Category: All categories

Spiegel Online International: Skulls of Colonial Victims Returned to Namibia

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Comment: This gruesome story on Spiegel Online International is dedicated to all those in the Finland and the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party who  still continue to believe in racial superiority of the white man over other ethnicities. True, white racists in Europe don’t make such a distinction so clearly as in the early part of last century but it is still there behind the true context of their statements.

Instead of saying that such an ethnic group is “inferior” compared with one’s own, they speak of cultural differences. How many times have we heard these groups state that “x” is so barbaric that they could never be part of our society?They are saying, in effect, what some were saying in the early part of last century: We are superior to this group.  They can never be like us and therefore are excluded and rejected. 

In history there are too many grim example of the barbarism that Europeans carried out on other groups. Certainly World War I and II were rude wake up calls that revealed our potential for barbarism.

The Piltdown Man hoax is another example of academia’s collusion in maintaining myths about our national superiority.

All of the European colonizers committed atrocities in Africa. The story below by Spiegel Online International tells about what the Germans did in modern Namibia.

The German online newsmagazine writes: “The story of how the remains came to be transported back to Germany is horrific. They belonged to the victims of German colonial troops, killed mercilessly following a Herero uprising in January 1904 which left 123 Germans dead. After the decisive Battle of Waterberg in August 1904, the Herero fled into the desert towards Botswana, pursued by German troops. Thousands were killed as they fled; out of a reported 80,000, only around 15,000 reached the neighboring country. The massacre is considered to be among the first genocides of the 20th century.

In October 1904, the German commander in Namibia, General Lothar von Trotha, gave his infamous order to kill any Herero, armed or not, found within the limits of German colonial territory. The skulls in Berlin, which mostly came from Herero who had died in prison camps, were sent back to Germany for supposed scientific studies aimed at underpinning the doctrine of racial superiority of Europeans over Africans.”

What kind of stain is this on our European history and are we still playing the same game today but differently?

________________

Germany revisits the dark chapter of its brief colonial history this week with the return of 20 skulls belonging to genocide victims in a former colony. A Namibian delegation is in Berlin to take home the remains of those killed more than a century ago. This could be just the beginning of such reconciliations.

Read whole story.

Violence and racism are always in the eye of the victim

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Are the Perussuomalaiset (PS) a violent party? Despite a story that was published widely by the media last week, there were no conclusions made from an ongoing study that a part of the PS approves violence, according to think tank Demos. The British-based think tank will, however, publish the results of a wider study on online populism in Europe later this year.

“Demos understands that the source of the stories came from a private briefing during which no link between the Finns party (PS) and violence was made. Allegations about the research findings had not been verified or checked with Demos,” according to a statement by the think tank.

So what gives? Nothing, really, except for a storm in a tea-cup by the PS which are throwing punches at shadows about the conclusions of the Demos report, which were never made in the first place.

But when one reads the Nuiva manifesto and anti-immigration views of the likes of PS MP Jussi Halla-aho, James Hirvisaari and others, it’s not difficult to conclude that violence and hostility come in many shapes and forms in Timo Soini’s party. Those that perpetrate violence and racism are naturally the last ones to admit it.

A quote by Scottish psychiatrist R D Laing’s (1927-89) could apply well to the world of denial that the PS is presently immersed in:  “We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love.” In other words, some PS MPs attack the common decency of  people and masquerade this hatred as free speech.

That is how low some politicians have stooped in Finland lately.

Whether these groups spew racism or show their anti-democratic credentials  on social media sites such as Facebook, rarely is the victim’s opinion asked by the Finnish media although this happens occasionally. There is no better source to comment on a social ill like racism than the victim.

Why does the PS cry foul every time they stick their foot in their mouths or when they expose their odd sense of humor like branding journalists “bloodthirsty hyenas?”

Because their hostile statements and views on groups like immigrants is violent and rightfully questioned by the media and our sense of decency.

Savon Sanomat: Persujen linja – onko sitä?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Comment: Here is an interesting story on Kuopio-daily  Savon Sanomat which published a poll Saturday about what people thought about Perussuomalaiset (PS) party’s MP Jussi Halla-aho’s suggestion that Greece should have a military junta to quell protests in that country. 

