On one of my nightly walks on Tuukalankatu in Mikkeli, I see a Soldiers of Odin sticker on a lampost. Since these types of groups are toxic and hazardous to society, I scrape off the sticker.
Now you see it, but now you don’t.
The cruel arm of Finland’s asylum policy is not only Migri (The Finnish Immigration Service) but too many politicians who lack the courage to show their humanity and empathy for others.
One of the consequences of one’s journey to Europe is not only many years of waiting and despair, but death.
In the rural region of North Karelia in eastern Finland, there is an island called n-word in Finnish. Yes, you heard right: n-word, according to Journalisti, a publication of the Union of Journalists of Finland.
But that’s not all.
In Finland, the n-word is inappropriate and racist. The island in North Karelia is not the only example of the n-word in Finnish geography.
The offensive word explains why the Union of Journalists North Karelia (PKJY), which owns the small island, applied to the Institute of Languages of Finland (Kotus) to change the name to Uutiseksi (News).
The proposal by PKJY, which approve the name change at a board meeting earlier this year, turned to Kotus but its request was turned down.
“Even if the n-word is used in a derogatory [and racist] manner today, the name cannot be changed because it makes some feel uncomfortable,” Kotus said in a statement.
Somebody should enlighten Kotus that the usage of the n-word today is racist and offensive, “not uncomfortable.”
The decision by Kotus is a good indication of how Finland deals with racism, or how it does nothing substantial to challenge it.
The island derives its name from lehtin-word, which was what some called journalists and people working for the media in the 1980s.
Finland puts a lot of effort into its integration program. Earlier this year, with the sexual assault cases in Oulu, we saw the then government of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä blame asylum seekers for not integrating and that our integration problem was a failure.
All of these accusations had one matter in mind for then Minister of Interior Kai Mykkänen and the National Coalition Party: the April 2019 parliamentary election. Mykkänen went as far as to suggest giving a test to asylum seekers about Finnish values.
As we all know, the suggestion of giving an integration test is only intended for public consumption. What are Finnish values anyway? Is one of them being a supporter of institutional racism?
What do you think white Finns teach asylum seekers about Finland at integration courses? Some may do a good job but at the end of the day, many teach asylum seekers to accept institutional racism by telling him or her fairy tales about our society. In effect, such teachers are saying that this is the way things are done and you must accept it.
One example is when such courses speak of gender equality. They do not tell women, who are asylum seekers, on how to combat labor discrimination. Moreover, they don’t give the students skimpy information in many cases about changing institutional racism.
If we are serious in turning people into active citizens, we must do away with much of our exceptionalism and superiority complexes we have of other people. Tackling all forms of racism should be a much higher priority.
The next question is why we don’t do that and with greater determination?
Perussuomalaiset (PS)* chairperson Jussi Halla-aho gave us on Yle Ykkösaamu his usual anti-immigration blah blah and why Finland should relax its hate speech laws.
In the interview, Halla-aho, who was convicted of ethnic agitation and breaching the sanctity of religion in 2012, defended the Nazi-spirited Suomen Sisu association and played down PS MP Juha Mäenpää’s description in parliament that asylum seekers are a non-human “invasive species.”
Mäenpää is the same politician who stated in 2015 that “God had answered his prayers” after an asylum reception center was razed by fire.
While these types of counterarguments by Halla-aho, who has steered the party in into the far-right ideological lap of leaders like Lega’s Matteo Salvini and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, have no significance because the PS leader would even find arguments to justify the rise to power of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler in 1933.
Helsinki University criminal law professor Kimmo Nuotio threw some cold water on Halla-aho’s claim that hate speech laws have no place in an open society. Apart from pointing out that the PS’ proposal is political, he did not consider the ongoing debate healthy for democracy.
Moreover, the number of ethnic agitation cases that reach the courts are still modest as the table below shows.
“Personally, I find this type of discussion harmful,” Nuotio said, “it’s an attempt to undercut the basis for these laws.”
One matter that the Ykkösaamu journalist should have asked is why do we have laws against hate speech? The answer is obvious. Without them, it would be open season for racists and parties like the PS openly harass, attack, label and socially exclude vulnerable groups like Muslims for their political gain.
The argument used by Halla-aho to not open Finland’s labor markets to outside the EU is equally deceiving. Adding the usual fear-mongering that outside the EU there are half a billion people who could come to work, he claimed that such workers would drive down salaries.
Possibly valid to some extent, such people in our labor market like now would force our authorities to do a much better job in regulating markets and ensuring that exploitation does not become the norm.
* The far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017, into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. In the last parliamentary election, Blue Reform has wiped off the Finnish political map when they saw their numbers in parliament plummet from 18 MPs to none. A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.
Green League MP Iris Suomela raised an essential question in parliament on Wednesday about rape. She said that there are “hundreds of thousands” rape cases in Finland of which 50,000 are reported annually to Victim Support Finland (RIKU).
“The end result of all this is that the police record about 1,200 [rape] cases [annually] of which around 200 get sentenced,” she said.
It is a very good matter that the government is not only changing sexual abuse laws, which include consent but aims to essentially improve how the police handle such cases.
One question that arises when looking at Finland’s present sexual abuse laws is if hate crime and hate speech are also underreported in the same way. If Suomela speaks of annually of about 50,000 rape cases that are reported to RIKU, what kind of ballpark figures are we looking at for hate speech and hate crime?
According to the latest figures, hate crimes in Finland during 2017 rose by 7.97% to 1,165 cases compared with 1,079 the previous year, according to the Finnish Police University College.
The report states that only 21% of harassment and hate-speech cases in 2016 were not reported by the victims, according to the ministry of justice. If this is the case, we are talking about thousands, possibly tens of thousands of cases annually.
