual are already criminalized by law.”

Halla-aho, who was convicted for ethnic agitation and breaching the sanctity of religion in 2012, wants to scrap Finland’s hate-speech laws.

Finnish white privilege #68

One of the least-acknowledged ideological love affairs written in the Finnish media is the relationship between the PS and Danish People’s Party.

That is why it should not come to any surprise that Halla-aho said in Politiken, one of Denmark’s most important dailies, that he’s not interested in becoming a minister or even prime minister. The only reason why he is in politics is to change the “scheme and system” of the way Finland’s immigration policy operates.

The aim is clear: Halla-aho and the PS want to turn Finland into one of the EU’s most restrictive countries concerning Muslim and non-EU immigrants, especially from the Middle East and Africa.

Copenhagen-based daily Politken is one of the biggest newspapers in Denmark.

Reading code is one way of understanding what the PS has up its sleeve.

  • When the PS mentions it is against humanitarian migration, it is most likely suggesting that Finland should turn back asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa;
  • Even if the number of asylum seekers, or humanitarian immigration, totals a few thousand, the PS does not see size as a factor. In Nazi Germany, there were half a million Jews before 1933, accounting for a mere 0.75% of the population. As the Holocaust proved, it wasn’t the size of the Jewish community but that hatred spread by the Nazis;
  • The PS rarely identifies its victim, or Muslims. It uses code words like “asylum seeker,” “person of migrant background or origin,” “social welfare loafers,” to mean Muslim or person of color;
  • The PS states that it is “nationalistic” (kansallismielinen), which can mean fascist, ethnonationalist or ultranationalist;
  • In the same way that the PS uses code to avoid getting in trouble with the law and get away with ethnic agitation charges, the media plays along by giving inflated respectability and validity to their racism.

Even if the PS has a long-range plan to adopt the Islamophobic policies and mindset of Denmark, it explains why Halla-aho is hellbent on changing permanently “the thinking and system” of Finland’s present immigration policy.

See also:

Auschwitz: An overcast day of black-and-white history where it still rains yesterday

Posted on by Migrant Tales

In the face of the rise of far-right ideologies and populism, it is scary how some forget how hatred turns some people into heartless beings. Did you know that before the rise of Hitler in 1933, Jews with German citizenship totaled half a million, or about 0.75% of the total population?

Captain Gustave Mark Gilbert, the Army psychologist at the Nuremberg trials (1945-46), said what the Nazi war criminals on trial had an incapacity to feel with their fellow men. That fellow men and women are today Muslims and other minorities like the Roma.

“Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy,” he said.

Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1990. The fences and structures still stand like in the 1940s. Photo: Enrique Tessieri.
Dread and hopelessness in Auschwitz-Birkenau have given way to silence. Photo: Enrique Tessieri.
Shoes that will never fit the feet of their original owners. Photo: Enrique Tessieri.
The main entrance gate of Auschwitz that reads: “Work will set you free.” Photo: Enrique Tessieri.

Rakkaus on vahvempi kun etnonationalismi

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Mitä olet ilman rasismia? Kelpaatko? Oletko yhä vahva? Yhä fiksu? Pidätkö yhä itsestä?

Toni Morrison (1931-2019)

Hienosti kirjoitettu ja sanottu, Merve Caglayan! On se törkeää, että poliitikot kuten Riikka Purra Perussuomalaisista voivat olla epäkunnioittavia toisia kohtaan.

Purra on huolestunut siitä, että nyt vain 60% (lähde please?) ruotsalaista on syntynyt kahdelle ruotsalaiselle vanhemmalle, kun 2002 vastaava luku oli 73% .

Kuinka moni on syntynyt suomalaiselle äidille ja isälle nyt tai tulevaisuudessa? Onko tämä tärkeä tietää?

Minun isäni oli argentiinalainen ja äitini suomalainen. Purran mukaan minun pitäisi hävetä taustaani, koska synnyin isän ja äidin rakkaudesta.

Ei, Purra. Olet väärässä. Sinun etnonationalismisi ja rasismisi eivät määritä heitä tai minua.

Äiti ja isä olivat rohkeita ja olen varma, että rakkaus oli se tärkein voima, joka heitä yhdisti.

The framing of Muslims and minorities by the Finnish media and other toothless stories

Posted on by Migrant Tales

If I had to choose the worst journalism in Finland this year, that would be the media coverage to the sexual assault cases of minors that took place from November 2018 to before the parliamentary elections of April 14.

If you speak with some Muslims in Oulu, they will tell you that the hysteria died down after the April parliamentary elections.

In all fairness, I would like to point out that Finland has, fortunately, newsmagazines like Suomen Kuvalehti and other regional papers that try to report fairly and objectively about the plight of Muslims and minorities in Finland.

