A new study by the European Agency of Fundamental Rights (FRA) reveals that a third of people of African descent (PAD) surveyed have experienced racial harassment in the last five years. That’s not all: Perceived racist harassment was highest in Finland (63%) and least prevalent in Malta 20% (see chart below).
“It is a reality both shameful and infuriating: racism based on the colour of a person’s skin remains a pervasive scourge throughout the European Union,” writes FRA director Michael O’Flaherty in the report’s forward. “…It is a reality both shameful and infuriating: racism based on the colour of a person’s skin remains a pervasive scourge throughout the European Union.”
Finland’s dubious ranking as the highest five-year rate of perceived racist violence against PAD has only ourselves to blame and a result of our lost decade (2011-2019), where we allowed racism and our silence to create the hostile migrants against migrants, especially PAD, today.
Migrant Tales wrote: “Why are the Center Party and National Coalition Party in bed with an anti-immigration and nationalist party like the PS [Perussuomalaiset]?*”
Such a bedfellow has cost Finland dearly in racism, discrimination and hostile environment.
Read the full Guardian story here.
FRA states: “Significant proportions of people of African descent experience racist harassment and racist violence in the 12 countries surveyed, including at the hands of the police. Very few report such incidents to any authority or body.”
The number of hate crime in Finland rose last year by 7.97% to 1,165 compared with 1,079 suspected cases, according to Finland’s Police University College.
The police report states that hate crime cases involving religion soared by 58% and the most common target group were Muslims.
In the 1980s, when there were about 20,000 foreigners living in Finland, one of the questions we sometimes asked about how racist is our country. We agreed that the intensity of racism hinged on the color of the skin of the person. The darker, the more racism that person would experience.
The FRA report sadly confirms the latter with religion playing also a strong role is racist hostility and harassment of visible migrants and minorities.
* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017 into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. Despite the name changes, we believe that it is the same party in different clothing. Both factions are hostile to cultural diversity never mind Muslims and other visible minorities. One is more open about it while the other says it in a different way.
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.