Enrique Archives - Page 15 of 152

Finland never was, is, and will be only “white”

Posted on July 3, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Whenever a far right politician like Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Olli Immonen, Jussi Halla-aho or James Hirvisaari comment on what is or who has the right to be Finnish, they always get it wrong. Their views, that Finland is only white, is not only wrong but a hostile act towards the tens of thousands of Finns who have foreign parent(s).

Finns with multiethnic backgrounds are more than some would want to admit. Why are politicians, especially from the PS, denying these people the right to be accepted and treated as equals in this society? Why doesn’t anyone, like Migrant Tales, speak up courageously for them?

The extreme nationalistic view of these PS politicians is not only harmful to Finland but to the people they label and exclude as equal members of this society. Why? Because they aren’t white.

Politicians, the media and the general public should send a clear message to those who label others in such a pernicious way. This is important because the aim of these anti-immigration politicians is to divide Finland along ethnic lines. Not only do they aim to make life as hard as possible, but destroy their self-esteem as Finns.

Immonen, who is chairman of the extremist Suomen Sisu association that aims to keep Finland white, writes on an Uusi Suomi blog entry: “This national cohesion [of white Finland] shouldn’t be upset by a no boundary utopian ideological world that is based on mass immigration and a multicultural social policy.”

Has anyone ever told Immonen and his pundits that Finland never was, is or will a so-called monocultural country? No country can ever be monocultural. It is a ludicrous claim like stating that all members of Group X are criminals or that Group Y are lazy.

That social construct, which Immonen refers to, was built during the last century thanks to myths born from Finland’s extreme isolation and fear of the outside world.

Instead of trying to breathe life into an ethnic Frankenstein that never existed, Immonen and his cronies should look at ways to encourage social and national cohesion through a policy of inclusion, acceptance and respect for cultural diversity.

Finland is a rapidly becoming a culturally diverse society and we must learn to live with this fact. Hiding our diversity or brushing it under the rug, like Immonen aims to do, is harmful to Finland.

No matter how much anti-immigration politicians and political parties may want to opportunistically kick and bitch about the fact that cultural diversity is here to stay, there’s nothing they can do about it.

It’s time to get real and embrace diversity for the sake of Finland’s present and future social cohesion.

PS’ Slunga-Poutsalo is “extremely concerned” about Finnish immigration policy

Posted on July 2, 2013 by Migrant Tales

In a short interview on A-Studio Monday, the new party secretary of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) reinforced her anti-immigration stance. “I’m not annoyed by anything concerning immigration,” said PS secretary Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo, “but extremely concerned about the immigration policy we pursue in Finland.”

Don’t be fooled, the PS’ new party secretary, Riikka SLunga-Poutsalo, is in the same anti-immigration extremist camp like Jussi Halla-aho and James Hirvisaari.

It’s unfortunate that the YLE journalist didn’t press her on what she meant by “extremely concerned about immigration policy.”

If he did, Slunga-Poutsalo’s far right anti-immigration colors would have stood a better chance of being exposed. As everyone knows, immigration policy is used by anti-immigration pundits to drive home their xenophobic views.

Compared with other European countries never mind neighboring Sweden, Finland is a non-destination for refugees never mind immigrants. Claiming that you are “extremely concerned” about immigration policy is fear-mongering.

But what worries Slunga-Poutsalo so much about our immigration policy anyway? The answer is easy: She doesn’t want Africans, Muslims and non-EU citizens moving to Finland because that means greater cultural diversity.

Her view of what kinds of immigrants should move to Finland is in line with the far right Danish People’s Party and their Euro MP Morten Messerschmidt, who spoke at their party congress on June 29-30:

“I think we need three sets of rules of immigration. One for Europeans, who will be regulated by EU-law. One for people from the rest of the Western World, including parts of East Asia, South America, etc. And then a third set of rules for the third world, who in general do not really offer anything we can benefit from…”

Slunga-Poutsalo sounded on A-Talk like PS MP Olli Immonen, especially when she spoke of her fear of ghettos.

In all truth, she doesn’t care about the plight of immigrants in Finland never mind if their children live in so-called ghettos. What she’s worried about is Finland’s ever-growing cultural diversity.

In the language of anti-immigration groups, “ghetto” is a byword for too many immigrants concentrated in one area. Would we call a white neighborhood a ghetto? What about Little China or Little Scandinavia?

