Category: Enrique

Finnish men assault elderly Somali woman (Part 2)

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Roble Bashir and Enrique Tessieri

Migrant Tales met on Thursday the elderly Somali woman who was assaulted in April by Finnish men at Helsinki’s Myllypuro metro station. This is part two of the interview with Abdulle Korad Musse, 63.

For the elderly Somali woman, who speaks to us with the help of an interpreter, racism is a terrible issue like the suffering that the long civil war has brought on her people and country.

The fact that most Somalis have endured and seen unimaginable suffering in their former home country as well as endured the dark side of racism in Finland, has made some of them exceptionally strong and resilient.

Abdulle Korad Musse admits that Finland isn’t a safe country for Somalis.

Apart from her son being attacked by Finns when she lived in Joensuu, her son was assaulted in Helsinki as well. She says that a complete stranger once kicked her in the shin when she was going up the escalator.

Musse admits that some Finns can be exceptionally mean. Once they tipped off the security guards that she was shoplifting at an Itäkeskus S-Market.

”I was stopped by security guards after I paid for my goods,” she says. ”The security guards took back the items to the cashier to see if they were stolen. They apologized after they found out that everything was in order.”

Musse says she felt so humiliated and angry that she threw all the goods in the plastic bags at the security guards.

”You can imagine what a scene I created: a Somali woman suspected of shoplifting in public,” she says. ”I have never stolen anything but I have seen Finns shoplifting. I still feel very bad about what happened to me.”

Musse says that Somalis in Finland don’t trust the police.

”I don’t think the police do their job well in this country,” she says. ”I know Somalis who have been physically attacked and the police has not resolved their cases even after five or six years.”

She claims that the police drag their feet when a Somali is a victim of a crime. Musse does not believe that anything will happen to those that attacked her in April.

”They simply don’t care,” she adds. ”They don’t care because you’re a Somali and because there are racist police in this country.”

Musse believes that since the authorities cannot directly kick the Somalis out of Finland, they use other methods to tell you that you’re not welcome. Everything you do takes a lot of time for a Somali in this country: finding work, getting citizenship, family reunification, and asylum, according to her.

The Somali woman applied in 2010 for a new flat from the city. She has to walk up three flights of stairs to get to her home. The doctor has told her that she should not walk up the stairs and carry heavy objects.

”Everything is far away from my flat,” she continues. ”I have to walk to the other side of the apartment complex to dry clothes. Walking to the bus stop takes fifteen minutes. I am afraid to walk through the forest alone to get to the bus stop.”

Musse says that she gets her strength from Allah.

”Only he knows where I will live and when I will die,” she concludes.

Finnish men assault elderly Somali woman (Part I)

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Roble Bashir and Enrique Tessieri

Migrant Tales met on Thursday the elderly Somali woman who was attacked by a group of Finns in April at Helsinki’s Myllypuro metro station. The woman, Abdulle Korad Musse, 63, was taken to hospital by ambulance after she was physically assaulted.  

Musse, who speaks to us with the help of an interpreter, is originally from Mogadishu and has lived in Finland since 1999. She first lived in the eastern Finnish city of Joensuu until 2002, when she moved with her family to Helsinki. Musse is a mother of six.

Her face lights up with obvious sarcasm when asked which city, Joensuu or Helsinki, were better places to live.

“Joensuu was far worse,” she admits. “One of my sons was attacked by a group of Finns [in Joensuu] and hit so hard on the knee with a club that he had to be operated on in hospital.   Another time a motorbike went after my son and ran over him. He was only seven at the time.”

Abdulle Korad Musse claims that most Finns are racist. 

Musse claims that she expects something bad to happen every time she steps out of her Helsinki flat.

“I can either get harassed or laughed at,” she says. “I try to avoid trouble by walking on the other side of the street. Young people aren’t [usually] the problem. Older-aged Finns are.”