According to the result of the poll by Taloustutkimus, the vast majority considered Halla-aho’s comments on Greece as inappropriate as well as 71% of PS members. Twelve percent considered the two-week suspension from the party as too harsh. 

Halla-aho and his PS cronies are becoming a big headache for the party’s leader, Timo Soini. A poll by television station Nelonen revealed that if Halla-aho splintered  from the PS his party would be as popular as the Swedish People’s Party with 4%.

Halla-aho and Soini have denied that there are two factions in the party and that they are close to splintering. 

_____________

Jari Tourunen

Savon SanomienTaloustutkimuksella teettämän kyselyn mukaan ylivoimainen enemmistö suomalaisista ei hyväksy perussuomalaistenJussi Halla-ahon Kreikka-puheita. Täystyrmäys tuli sukupuoleen, ikään, varallisuuteen tai puoluekantaan katsomatta.

Read whole story.

Migrant Tales Literary: New World Finn – People in the Summer Night

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Visiting Finland in the summer from Southern California was like diving directly into Frans Emil Silanpää’s People in the Summer Night  (Ihmiset suviyössä).  While Silanpää’s words carry us gently to those magic summer landscapes of Finland, which have a low-hum sonance to them, there is as well a lachrymose tune in the background that gets louder as summer begins to shut itself off.  

Summer is still as brief and magical as when Silanpää published his famous book in 1934 despite global warming, mobile phones and the age of the Internet.

“Nature’s own colors were harmoniously varied even at this time of the year and in this part of the country,” he writes. “And wherever there was a dissonant blemish from some recent deed or happening, nature, using the different means the particular season, at once blended it with the harmony of the whole. At first sight the colors were gray, red, white – it is natural for the eye always to be caught by human dwellings – then green in all shades; it was the beginning of July.”

These were the landscapes of the people of Teliranta and nearby described by Silanpää living in their dwellings that were well-adapted to the sub-arctic landscapes.

Matters begin to change in these parts once fall gets the upper hand over summer. Both seasons wrestle it out until one of them is the absolute victor.  The summer, which always loses to fall but beats spring, uses the sun as its secret weapon while fall uses darkness and frost.

Anything can happen in the magic sub-arctic summer: Sparrows can fly busily over the lake and the heart can give birth to new hope as well as a friendly quacking duck, which learns how to remain an image before you.  Rainbows can paint the skies in summer and raindrops can play music on your roof depending on where they splash.

In a book on Finland given to my late uncle when he moved with his sister to the United States in 1935, there is a description of Finland that still lives on today: “Suomi is a beautiful land. Anyone who has been there leaves a little of his heart…In summer, the sun shines day and night on glittering lakes, roaring rapids, and vast peaceful forests. It is the land of flame and snow…”

                                                                      Man, dog and puddle. 

When Silanpää published People in the Summer Night, Finland was an agrarian country. In the 1960s, when I started visiting my grandparents every summer from Southern California, over forty percent of the people lived in cities and towns.

Finland’s countryside was teeming at that time with villages and farms. Each hamlet usually had a small market, school, post office, even bank, as well as lots of friendly and curious people. Today, however, those picturesque villages have turned into ghost buildings inhabited by our collective nostalgia and memory.

There was one group of people that I remember especially from those days and from Silanpää’s landscapes. They were the quiet and bashful ones who were so meager with their words and emotions that it was almost a superhuman task to get them to utter a word.

Their frugality with words, which appeared sometimes like terrified benji jumpers on their lip, were always plastered behind their silent gazes. But if I am honest with you, I never really saw these types of people in real life since they appeared to me like a semi-spirit that inhabited part of Finland’s soul.

On one occasion I was, however, pretty sure I had spotted one of them on television. He was a chubby officer looking over some maps of the frontline of the Continuation War (1941-44). He had just received news that the Russians had broken through the frontlines and, just like when Dr. Jekyll changes to Mr. Hyde, he became enraged yelling at the top of his voice perkele saatanas  (damn the devil!) over and over again while banging his fist on the table so hard that you felt sorry for that piece of furniture.