I seriously doubt that immigrants, especially Africans and Muslims, will ever get any sympathy from Slunga-Poutsalo. They should therefore treat all of her comments with a generous pinch of salt and tweezers. Her track record on immigration can be clearly seen from the Nuiva Manifesto, which she signed together with other PS anti-immigration extremists. Her mandate is clear: undermine and harm immigrants and visible minorities as much as possible.

How will Slunga-Poutsalo do this? By driving home the point that immigration is a threat to Finland.

One comment she made did reveal her true anti-immigration colors. She said that convicted immigrants should be deported. That is a favorite position of far right anti-immigration groups who constantly criticize immigration policy.

Edward Snowden would help to put to rest Finland’s Cold War legacy

Posted on July 2, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Wikileaks said in a statement that whistleblower Edward Snowden had asked for political asylum in twenty-one countries, one of which included Finland. Understanding Finland’s history and its historic suspicion of foreigners, granting a high-profile asylum seeker like Snowden asylum in Finland would not only help to put to rest for good our poor record but have an overall positive impact.

Ever wonder why there are so few foreigners living in Finland? The answer is simple: Finland did everything possible to discourage immigrants and foreign investment to the country.

Finland had in force its first Aliens’ Act in 1983, or 65 years after independence. Before that, the Aliens’ Office was a police state where you didn’t have the right to appeal a decision.

Without any law that regulated immigration affairs in Finland, the Restricting Act of 1939 (law 219/1939) made sure that foreign companies and foreigners as well would be discouraged from coming to the country.

The Restricting Act of 1939 prohibited foreigners from owning real estate and acquiring a majority stake in Finnish companies – limiting this to 20% normally and 40% under special permission. The Act stipulated that foreigners could not own shares in sectors such as forestry, securities trading, transportation, mining, real estate and shipping.

Even if Finland was the first European country to give women the right to vote in 1906, it was not until 1984 when their children were granted automatic citizenship rights. Only the children of Finnish fathers were granted Finnish citizenship.

While it sounds strange, Finland adapted well and profited from its geopolitical isolation during the Cold War because it helped reinforce racist myths about Finnish ethnicity despite the fact that over 1.2 million people had emigrated from this country between 1860 and 1999.

The authorities like Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Supo) kept a close watch on immigrants. Some of the matters that were written on my Supo-Interpol file that was accessed illegally by a person was that I was interested in human rights and organized a demonstration in 1981.

This sad legacy, which has improved from the dark days of the cold war, when Finland returned asylum seekers to the former Soviet Union with total disregard for their safety and human rights, is what still casts a shadow over our anti-immigration sentiment. The senior officials in the ministry of interior and in the Finnish Immigration Service grew up during the Cold War.

If Finns were brought up to see people who are different from them as enemies and reinforced with the help of its laws, it shouldn’t surprise us that an anti-immigration party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) became the third larges in parliament in April 2011.

Snowden would do wonders to bolster Finland’s standing as a country that firmly stands for human rights and respects asylum seekers. It would help show how our negative attitudes and fears about immigrants and refugees are outdated.

The PS’ not too public love affair with the Danish People’s Party

Posted on July 1, 2013 by Migrant Tales

The DPP is an anti-migration, ethno-nationalist, anti-Islam,populist anti-elitist and anti-EU party that wants welfare only for native Danes.
The PS is the a carbon copy of the latter.

If you want to know what kind of a Finland the Perussuomalaiset (PS) want to turn the country into, take a good look at their political mentors in Denmark, the Danish People’s Party (DPP). Was it a coincidence that DPP EuroMP, Morten Messerschmidt, spoke at the PS’ annual congress in Joensuu?

Messerschmidt was charged in 2007 for singing Nazi marching songs and giving the Hitler salute in a bar in Tivoli, the major tourist attraction in central Copenhagen.

He was cleared of such charges in 2009 by a court, which forced the daily BT to compensate Messerschmidt for libel. Together with two other DPP members in 2001, Messerschmidt was sentenced by a court for 14 days for ethnic agitation. A DPP ad in Studiomagazinet claimed that Denmark would face mass rapes, violence, insecurity, forced marriages, women would be oppressed, and gang crime if the country became a multiethnic society.

See original source here.

Despite this outburst by the DPP EuroMP, the anti-immigration Danish populist party has its hands full with its racists and neo-Nazis, which it expels from the party regularly. Soini’s PS, however, hasn’t been so eager to weed out its racists and neo-Nazis.

Two PS MPs have been sentenced for ethnic agitation.

The end of the DPP’s pivotal role in Danish politics came in September 2011, when a left-leaning alliance led by the Social Democrats won the election.