Musse claims that Finland isn’t a safe country to live for people like her. “They [some white Finns] see you as an insect and insects must be exterminated,” she says.

The Somali woman, who was physically attacked in Myllypuro with her thirty-four-year-old daughter in April, said that the whole incident started in the lift.

“Out of nowhere, the young Finnish couple in the lift started calling us names like dirty bastards and that we should go back to the country we came from,” she continues. ”When the lift door opened, the woman threw the bike at my daughter. That’s when the fight began.”

“My daughter got the Finnish woman on the floor and was on top of her,” she continues. “I tried to stop her but soon the man who was with her was joined by three men and four women. My daughter hit the woman but she was soon attacked.”

”That’s when I got hit,” she explains. “A tall man punched me in the head. I got dizzy and fell down. On the ground he started kicking me in the kidneys, hips and shoulders. I tried to cover my stomach because I was operated in hospital a month ago.”

Musse was taken to  hospital by ambulance. She says she’s become very ill after the incident and suffers from near-constant pains.

“I cannot hold anything [heavy] and its impossible to sleep on either side my shoulders,” she says. “If I sit for too long and stand up, my knees, shoulder and hips are in pain.”

Musse says that her daughter’s face and body were bruised and swollen “everywhere.”

”The Finns that attacked her yanked by force a silver ring from her finger,” Musse says. “All the goods that we had bought in the Itäkeskus Shopping Center were scattered all over the metro station floor.”

Part II will be published Saturday. 

 

Business Insider: Timo Soini’s “threat” to the world economy

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Not only must have Perussuomalaiset (PS) party chairman Timo Soini been swept off his feet with delight for being named by Business Insider  as the seventh-most dangerous person to the global economy, but Finland as well for such a dubious recognition. Who ever heard of Business Insider anyway?

For starters, somebody could inform the online publication that the official English name of the PS isn’t any longer the True Finns, but the Finns Party.

After weighing the old and new English-language official translations of the PS, Migrant Tales (MT) decided last year that we didn’t want any part of this populist nonsense and decided to call Soini’s party by its Finnish name, the Perussuomalaiset.

Timo Soini is a dangerous persons to the global economy, according to Business Insider. 

While we understand  at MT that the PS has been a blow to the credibility of Finland’s international image and to institutions like parliament, the political clout that Soini has hinges by and large on the lack of leadership of  Finland’s major parties, which rolled out the red carpet for him before last year’s election.

Soini’s anti-EU, anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam message appeals to a wide range of politicians in this country.

Why did Business Insider choose Soini as the seventh-most dangerous public figure to the global economy?

The online publication writes: “As the leader of the largest opposition party in Finland’s parliament and one of the biggest eurosceptics in Europe, Timo Soini is in a position of incredible importance with regard to continued euro bailouts.”

I doubt that the PS chairman is any longer in a position of “incredible importance” in Finland. The numerous scandals that have rocked the party and Soini’s disappointing showing in the presidential election have dimmed much of his shine.

Other influential personalities on the Business Insider are: German Chancellor Angela Merkel (1); French President Francois Hollande; German economist Hans-Werner Sinn; Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke; Nkolaus Blome, Bild newspaper deputy editor; and US President Barak Obama.

Finland’s and Japan’s demographic and economic decline

Posted on by Migrant Tales

You don’t have to be an expert to understand that Europe and especially Finland are speeding towards a demographic and economic decline of untold proportions. The calamity we face will not come from outside our borders per se but will have the “Made in Finland” label on it.  

There’s an interesting story on the Guardian about how cultural traits  fueled the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe in Japan. The panel’s findings on the disaster could be eerily similar to a future report that studied the causes behind our own demographic and economic decline.

Kiyoshi Kurokawa, a professor emeritus at Tokyo University, states: “Its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture: our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to ‘sticking with the programme’; our groupism; and our insularity.”