                                                                       Summer turning itself off and giving way to fall. 

If we look behind our shoulder deep into the depths of history, we’ll see too many wars and suffering still attracting our attention and forging who we are today as a people. Even though we must be thankful to all those who sacrificed their lives for Finland, the question we must ask today is how to leave behind that hatred and suspicion that ignited so much destruction and death.

Since Finland was never able to go through a historical psychoanalysis period during the cold war to understand our present fears and the prejudices, today is a good time as ever to do so.

It could begin by telling the person next to you, who may still be fighting in those imaginary trenches, that the Continuation War ended over sixty-five years ago.

It would be a good way to put to rest for good those demons of the past.

What the far right in Finland really means when it says “multiculturalism sucks ass”

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

If one reads the anti-immigration rhetoric of the far-right wing of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party led by MP Jussi Halla-aho, you will eventually find the racism and the meaning behind their spiteful discourse. Almost everything they claim when it comes to immigrants and refugees boils down to one matter: Stop Muslims and non-Europeans from coming to Finland and Europe.

For good reason Halla-aho and his cronies in the PS will not tell you their definition of multiculturalism or another favorite pet term, “uncontrolled immigration.”  Uncovering what these terms really mean for them would not only expose their racism and extremism but their political pipe dream.

How would it sound if a PS MP claimed that he or she is against Muslims and Africans moving to Finland? It would be pretty bold handing journalists a wonderful story but leave the person who made such a claim vulnerable to attacks by his or her political enemies.

If we, however, rephrased the term so that nobody would know what we really mean we’d have greater success.  By stating that “We are against multiculturalism” or “Multiculturalism sucks ass” as Halla-aho has written on Facebook, we drive home our message.

It would be highly revealing if a reporter asked Halla-aho and his cronies their definition of multiculturalism. They would most likely state vaguely that it has something to do with a failed immigration policy, or specifically one that permits Muslims, Africans and non-Europeans from moving to this country.

Those in the academic world and policy makers  understand that multiculturalism is a social policy used in Canada, Australia and Britain to integrate immigrants.

Finnish identity on one’s own terms

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

One of the matters that has turned me off about Finland for a long time is that I haven’t been allowed to embrace my Finnishness on my terms.  By my terms I mean defining what Finnish identity means personally to me.

If people who define Finnish identity in narrow terms had their way, many Multicultural Finns, expats, immigrants and minorities could possibly suffer a similar fate as the Romany minority in this country. Constant exclusion and prejudice would follow them around like a dark shadow. Even if that shadow excludes them from society, it protects them from some of its hostility.

Some Finns who define Finnish culture and identity on their narrow-minded terms and aggressively impose it on everyone else, are always ready to give a quick reason why a person is not a Finn. You are too dark they may claim, or you look too “foreign,” you act strange and speak different from us.

The fact that some give more reasons to exclude others than include them in our society says a lot about us as a nation.

For a person like me, a Finn with a multicultural background,these excuses must be challenged and banished.

I have a lot of questions to ask those who claim to be “pure” Finns.  For one, they could explain where is the Garden of Eden in this country since Finns are a “pure” ethnicity that never mixed with anyone. They could tell us as well how our culture was not influenced by over 700 years of Swedish and Russian rule. What about those 1.2 million Finns that emigrated from this land between 1860 and 1999? How did you erase them from our history?

Is a great part of your denial of who you are only a tool to build a social-ethnic construct of yourself? Is this the reason why the spiteful message of PS MPs like Jussi Halla-aho appeals to so many of us? Was that one of the reasons why 19.1% voted for the PS in April?

In many respects I am fortunate that I grew up abroad instead of in Finland despite my Finnish background. If I’d grown up in this country in the 1960s and 1970s, I would have never been able to develop a strong sense of myself and my otherness.

Would living in such a Finland been worth it?