Even if Finland has very good hate speech laws and laws that promote social equality, the question these above figures bring up is what MP Suomela raised: Few victims report such crimes to the police. We need a change in culture and to listen to the victim.
The latter claim is supported by some of the conclusions of a recent European Network Against Racism (ENAR) shadow report. “Most EU Member States [like Finland in the report] have hate crime laws, as well as policies and guidance in place to respond to racist crime, but they are not enforced because of a context of deeply rooted institutional racism within law enforcement authorities,” ENAR said.
Apart from institutional racism issues, another practical matter we should ask if there are enough police monitoring hate speech and hate crime in Finland and enforcing the law vigorously.
The Finnish police have at the most 10 Internet police officers who monitor hate speech, reports Yle, citing police inspector Måns Enqvist of the National Board of Police of Finland.
Ten is too few in light of the ever-growing hate speech and hate crime problem in Finland.
THIS STORY WAS UPDATED
Perussuomalaiset (PS)* First Vice- President Riikka Purra asked in a tweet: “In your opinion, is it racist to call an African rapist human scum?”
Indeed, it is racist! It is especially racist if you are a white politician who is a member of an Islamophobic and Afrophobic party.
Can a human, irrespective of the crime, be referred to as subhuman?
Her question is a bit similar to what former UK Prime Minister David Cameron called migrants trying to enter Britain as a “swarm,” which is a term applied for fish and insects.
It is not appropriate for anyone, especially politicians, to refer to people as “scum” or a “swarm.”
In the interview with Susanne Päivärinta on Wednesday, the chair of the parliamentary administration committee, which oversees immigration policy, Purra could not name the three biggest national groups in Finland.
She told Päivärinta that they were the Russians, Estonians, and Somalis. Wrong. The three biggest groups are Estonians, Russians, and Iraqis.
Purra talks big and spreads Islamophobic fear but has problems with her facts like what percentage of foreign nationals live in Finland.
She didn’t even know.
Purra is a disingenuous politician whose anti-immigration rhetoric is a sham.
* The far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017, into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. In the last parliamentary election, Blue Reform has wiped off the Finnish political map when they saw their numbers in parliament plummet from 18 MPs to none. A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.
Migrant Tales does not usually publish opinion polls. However, the latest one published by Yle warrants a quick response.
White Finnish newspapers headlined the news as, “Support for the Perussuomalaiset* party surpasses 20%.” I and many of my friends see it differently: “Support for the PS shows that Finland has a serious untreated racism problem. Watch out brothers and sisters and get ready for more hostility and violence.”
Politicians like PS Vice-President Riikka Purra may ask how can one insinuate that half a million voters could be racist.
My answer: How many millions of Nazi Germany were indirect or direct complices in the Holocaust? How many millions of white Europeans and USAmericans were involved in slavery and the slave trade?
Yes, the PS is a racist party that exposes Finland’s untreated social ills like racism.
* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017, into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. In the last parliamentary election, Blue Reform was wiped off the Finnish political map when they saw their numbers in parliament plummet from 18 MPs to none. A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.
Migrant Tales wrote a story in 2013 on how the City of Vaasa, in cooperation with the Suomen Uimaopetus- ja Hengenpelastusliitto (SUH), the Finnish swimming instruction and lifesaver’s association, deemed the burkini “a security risk and not hygienic.”
The decision led to the banning of the burkini at Vaasa swimming halls.
Despite the initial eagerness to ban the burkini, the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman now recommends that all swimming halls in Finland permit the use of the burkini. According to the ombudsman, such prohibitions could be discriminatory.
I remember speaking to a representative of the City of Vaasa six years ago about its plan to ban the burkini. The attitude of the municipal official was quite hostile, asking why Muslim women should be given special liberties if men cannot wear shorts at swimming pools.
“We have for as long as I can remember men from wearing shorts [at pools]. There are no exceptions,” said the Vaasa city official, adding that “99.9% of the swimmers are for the ban.”
Even if the City of Vaasa was planning to ban the burkini, no representatives of the Muslim community were contacted.
The SUH representative said that it had got in touch with the Somali Association of Finland and a Somali city councillor, but none of them had commented on the matter.
The critical reporting and credibility of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle) have suffered in recent times star reporters quitting and parties like the Islamophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS)* influencing editorial content from the board.
There is no better example of Yle’s partiality and toothless reporting than a recent political human interest article about Riikka Purra, PS first vice-president who spreads white Finnish supremacist ideology.
One of Purra’s pet topics is how white Finns will become a minority in their country due to non-white immigration. She spreads such far-right fear-mongering despite knowing that Finland is one of the whitest countries in Europe.
Articles like the one below by Riikka Uosukainen, which raise Purra to a pedal stool because of her stellar rise in politics and possibly the next leader of the PS, are the partial and toothless stories that Yle writes uncritically today.
Imagine, in Finland today that a politician’s stellar rise hinges on spreading hatred and conspiracy theories about migrants. This is how low our country and Yle have stooped.
If we look at these pictures in the story, it is clear that the reporter likes Purra and wants to give her the best image she can in the story.
That is what serious journalists blame opinionated and toothless journalism for spreading racism and hostility towards migrants and minorities.
In the last picture with the new party secretary, Simo Grönroos, the reporter describes him as “a nationalist” who founded Suomen Sisu, a far-right Nazi-spirited association.
Just like Purra and her white Finnish supremacist conspiracy theories, Suomen Sisu is against Finns marrying foreigners because it would be bad for “racial hygiene.”
The article is one more slippery slope of how Finland is normalizing racism and white supremacy.
* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017, into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. In the last parliamentary election, Blue Reform was wiped off the Finnish political map when they saw their numbers in parliament plummet from 18 MPs to none. A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.