As the euro financial crisis deepens, which fuels our ever-growing skepticism and fear of the outside world, our response to the challenges facing our country and region has been ever-bigger doses of nationalism.

Source: Northern Denim Co. 

Our reaction to the euro and various political corruption scandals was the election of April 2011, which paved the way for an anti-EU, anti-immigration and anti-Islam party. How is it possible that a right-wing populist party like the Perussuomalaiset can attract 19.1% (39 seats) of the votes compared with 4.05% (5 seats) in 2007?

Part of the answer to that question must be in our insularity, scapegoating and ever-growing skepticism of the outside world.

Even if some used to call Finland the Japan of Europe in the 1980s, our country resembles today a nation that is inching towards permanent demographic and economic decline.

Foreign workers are moving to Japan these days to fill jobs and to compensate for the extremely low birth rate. Like in Finland, the ramifications of an ever-growing influx of immigrants into a society that has based its identity on ethnic purity are enormous to say the least.

Despite the difficulties we face, there’s still time to save Finland and Europe.

Europe’s future lies in its ability to deal with the challenges posed by its ever-growing cultural diversity and globalization.

That is why we need to learn from countries like Canada, the United States and Australia that have reaped synergies from their diversity more effectively than us.

 

 

Monikulttuurisuus ei ole poliittinen ideologia

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Monikulttuurisuus on monimuotoinen ja monimutkainen käsite. Maahanmuutonvastustajille se on yksinkertaisesti siirtolaispolitiikka, joka mahdollistaa etupäässä muslimien, afrikkalaisten sekä ei-eurooppalaisten asumisen Suomessa tai Euroopassa. Tavoite on yksinkertainen: pitää Suomi valkoisena ja muuttumattomana.

Kansanedustaja James Hirvisaari (ps) viimeisessä bloigissaan antaa tyypillisen maahanmuutonvastustajaan selityksen siitä, mikä on monikulttuurisuus. Hirvisaari väittää, että monikulttuurisuus on poliittinen ideologia.

Mutta onko se niin? Tuskin.

James Hirvisaari

Hirvisaaren määritelmä monikulttuurisuudesta ei pelkästä paljasta hänen äärioikeistolaisideologiansa mutta hänen tietämättömyys perustuslaistamme, puhumattakaan yhdenvertaisuuslaista. Käyttääkö hän vielä 1919 perustuslakia lähteenä tai uudempaa ja lainvoimaista versiota, joka tuli voimaan 1999?

Uudessa Suomen perustuslaissa ( 17 §) lukee seuraavasti: ”Saamelaisilla alkuperäiskansana sekä romaneilla ja muilla ryhmillä on oikeus ylläpitää ja kehittää omaa kieltään ja kulttuuriaan .”

Jos Hirvisaarella on vaikeus hahmottaa ,mitä on suomalaisen lain henki , kun puhumme kasvavasta monimuotoisuudesta yhteiskunnastamme, hän on aivan eksyksissä kun hän alkaa selittää omia käsityksiään monikulttuurisuudesta.

Ensinnäkin, monikulttuurisuus ei ole siirtolaisuuspolitiikka eikä poliittinen ideologia, kuten vasta-jihadisitit ja heidän hengenheimolaisensa haluavat antaa meidän ymmärtää.

Monikulttuurisuus sai alkunsa Kanadassa 1970-luvulla sosiaalipolitiikkana. Sen tarkoitus ei ollut pelkästään edistää maahanmuuttajien sopeutumista ja hyväksyntä Kanadassa, vaan myös estää maan hajoamiseen englannin- ja ranskankielisiksi valtioiksi.

Paitsi Kanada, maailmassa on virallisesti kaksi maata, jotka määrittelevät itsensä monikulttuuriseksi. Ne ovat Iso-Britannia ja Australia. Suomi ei ole virallisesti monikulttuurinen maa, kuten nämä yllämainitut. Suomen laissa (perustuslaissa tai yhdenvertaisuuslaissa) ei lue missään, että olemme ”monikulttuurinen yhteiskunta.”