Fortunately matters have changed for the better in this country.  Slowly but surely we are learning to see our culture as rich and diverse.  In that new diverse Finland that some want to destroy at all costs today, we can all be Finns on our own terms. Immigrants are included in this group.

Building such an inclusive society in this century is certainly worth living and fighting for!

guardian.co.uk: English Defence League filling vacuum left by mainstream politics, says report

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Comment: An effective way for Finland to come to grips with its far-right problem in parliament would be to see how countries like Britain deal with these types of threats.Two thinktanks, Right Response and Chatham House, are warning that out-of-touch politicians on a grassroots level have left a vacuum for far-right groups like the English Defence League. 

Matthew Goodwin of Right Response claims that mainstream parties had become increasingly professional and managerial. “(They are) concentrating on political marketing techniques and relying on computer-generated canvas returns, tightly-scripted phone banks, focus groups and opinion polls,” he said, “rather than on face-to-face contact, except at election time. Extreme parties often had more innovative websites too.”

He continues: “The rise of extreme parties was not only linked to anxiety over threats to jobs, social housing and the welfare state posed by immigrants. Mainstream parties needed to challenge more forcefully claims national cultures were under attack and that meant going beyond making an economic case for immigration and arguing instead for cultural diversity.”

Such observations by the author of Right Response could very well apply to Finland and explain partially why a right-wing populist party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) won 19.1% of the vote in the last election. Instead of challenging the anti-immigration and anti-Muslim claims of some of the PS candidates, mainstream parties except for the Greens started to flirt with that party’s xenophobic message.

It appears that in Finland we are having a difficult time admitting how severe of a social ill is racism and if there are far-right anti-democratic politicians in parliament. Migrant Tales has maintained for a long time that the Suomen Sisu wing of the PS led by MP Jussi Halla-aho and his cronies are extremists that should be isolated from Timo Soini’s party.

Social Democratic Party Presidential hopeful Paavo Lipponen has warned earlier about the threat of the far right in the PS. He continued to drive home this message today on MTV3’s Huomenta Suomen Torstaikapinetissa show: “A clear far-right streak exists in the Perussuomalaiset party,” said Lipponen. “We must now ask whether this is Perussuomalaiset (party’s) line and if it accepts this type of politics.” 

Conservative MP for Northampton North, Michael Ellis, was quoted on guardian.co.uk as stating that he had “every confidence” that the coalition government would combat “the rise of the ‘new far-right'” and the potential for “lone wolf'” terrorism.

“One must only look at the terrible atrocity this summer in Norway at the hands of a murderous terrorist – in the name of a crazed war against Islam,” he said, “to see the relevancy and currency of this report.”

_______________

James Meikle

Mainstream political parties must tackle far-right groups through doorstep hearts and minds campaigns that tackle anti-Muslim sentiments at local level, according to two reports on challenging extremists.

Read whole story.

MTV3: Lipponen jyrähtää jälleen: Perussuomalaisissa asuu äärioikeistolaisuus

Read whole story.

PS’ Hirvisaari and his overkill of the media

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP James Hirvisaari went on the rampage today by calling journalists “bloodthirsty hyenas” as well as  “arrogant and lying scum.” He equated  persu, the shortened term for Perussuomalaiset which is now a forbidden word in parliament, to nekru, or the very offensive n-word.

Hirvisaari has learned a lot from his outbursts. I am certain that he now he knows how immigrants and Muslims must feel after reading his countless spiteful blog entries and opinions of these groups.

The big difference, however, is that those that Hirvisaari lashes out against like immigrants and refugees  don’t have the means to defend themselves like one of Finland’s largest parties.  What does Hirvisaari write about immigrants? Read what he says about reporters.

What is even more incredible about what Hirvisaari said was the reaction of Pirkko Ruohonen-Lerner, leader of the PS parliamentary group. She told the media that the MP from Asikkala didn’t really mean what he said because he wasn’t probably taking his arguments seriously, reports Helsingin Sanomat.

The PS claims through Hirvisaari that the media and “elite” Finns are carrying out a systematic hate campaign against Timo Soini’s party.

