Singer Musta Barbaari’s mother and sister are going to be charged for resistance to cooperate with law enforcement officials and insubordination, according to YLE. In a highly publicized case in social media last year, Musta Barbaari, whose real name is James Nikander, wrote that plainclothes police officials stopped his mother and sister in downtown Helsinki.
According to a then-Helsingin Sanomat story, the singer’s sister refused to show her passport and asked the police why they were arbitrarily stopped and questioned.
“The plainclothes police didn’t answer [my sister’s question] but proceeded to handcuff both of them rudely and forced my mother to lie on the ground,” he wrote. “My sister asked once again why they were being treated in such a way and what they had done but didn’t get an answer from police. My mother feared for her life and thought she was going to be beaten since the behavior of the police was very rude!”
The police were cleared of all wrongdoing in the case and went further by clearing the police of ethnic profiling while monitoring migrants in 2016, according to YLE News.
One of Musta Barbaari’s latest videos called, “Who’s afraid of the dark?”
In the spring of 2016, the police carried out spot checks with the Finnish Border Guard on “foreign-looking” people in the Helsinki, Espoo, and Vantaa.
The idea that officials are looking for people who “look foreign” should raise some questions. One of these is what is a “foreign-looking” person look?
The University of Turku will publish the findings of Finland’s most comprehensive study about ethnic profiling in 2018.
Up to now, the police service has denied that it ethnically profiles people.