”Monikulttuurisuutemme” lepää pitkälti meidän omissa pohjoismaisessa demokratiassa, ihmisarvon sekä hyvinvoinnin periaatteissa.Maassamme on yksi laki, jota kaikkien on noudatettava, monimuotoisuus sen sisällä on itsestäänselvyys.

Perustuslakiin on kirjattu oikeutemme ja velvollisuutemme. ”Monikulttuurisen yhteiskunnan” tavoite pysyä yhdenvertaisuuslain tavoitteissa vaatii tiettyjä toimenpiteitä, joita ei voi määritellä aina edes positiiviseksi diskriminaatioksi.

Uusi Suomi

 

Migrant Tales Literary: El gaucho más corajudo de la Pampa durante la dictadura

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Siempre me ha fascinado el oponente más débil.  Hay muchos ejemplos en la historia:  José Artigas, Esteban Echeverría, Sacco y Vanzetti,  Resistencia Rosa Blanca, Che Guevara, Antero Rokka, Mahatma Gandhi,  Nelson Mandela, Alvaro Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca,  y El gaucho más corajudo de la Pampa, entre muchos otros.

Un buen ejemplo es el Maracanazo, cuando Uruguay le ganó al favorito Brasil 2 a 1 en el mundial de 1950.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pMmRFKKZfk

 EL GAUCHO MÁS CORAJUDO DE LA PAMPA DURANTE LA DICTADURA

 En las afueras de Treinta y Tres (Uruguay)

me encontré con un gaucho mujer con vigotes

y pa’ que to voy a contar más.

“Nada más que penas macho”, dice con voz de canario desflorado

(pero con plumas intactas)

y nos despedimos colores

sentados con unos amargos.

“Soy de la hoz y el martillo”,

ametralla

“Pero 100% gaucho”.

Arrancando un ombú y transofmandolo a una guitarra eléctrica

contó esta pálida canción:

El gaucho travesti

amontó un caballo

desparamando al aire gris

estas palabras al partir:

“Soy el gaucho más corajudo de la Pampa”!

                                                                                                                                                                                        Helsinki, 3 de marzo de 1984

 

Marta Gómez: The little boy who wanted to be white

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Marta Gómez is a talented singer from Colombia who offers us a song called “Negrito,” or “(cute) little black boy.” In most parts of Latin America, it’s perfectly fine to call a person negrito, the diminutive of the word negro. The song by Gómez is based on a real negrito of her hometown of Cali, who in the hope of living a better life and finding work, drank Clorox to become white. 

The boy lived to see another day after he was treated in hospital after drinking the disinfectant.

In Gómez’ song, the boy paints himself white but then regrets what he did.

She says that Negtrito’s heart felt cheated and even the devil prayed that the little boy would turn black again. “The little black boy even lost his appetite   repenting what he did.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84U6iyCjIJY&feature=player_embedded#!

Migrant Tales thanks William Rivera for sharing this song with our readers.

 

The absurdity of the reverse-racism argument in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Every now and then you’ll hear a visitor on Migrant Tales claim: What about [reverse] racism against [white] Finns!? Racism is a complex problem but one matter singles it out: It is an effective tool to socially exclude, control and exploit other groups in society from vital resources such as jobs and economic wealth. 

The fact that white Finns are the standard of everything in Finland is enough proof that they wield real power. White Finns don’t have to understand racism because they simply don’t have to. It’s not an issue because they are the standard of this society, the norm. Everyone else has a prefix attached to them like immigrant, immigrant descendant, black, Roma etc.

In May 2011, the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS) party renounced all forms of racism, even positive discrimination, or affirmative action. 

It is surprising that when the PS made their preposterous statement, few if any media in this country understood how racist and grotesque it was and how it revealed a serious case of  colorblind racism (let’s pretend we’re equal because ethnic background does not matter, when in fact it does).   