With MPs like Hirvisaari, Jussi Halla-aho, Teuvo Hakkarainen and others, they can rest assured that the PS’ worst enemy is none other than itself.

ESS: Hirvisaari lakkauttaisi Ylen

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Comment: Of all the far-right anti-immigration PS MPs, James Hirvisaari has got to be the scariest. A railway engineer by profession, Hirvisaari not only reveals his ignorance about the role of the media in a democratic society but his true political colors whenever he gives his opinion on immigration never mind Muslims.

In his latest blog entry on Uusi Suomi, he accuses journalists of being “arragont and lying scum.” Hirvisaari has gone on the rampage at newspapers that use the term persu, or shortened term for Perussuomalaiset, by comparing it with the term nekru, or a synonym of the n-word.

The JSN announced today that using the term persu, which comes close to the term perse or anus, can be used by the media sparingly.

In a blog entry shortly after Anders Breivik killed 77 people in Norway, Hirvisaari blamed immigration for the mass killings. “I really am not surprised that something like this could happen in Norway,” he wrote on Uusi Suomi. “In the last years at least ALL (100%) of tens of those accused of violent rapes have been immigrants/foreigners that have come from outside Europe.”

Hirvisaari is also a strong believer of  ethnic hygiene. He believes that it is a bad matter for Finns to marry foreigners.

One of Hirvisaari’s recent pet topics recently is the Finnish media. He and PS MP Jussi Halla-aho have tried to teach the media their job with  dismal results.

Hirvisaari’s latest target is the Finnish Broadcast Company (YLE), which he accuses of brainwashing the public. “For as long as in YLE’s bylaws read that one of the aims of the company is to further multiculturalism, or brainwash Finnish citizens (not foreign citizens?), I would not want any state money (to go to YLE),” he was quoted as saying on Lahti-based daily ESS.

A question for Hirvisaari: Is it the state or viewers who finance YLE? If it is the latter then it cannot be the state.

Hirvisaari, like Jussi Halla-aho and his PS cronies, believes that multiculturalism is a conspiracy or a left-wing tool that permits non-Europeans and Muslims from moving to Finland and Europe. 

If it were up to Hirvisaari, he’d close Finland’s borders and start a state-sponsored hate campaign against visible immigrants and minorities.

Fortunately, Hirvisaari’s party is not in government and that he is up for relection in 2015.

____________

Perussuomalaisten kansanedustaja James Hirvisaari leimaa Yleisradion täysin ylimitoitetuksi ja kohtuuttomasti rahaa kuluttavaksi muinaisjäänteeksi, jolla nykymuodossaan ei ole olemassaolon oikeutusta. Hirvisaari vastasi sähköpostilla Etelä-Suomen Sanomien kysymykseen Yleisradion tulevasta rahoitusmallista. Hän ei suostu puhelinhaastatteluihin.

Read whole story.

Ihmisiä muuttoliikkeessä: Susanna Niinivaara: Muisti Pätkii

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Comment: One of the most incredible claims made by the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party is that Finland  should be thankful to them for opening up the debate on immigrants and immigration to Finland. The immigration topic has been debated in Finland for decades but if there is something we can be thankful to the PS is for making racism public.

The opinion-piece below by Susanna Niinivaara shows how the debate began in the early 1990s when the first Somalians arrived from the former Soviet Union.

Even Niinivaara arrives at almost the same conclusion as I: “The Perussuomalaiset (party) has brought to the debate (on immigrants and immigration) an angry tone that does not tolerate  contrary opinions.”

_____________________

Susanna Niinivaara

Ensin perussuomalaiset onnistuivat brändäämään itsensä maahanmuuttokriittisenä puolueena, ja sitten puolue onnistui sumentamaan meidän toimittajien muistia. Perussuomalaiset toistavat sitkeästi, että Suomessa maahanmuuttoon liittyvistä ongelmista on vaiettu ja varsinkin näitä ongelmia on hyssytellyt media. Viestimissä on väitteelle annettu tilaa ja perussuomalaiset ovat saaneet kiitosta siitä, että he ovat nostaneet vaietun aiheen keskusteluun.

Read whole story.