For over ten years, the DPP had offered support to a minority government in exchange for the passage of strict immigration laws. But that has now changed, according to a story by Time Magazine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0T1uItGjh-0

This video clip was published before the September 2012 election in Denmark.

How did the DPP influence Denmark’s immigration laws?

Both the Danish and foreign spouse must be at least 24 years old to live in Denmark
The Danish partner must post a bond of £7,200 collateral ($11,600)
The foreign spouse must pass a language and general knowledge test
Both need to demonstrate a combined attachment to Denmark greater than to any other country
They have to prove that they have ”actively participated in Danish society” for at least a year
Many asylum seekers were kept in limbo for years

If the PS ever got in government or became the biggest party in the 2015 election, I have no doubt that it will follow DPP’s anti-immigration and populist path.

Despite the usual assurances by Timo Soini that the anti-immigration hardliners in the PS are ”a myth” fabricated by the media, few serious analysts believe his words. Soini, like the worst used car salesmen, is a political animal that will do anything to pitch a political sale to voters, even if it promotes greater hostility towards immigrants and visible minorities.

Mark my words: The PS would love to play the same role that the DPP had played in Denmark.

The jury is still out whether voters will give the PS such a questionable mandate.

New PS party secretary Riikka Slunga Poutsalo “demands” tighter immigration policy

Posted on June 30, 2013 by Migrant Tales

As Migrant Tales correctly pointed out, it didn’t take long for the new party secretary of the Perussuomalaiset (PS), Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo, to show her far right anti-immigration credentials. Interviewed by YLE’s 8:30 pm news, Slunga-Poutsalo “demands” Finland should tighten immigration policy further.

Migrant Tales wrote Saturday that one of the aims of the PS annual congress in Joensuu was to make the party the biggest in Finland by 2015 with the help of an anti-EU and anti-immigration campaign. Finland will hold parliamentary elections two years from now.

“We shouldn’t commit the same mistakes [in immigration] than Europe but learn from them before it’s too late and when we’ll be in the same boat as them,” she said.

PS chairman Timo Soini played down as usual the role of intolerance and anti-immigration sentiment in his party.

“This is a myth that the media cranks out [constantly],” he said. “Crank it out [all you want] so the Perussuomalaiset will get more publicity.”

He denied that the anti-immigration wing of the party led by PS MP Jussi Halla-aho had got an important foothold in the party leadership thanks to Slunga-Poutsalo and Juho Eerola, who was elected third vice president.

In one of her first major policy statements as party secretary, Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo “demanded” that Finnish immigration policy should be tightened further.

The 8:30 pm news reported – as did Migrant Tales – that Slunga-Poutsalo is an anti-immigration hardliner who not only signed the Nuiva Manifesto but has taken part in anti-immigration chat forums like Hommaforum.

The new party secretary finds herself in good anti-immigration company with Eerola, who likes Mussolini-style fascism, Halla-aho and James Hirvisaari, both of which who have been sentenced for hate speech.

Slunga-Poutsalo was one of the signatories of the Nuiva Manifesto. She is on the top row right.

The PS’ new Cadillac model of racism

Posted on June 30, 2013 by Migrant Tales

How does intolerance and racism work in Finnish politics? How does it manifest itself today in anti-immigration parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)? A quote by U.S. civil rights leader Malcolm X (1925-65) provides us with a partial clue to these questions: “Racism is like a Cadillac, they bring out a new model every year.”

Is it a surprise that one of the first persons to congratulate Riikka Slung-Putsalo was PS MP Jussi Halla-aho? Both were responsible for drafting the anti-immigration Nuiva Manifesto.

If we took Finland’s most intolerant party in parliament, how do intolerance and racism manifest themselves at the PS’ annual congress (June 29-30) in Joensuu? What Cadillac model has the PS introduced?

The answer to that simple question is a complex one since the driver, party chairman Timo Soini, denies that he’s driving a Cadillac. While the PS may want to hide the new Cadillac model, there’s a lot of incriminating evidence that suggests the contrary.

How do we know? Easy.

Take a look at the new PS leadership for 2013-15. Four of its party leaders, which include Soini, are strongly in the anti-immigration camp. Be it the elimination of mandatory Swedish at schools (Jussi Niinistö, vice president), to liking Mussolini-style fascism (Juho Eerola, third vice president), to denying cultural diversity (Hanna Mäntylä, second vice president), it’s the same anti-immigration PS Cadillac.

Let’s not forget Riikka Slunga-Putsalo, probably the worst anti-immigration pundit together with Eerola, who was elected party secretary Saturday.