Many stories published in the Finnish media reinforce stereotypes about Muslims. This story, published in September 2018, is one of the worst examples. The woman wearing a niqab in the picture does not represent a political party even if the story was about niqab and burka bans in Finland. The picture was taken down shortly after it was published. Source: Yle.

If one can describe the frenzy that was fuelled by the media, police, and politicians concerning the Oulu sexual assault cases, it would be similar to the incitement of a lynch mob before they are about to hang a person in public.

Even if a real lynching is different from one that takes place on social media, both have the same aim. If a real lynching publicly murders a person, a social media lynching kills over and over again a scapegoat, which is often an ethnic group.

Turkish writer Mehmet Muran Ildan described the act of lynching in the following words: “A society with lynch culture needs a big zoo, not for the animals definitely, but for the very people themselves!”

When the media is in “lynch mode,” fair reporting is the first victim that is sacrificed. State Broadcasting Company Yle is a sad example of the latter. It threw in the dustbin and permitted its prejudices and biased reporting to get the best of it.

Just like the coverage of the Oulu sexual assault cases, the coverage of the repatriation of about 11 Finnish women and 30 children from the al-Hol camp in Syria was characterized by disinformation and lack of information. This illustration used in a Helsingin Sanomat story has women apparently wearing burkas even if they use niqabs. See Migrant Tales.

An example of Yle’s biased and unbalanced reporting were the stories it published between November 27 and February 13 on the Oulu sexual assault cases. A total of 77 stories were published during the period under review. In one day, Yle published 13 stories about the topic!

Even if it appeared from the media, police statements and politicians that Finland was suffering an epidemic of sexual abuses by migrants, only eight were convicted and given prison sentences.

While not criticising the media, Päivi Happonen, a Yle reporter, wrote in her blog the over-enthusiastic communications policy of the Oulu police. “So what bad did [Oulu police’s communication] inflict?” she asked. “A lot. Many have the impression that Oulu became the crime capital of Finland, where asylum seekers rape all the children they can.”

The unbalanced and overzealous reporting spread fear as well in the Muslim community. According to Imam Abdul Mannan of Oulu, Muslims did not feel safe and avoided going to the city center.

Another matter that sparked excesses by the media’s reporting was that parliamentary and European parliamentary elections were going to be held in April and May, respectively. Politicians from the governing party demanded tougher laws on crime and even tests on Finnish values to asylum seekers. The City of Oulu went as far as to ban asylum seekers from visiting daycare centres and elementary schools.

Even if the governing National Coalition Party and Center Party attempted to gain from the situation with their ever-get-tough stance on “people of foreign origin,” which is code for non-EU citizen or Muslim, the party that reaped the most from the situation was the Islamophobic and populist Perussuomalaiset (PS).*

This is reinforced by opinion polls published monthly by Helsingin Sanomat, and Yle. Yes, you read correctly: monthly polls.

One such poll showed the popularity of the PS rising by an impressive 13.7 percentage points in a year, from 8.7% to 22.4% in November.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Näyttökuva-2019-3-29-kello-22.44.31.png
Léo Cutódio published at the end of March the following posting on Facebook. In March, a Yle poll showed the PS with 15.1% and trailing behind the Social Democratic Party and the National Coalition Party.

Emilia Palonen, a University of Helsinki lecturer, was quoted as confirming that “anti-immigration sentiment” is the cause for the rise in popularity of the PS. Even if Palonen does not state it directly, one of the causes of the growth in such anti-immigration sentiment is due to Oulu.

One wonders how a country like Finland, which scores high on the World Press Freedom Index, so many important newspapers get it wrong when it comes to writing about Muslims and minorities.

There are various reasons why news coverage of Muslims and other minority groups is unbalanced:

  • Muslim and minority sources and experts are rarely used as authorities in a balanced news story.
  • The media too often paint Muslims, and minorities with a single brush and underline a narrative of “Us” versus “Them.”
  • There are no Muslim editors and there is an underwhelming number of visible minorities working in newsrooms as staffers.
  • Some media continue to give inflated respectability, importance, and space to Islamophobes and xenophobes.
Helsingin Sanomat’s staff is celebrating the daily’s 130th anniversary in November. Do you see any minorities? Only one person in the picture has a so-called foreign-sounding name. With about 16% of Helsinki’s population is non-white Finnish, Muslims and minorities are underrepresented in the newsroom. Source: Helsingin Sanomat.

If there is something that publications like Helsingin Sanomat and Yle could do is to write critically about the racism and Islamophobia in parties like the PS and not to treat their politicians in a neural-friendly manner.

The media is a crucial watchdog that looks over people’s rights irrespective of their backgrounds. If Finland doesn’t watch out, and especially its media, the slippery slope to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary is not too faraway.