With parliamentary elections nearing in April, topping the anti-immigration rhetoric list are two parties with representatives in parliament: National Coalition Party and who else but the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*.
We’ve been reading almost daily about National Coalition Party MP Pia Kauma’s crusade against migrant women with baby carriages. The PS are another hostile party to migrants that will feed migrants to the dogs in order to get your vote in April.
While the PS wants to fool voters into believing that their rhetoric against migrants and minorities has something to do with patriotism and defending white Finnish rights, nothing could be further from the truth.
Migrant Tales has never been fooled by this type of chicanery and neither should you.
If there are warning red light over Finland, it’s to warn us of the PS, a party that has ties with extremist groups like Suomen Sisu.
Since the PS has made so many outrageous statements in the past about migrants, minorities and development aid, let’s look at the two most recent ones by MP Vesa-Matti Saarakkala and MP Juho Eerola.
If Saarakkala had his way, he’d get rid of dual citizenship and take away a person’s citizenship if he were sentenced for a serious crime like terrorism. Eerola, on the other hand, the MP that admitted liking fascism and Benito Mussolini’s economic policies, wants to scrap the right of migrants to use paid interpreters.
What’s wrong with these two proposals? For one they reveal that Saarakkala and Eerola, both lawmakers, are in the dark about our constitution.
One of the most important rights in our constitution is that everyone, irrespective if the person is a Finn or migrant, has the right to be treated equally before the law.
Here’s a question to Eerola: If you are going to take away the right to use a paid interpreter from migrants, how would that affect minorities such as the Sami, Roma and mutes?
These types of statements made by MPs just to get votes in next year’s election reveal the true face of the PS. It shows a party that is lost but led by the headlights of its opportunism and ignorance. The PS would end up feeding our laws and values to the dogs if it ever got power.
Should migrants, expats and minorities fear the PS? Not at all. We should challenge them and do everything possible to send them them back to where they came from: to the one-digit political minor league.
Let’s hope that this will happen sooner than later.
* 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.