One of the eeriest aspects of the PS is its ability to hide its racism model.What you see is not necessarily what you get. The culture of anti-immigration rhetoric is stuffed today with doubletalk and decipherable only by code.

Has anyone thought what kind of a country Finland would be if we’d allow the PS to draft laws that would strike the term multiculturalism from its youth law or prohibit the use of the burqa and nijab? What about if we banned male circumcision or decided that we wouldn’t accept Muslim refugees and immigrants to our country?

All these measures, which are wholeheartedly supported by the PS, would end up destroying Finland and its Nordic social welfare state democracy. It would be like leaving our future and democracy to chance.

Immigrants and visible minorities don’t need the acceptance or 5.4 million Finns never mind that of the PS to feel at home in this country. All of us who have moved to Finland know at least one person who has shown immense hospitality and given us hope that building a home in this country is possible.

The PS is not only a threat to Finland, but especially to immigrants and minorities.

Immigrants and minorities would be the biggest losers if the PS ever became the biggest party in the country. We’d be persecuted and our rights downgraded even further by making discrimination and prejudice “normal” and “patriotic.”

Annual congress: The PS aims to become the biggest party in Finland with anti-EU and anti-immigration platform

Posted on June 29, 2013 by Migrant Tales

The first day of Perussuomalaiset (PS) annual congress in Joensuu (July 29-30) did not produce any surprises but reinforced the party’s anti-immigration, and especially its anti-Islam and anti-cultural diversity stand. The party leadership, starting from Timo Soini to its new secretary, Riikka Slunga-Putsalo, confirm this.

Soini, who was reelected chairman of the party by a landslide, announced that he would not run for EuroMP in 2014.

“There are two reasons for this: I can’t afford to and I do not want to,” Soini was quoted as saying on YLE in English.

See original story here.

The new vice president of the PS is Jussi Niinistö, a member of the far right Suomalaisuuden liitto that campaigns against mandatory Swedish at school. Hanna Mäntylä and Juho Eerola were elected second and third vice president, respectively.

Niinstö’s political colors became evident in September 2011, when he stated in parliament Nazi playwright Hans Johst’s Schlageter, “Wenn ich Kultur höre … entsichere ich meinen Browning” (“Whenever I hear of culture… I release the safety-catch of my Browning”).

Niinistö replaced the word culture with parliamentarism when he mentioned Schlageter’s quote.

Eerola, who got elected to parliament thanks to his anti-immigration views and ties to far right associations like Suomen Sisu, which is no longer a member, doesn’t have the stomach to accept cultural diversity. One of his most infamous quotes is: “I am attracted to fascism and especially the economic policies of Benito Mussolini.”

Eerola was party second vice president in 2012-13.

Mäntylä is no friend of immigrants and visible minorities. She has supported a number of PS draft laws that see “multiculturalism” as a threat or that would ban the burqa and nijab in Finland.

Slunga-Putsalo was one of the 12 members that drafted and signed the anti-immigration Nuiva Manifesto, which aims to undermine immigrant and visible minority rights in Finland.

The type of immigration policy supported by Slunga-Putsalo would limit social aid for a year to all new immigrants that move to the country.

Another aim of the Nuiva Manifesto is to halt immigrants that would have a “negative” impact on society. It supports, however, immigrants whose impact would be “neutral or positive.”

While Slunga-Putsalo and Eerola, who signed the Nuiva Manifesto as well, won’t tell you what groups would be “negative” to Finland, it’s easy to understand that they mean Muslims, Africans and other visible immigrants from outside the EU.

Another example of the PS’ democratic credentials was inviting EuroMP Morten Messerschmidt of the far right Danish People’s Party to Joensuu to greet the PS delegates.

In 2007, he was charged with singing Nazi marching songs and giving the Hitler salute in a bar in Tivoli, the major tourist attraction in central Copenhagen.

Messerschmidt was cleared of such charges in 2009 by a court, which forced the daily BT to compensate him for libel. Together with two other DPP members in 2001, however, Messerschmidt was sentenced for 14 days for ethnic agitation. A DPP ad in Studiomagazinet claimed that Denmark would face mass rapes, violence, insecurity, forced marriages, women would be oppressed, and gang crime if the country became a multiethnic society.

Sikh busman confident that employer will lift turban ban

Posted on June 29, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Busman Gill Sukhdarshan Singh is confident that his employer, Veolia Transport of Vantaa, will honor a Southern Finland Regional State Administrative Agency ruling that imposing a turban ban by the employer was discriminatory.