Colorblind racism works in Finland in an implicit and explicit manner. Its aim is the same:  ethnic background is not the issue. If it is an issue, it’s your  ethnic background. 

  • ·         We have such a wonderful society that we are way past racism so get over it (explicit colorblind racism);
  • ·         It’s your culture, your parents or you that is hindering adaption to our society. In this case I recognize your ethnic background but only to shift blame and wash my hands of the problem (implicit colorblind racism). 

 This graffiti that reads “White Power” in Finnish was on a special elementary school’s wall in Mikkeli, Finland, for months before it was removed. 

Accusing a visible minority, or immigrant of being racist against white Finns, is a good example of implicit colorblind racism.  Since racism isn’t a problem in our society, it can’t be my problem. It’s your problem. 

Some successful immigrants or visible minorities who have succeeded in Finland may reinforce the same colorblind racist argument as white Finns. They may claim:  “I’m not white but I adapted to the white Finns’ world. That is why I am successful. You too can be.” 

Those immigrants who have racism issues usually come from countries where such a social ill is the standard. It’s easy for them to accept the white Finn as a standard because they too were the norm in their former home country.  As a result, some embrace the idea of becoming a Tuomo-setä, or Uncle Tom, because they are encouraged to and rewarded by white Finnish society for such behavior.

If you are ever confronted by a person who uses the reverse-racism argument, ask him or her how is the prejudice of a minority as devastating as that of the majority? 

White Finns should stop whining about reverse racism because it isn’t an issue. It’s only one of many loaded arguments used by them to justify their racism.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Go for the values and weaknesses of a group if you aim to destroy their self-esteem

Posted on by Migrant Tales

How would you go about destroying the self-esteem of a group? If you were an anti-immigration politician, certainly you’d target the group’s values (religion) and exploit your racist arguments by pointing the finger at their most vulnerable weaknesses, like high unemployment. 

Prejudice and racism are diehard social ills because they take generations to wear off.  It may have taken a few months to label a small group of Somali refugees that came to Finland in the early 1990s, but it will be a very long time before they wash off their stigma.

The Romany minority of Finland are a good example of how negative labels can follow a group like a shadow for centuries.

 The Ilta-Sanomat tabloid claims that Somalis swindled authorities in granting them political asylum in Finland.

If it wasn’t a tabloid billboard that spread and reinforced racism and suspicion of groups like the Somalis in the 1990s, the icing on the cake was provided by the tacit silence of the politicians and society in general.  Even if one group was being singled out, it was an attack on all immigrants living in this country at the time.

As the old saying claims, there is no evil that lasts 100 years. In the United States, it took centuries to end slavery before we saw the rise of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. The Arab Spring movements last year are good recent examples of how “no evil can last 100 years.”

There is a problem with the saying, however, since it implies that evil cannot exist over 100 years because a person cannot live past that age. History reveals that evil is more like Methuselah, the Biblical figure that lived to be 969 years old.

The findings of a study in Britain published exclusively by the Guardian claim that unchecked corporate power, unrepresentative politicians and apathetic voters are fueling today the decline of British democracy.  The same illness has spread to other parts of Europe, like Finland.

The Guardian writes: “A study into the state of democracy in Britain over the last decade warns that it is in ‘long-term terminal decline’ as the power of corporations keeps growing, politicians become less representative of their constituencies and disillusioned citizens stop voting or even discussing current affairs.”

Finnish society, which used to be perceived as the least corrupt country in the world, according to Transparency International, has had its image seriously tarnished by greedy politicians and corporate leaders.

In the same way that corruption undermines a society’s values and sends it into decline, similarly prejudice and racism constitute serious threat to it as well.

If people are excluded socially and their only aim in life it to live off welfare, certainly they have every right to challenge their situation.

The only way you can avoid violence in society is by empowering people to change their situation through our democratic institutions. Two matters can happen if people lose faith in them: indefinite (very costly) social exclusion and/or violence.

