MP Teuvo Hakkarainen, who is facing ethnic agitation charges, and the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party are deplorable examples of how low our society has stooped in the dubious racism and bigotry league.
The PS isn’t just any party but a member of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s government comprised of the Center Party and National Coalition Party (NCP).
The silence of the PS in the face of Hakkarainen’s racist and bigoted statements in the PS’ Suomen Uutiset publication not only speak volumes about how racism is encouraged and spread in Finland at the highest levels of government and parliament.
We will translate most of Hakkarainen’s comments in Suomen Uutiset so that politicians and institutions around Europe can get a glimpse of the social illness inflicting Finland today.
According to Suomen Uutiset and Teuvo Hakkarainen, racism and bigotry are fine as long as it’s done by white Finns. Funding for the publication comes from tax-payers. Read full interview (in Finnish) here.
The asylum refugee center in Saarijärvi, a central Finnish town of 10,000 inhabitants that Hakkarainen represents, will close at the end of April.
“Saarijärvi will soon be left in peace,” Hakkarainen was quoted as saying in the PS publication, “but it’s unfortunate that they [asylum seekers still] remain in this country.”
The PS MP visited the Saarijärvi asylum reception center and its 280 inhabitants by surprise in September.
“There was only one [person] who I would have approved as an asylum seeker,” he continues. “Place a stamp on their [asylum seekers] asses who came here as tourists and send them as far away as possible [from Finland].”
Hakkarainen, who calls asylum seekers “tourists,” admits that one of the biggest challenges facing Finland is how to deport those that don’t get a residence permit and who become undocumented.
“Finland is now less attractive to tourist asylum seekers and the flow of refugees has dried up,” he continues thanking his party and government efforts for tightening immigration policy. “Nothing would have happened if the Social Democrats would have been in our place in government and we’d have 100,000 more asylum seekers here [now].”
The PS MP doesn’t only insult asylum seekers in his usual racist and bigoted style, he lashes out as well at Red Cross employees at asylum reception centers and at pensioners that weaved socks for refugees.
“The propaganda of the national media got through [to the people],” claims Hakkarainen. “When more hairy and bald ‘children’ arrived [to Finland], grandmothers weaved socks and sweaters for them. They [asylum seekers] used them to wipe their asses and threw them away.”
Hakkarainen was especially critical of the Red Cross because he claims that single white Finnish males that live in villages were left to lick their wounds since the few women that lived where they did were lured to work at the asylum center. “They [the Red Cross] aren’t at all worried about single Finnish men that lives and scrounges in the wilderness,” he states. “No help ever reaches them.”
After kicking below the belt asylum seekers, the Red Cross, its women employees and women pensioners for being so naive, the PS MP makes the ludicrous claim that the Red Cross is not interested in Finnish seior citizens.
But his rant doesn’t stop here.
“That was social sex tourism and which Finnish tax payers paid and was organized from the Middle East,” he continues, adding that there is a conspiracy to exchange white discarded Finnish men in villages for asylum seekers. He warns and points the finger at the Red Cross staff that, according to him, have affairs with asylum seekers.
Hakkarainen’s insults and loaded words, coupled with the silence of his party that prints such racist rhetoric in the PS newspaper, show the cancer that has spread in Finland. The PS MP’s words are full of bravado and give the green light from his party and the government to be hostile and harass migrants and minorities in this country.
Hakkarainen, who recently played down an ethnic agitation charge to a speeding ticket, is defiant.
“I will not change if I get sentenced,” he said. “In the future, they can send me tickets [for ethnic agitation] directly by mail so that there won’t be extra costs to society [tax payers].”
* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The English names of the party adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We, therefore, prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings. The direct translation of “Perussuomalaiset” is “basic” or “fundamental Finn.”