Source: Gill Sukhdarshan Singh.

”I have no doubt that that in two months, when I will get written permission from the employer, I will start wearing a turban at work,” Sukhdarshan Singh told Migrant Tales.

The Southern Finland Regional State Administrative Agency gave the Veolia Transport of Vantaa until the end of Septempter how the company plans to redress the problem.

Sukhdarshan Singh said that what he did was for all Sikhs living in Finland and “to further multiculturalism.”

”Multiculturalism means that my children can appreciate both cultures,” he said.

Two of his children study at university and one at high school.

Let’s challenge Finland’s disgraceful family reunification obstacles

Posted on June 28, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Migrants’ Rights Network (MRN) of Britain shows how organizations can do valuable work in lobbying for change against unfair family reunification laws (see Migrant Tales 28.6.13). Politicians, who have tightened such laws, are short-sighted and have created a tragedy for those who live separated from their loved ones.

The same suffering that separated families suffer in Finland are similar to the tragedy they are going through in other European countries like Britain.

“During the year since the Government announced its changes to the family migration rules, MRN has heard from hundreds of families who have been kept apart from one another – couples split across continents, young children separated from parents, elderly relatives kept apart from relatives who wish to care for them in the UK,” writes MRN.

Tighter family reunification requirements came in force in 2011. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that one of the main factors behind these changes was the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS) party’s growing popularity in the polls and its historic election victory in April 2011.

New rules that came in force in two years ago have made family reunification ever-complicated and costly. One big change in the rules is that family members must now apply in their home country or at the nearest Finnish embassy. As a general rule, the minimum that a three-member family must make monthly to bring their loved ones is 2,880 euros, according to the Refugee Advice Center.

Family reunification applications have plummeted as a result of tightened rules. In 2012, there were just over 500 applications compared with 1,900 in the previous year and 3,900 in 2010. All in all, there were 8,600 application in 2012. Finnish Immigration Service (FIS) reported earlier that at the end of 2011 there were a total of 6,100 family reunification application by Somalis alone. According to the Refugee Advice Center, only 329 family reunifications took place on average annually between 1999 and 2010.

How do the new rules make life ever-difficult for refugees and immigrants and how are they kept in limbo? The answer to that question is simple: How would it feel to live separated from your loved ones for years and with little hope that your family will ever be reunited in Finland?

Some of the problems of righter rules are highlighted on Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Newsletter: “Tightening the rules for family reunification would put the protection of the right to family life under severe risk. In response to the current political climate as it relates to refugees, the Finnish Refugee Advice Centre, the principal non-governmental organisation offering legal aid for refugees, has issued a statement on the risks of tightening the policy on family reunification in Finland. Rules are already very strict, constituting an obstacle to refugee integration for those already settled in Finland, who continue to live in uncertainly regarding their families.”

While FIS claims lack of and to handle the backlog of thousands of applications, the real reasons are anti-immigration Christian Democrat Interior Minister PäiviRäsänen and unofficial efforts to stop as many Somalis as possible from moving to Finland.

Under Räsänen, Finland continues, despite obligations under international laws, to detain as a first resort children seeking asylum for long periods of time. The interior minister, whose tough stance on immigration and refugees is liked by the PS, has said publicly that homosexuality is a sin.

Even if it may be in vogue in some circles to be against immigrants and cultural diversity in Finland, politicians, the media and public must look further ahead in the future. Do we want to assist in destroying and fragmenting the lives of thousands of people who are already traumatized by war and displacement?

That is exactly what we are doing as long as we continue on the present path.

A good start would, however, be to challenge the unfair family reunification rules.

The example of the fine work by the Migrants’ Rights Network would help us draft a plan in Finland.

Do we have the resources to keep a check on cyberhate thanks to Prism and Tempora?

Posted on June 27, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Intelligence whistleblowers like Edward Snowden have not only shown the extent of global surveillance by the NSA and GCHQ, but how much governments like the United States flirt with totalitarianism and invest billions of dollars in trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Writes the Anti-Defamation League, which was founded in 1913 to address anti-Semitism and all forms of racism: ”With an estimated 2.4 billion people online around the world and at least 50 billion Web pages, it’s impossible for companies to police cyberspace by themselves. That’s why each of us has to take responsibility for reporting cyberhate when we see it.”

Go here to read the ADL Cyber-Safety Action Guide.

Looking at global surveillance tools like Prism and Tempora, which were recently revealed by Snowden, don’t we now have the resources to report and locate cyberhate?

Something to think about.