In Europe not thinking today about how to tackle social exclusion and racism is thinking little or erroneously.

Thus the roots of the problem are not the marginalized groups, far-right parties or opportunistic anti-immigration politicians, but our apathy, greed and the fact that some of us have forgotten that we are social animals.

 

 

 

Dear Finland, as the heat of summer draws…

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Dear Finland,

As the heat of summer draws attention to your ever-changing sub-arctic beauty, you may have wondered why Migrant Tales has become a voice of the immigrant and visible minority community in Finland. We are always humbled by your presence on our blog. In truth, we are nothing more than a new confident image of a culturally and ethnically diverse Finland.     

We are not the enemy because we speak out for more acceptance and respect between different groups living in this country. Your real enemies are those who claim with poker faces the contrary and tell you that prejudice and racism are good weapons to exclude others socially.

This cart resting in the heart of the rural Lakelands region of eastern Finland reads in Spanish: “To the woman of my life.”  For some, that woman could be Finland. 

Finland never belonged to anyone, especially to the racists and white Finnish supremacists, those very people who mock and make fun of your diversity. History proves as well that Finland didn’t even belong to the Swedes, the Russians, or even those that call themselves Finns today.

Our identity is a great awakening, ever-changing,  powerful:

Awaken me from eternal sleep

The shadow of those that hate me 

Carry me from these unacceptant lands

 past the midnight summer sun

where rain is so deadly 

that it punctures through skin.

Turning into a guitar

a daring escape occurred to me:

Thrum! Another thrum!

A great leap forward

falling down as a loud thud.

In scattered bits and pieces of me

I will find the way to blast through those nets

that society maliciously weaves.  

There are many examples of those “malicious nets” standing right under our noses today.  Take for example Eino Jutikkala’s and Kauko Pirinen’s “A History of Finland” published in 1974, which claims we Finns belonged to two “races.” Yes, such a preposterous claim was made in this country only 38 years ago!

Jutikkala and Pirinen state: “The Finns and the Hungarians are not blood relatives not to any appreciable degree, at least – whereas the Finns and the Estonians are quite closely related. Both of the later belong to the so-called East Baltic race, which is relatively short-skulled and of medium height. However, among the Finns, especially among the inhabitants of western Finland there are many representatives of the ‘Nordic’ racial type, which is characterized by a long skull and tall stature.” [1]

Another school textbook published in 1942, adds that a person who belonged to the Nordic race was “tall, slim, blue-eyed, had blond hair and red cheeks.” [2]

Apart from teaching racist myths about ourselves, how can our school textbooks  forget to mention that over 1.2 million Finns emigrated and mixed ethnically and culturally with other people in faraway lands?

In many respects, the tens of thousands of visible minorities in Finland today are like Rachel, the main character of Heidi Durrow’s novel, “The Girl Who Fell From the Sky.” Rachel is society’s idea of race, class, and beauty.

Durrow’s father is a black USAmerican and her mother is Danish.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ2__1b15gY&feature=related

Durrow describes Rachel to be the following person: I think her greatest wish was to be one thing. She wanted to be understood and she wanted to be as complex as she was, and so she goes around trying to do and be one thing, which is a good student. And she becomes a big reader and the world kind of opens up to her in this way. And she thinks that if I am excellent, then definitely I will be understood and this whole race thing won’t matter. 

I think that’s still true today that if you strive for excellence then ultimately, maybe, you can maybe get beyond the shadow of race, maybe you can transcend the ways in which people may limit you because of your background, whether it be your racial background or your educational background or your economic background in many ways.

[1] Eino Jutikkala and Kauko Pirinen: A History of Finland. Praeger Publishers, New York, 1974. p. 7.

[2] J.E. Aro, J.E. Rosberg and L. Arvi P. Poijärvi; Koulun maantieto. Otava, Helsinki 1942. pp. 31-32.