Migrant Tales insight: This very sad story caught our attention. We are sorry to hear this and hope the police catch the perpetrators.
Facebook (Hami Bahadori): A racially motivated hate crime?
Jussi Halla-aho and his ilk have made it clear: the only “real Finns” are white and Christian
White Finnish supremacy is not only limited to the Perussuomalaiset (PS).* It is found in other mainstream Finnish parties as well.
THIS STORY WAS UPDATED
This is how a far-right white supremacist like Jussi Halla-aho attempt, like in a Yle interview in February, argue why people of color and other minorities can never be Finns: “If I would for some reason go to Somalia and become a Somali citizen, would that make me a Somali?”
Even if the host Kirsi Heikel stood silent while the head of the PS made the statement, the example is another hallow defense of how Halla-aho attempts to exclude migrants and minorities in Finnish society.
The answer by Halla-aho is what I call a yes-but-no response. It may sound at first logical but you soon notice that it is full of holes. It is like an apple that is shiny from the outside but rotten from the core.
Many people who aren’t white don’t want to be white like Halla-aho, PS Vice President Riikka Purra never mind party secretary Simo Grönroos. For me, that would be horrible. What we want, instead, is to be treated with respect, enjoy equal rights and stop hearing near-constantly toxic othering so common to Finland’s hostile environment.
Take a good look at Halla-aho, Purra, Grönroos and others like them and ask yourself the following question: Do I want to look and be like them?
Never!
Certainly, it would also be difficult, if not impossible for some, to change their skin color and ethnic background to appear as white as them.
The surge of racism, hate speech and crime in Finland during this decade is so dire that some children of color learn at an early age to feel inferior and ashamed of their dark skins. Some, even try hiding from the sun because it tans their skins.
What kind of a country and society do we live in where children, yes children, don’t feel at ease with who they are?
In an attempt to keep Finland an imaginary 99% white and Christian country in the future, Halla-aho and his trusty right-hand woman, Purra, turn to the supernatural to define who is a Finn. According to them, you can tell who is a Finn by intuition.
Both Halla-aho and Purra don’t tell you if that Finn they claim to see by intuition is a black person, a person of color or a visible migrant and minority.
Both of them are so white-Finn centric that they most likely mean a white person.
They call it intuition, I call it bullshit.
Parties like the PS, with the help of other mainstream parties, are trying to normalize racism. We must do everything in our power to stop this type of social ill from spreading more.
What makes the PS a far-right Islamophobic party that is a threat to this country?
- It supports ethnonationalism;
- Even if it the party’s leadership claims that it does not support ethnonationalism, it does nothing to ban it from the party;
- PS party secretary Grönroos is an ethnonationalism;
- The PS supports the social exclusion of Muslims;
- It requires groups like Muslims to give up their culture and identity;
- It copies and pastes far-right Islamophobic and xenophobic rhetoric used by such parties in Europe,
- It openly aims to make naturalization laws stricter for migrants thus retarding their participation as equal members of society;
- It supports one-way adaption (assimilation) not two-way integration of migrants;
- Cultural and ethnic diversity are four-letter words for the PS;
- It fears that white Finns will become a minority in their own country and makes a big deal about this;
- Without reading European history, it believes that Europe is only white and Christian and should stay that way;
- It aligns itself in the EU parliament with similar far-right parties like Italy’s Lega and National Rally of France that are pro-Moscow;
- It is a member of the far-right EU parliament Identity and Democracy political group;
- It supports policies that make and keep migrants and minorities as second- or third-class members of society;
- All of its EU candidates didn’t mind if asylum seekers drown in the Mediterranean;
- It is a homophobic party that supports neo-liberal economic policies.
* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017, into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. In the last parliamentary election, Blue Reform has wiped off the Finnish political map when they saw their numbers in parliament plummet from 18 MPs to none. 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.
White Finnish media story of the day*: Yle labels as well people of color as “people of migrant origin”
After Helsingin Sanomat Monday published a story where oddly termed four progressive US congresswomen of color as “people of migrant origin,” state broadcaster Yle used the same term on Monday for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar.
Even if Finland’s largest daily corrected the story, the old headline was still found in some tweets from Helsingin Sanomat.
Not only have members of “the Squad” revealed Trump’s racism towards people of color, but they helped expose it here in Finland and how our leading media talks about people who are not white.
Here is a simple definition for the media: If you are a USAmerican or Finnish citizen, you are a USAmrican and Finn. Considering the racism that exists in our societies, it is too much for some to stomach this fact.
This means that representatives Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Pressley, and Omar are USAmericans who call themselves people of color. Disagree? Tell me a single person from the United States who isn’t of migrant origin.
The use of the term by some Finnish journalists shows how far off Finland still is from being an inclusive culturally and ethnically diverse society.
What do you think a congresswoman of the Squad would react if a Finnish journalist would refer to any of them in an interview as “people of migrant background?”
I suspect there would first be a smile and then irritation.
“Is that what you call people of color in Finland,” they may ask.
*White Finnish media story of the day highlights how the national media racializes Finland’s ever-growing culturally and ethnically diverse society by maintaining antiquated, even racist and exclusive views about who has the right to belong and call this country their home.
White Finnish media story of the day*: Stop toxic labeling of people of color and minorities
It is not the first time when Migrant Tales has spotted mistakes by the Finnish media. The latest one involves a story concerning US President Donald Trump’s racist tweets against four minority congresswomen: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar.
The original story, which referred to the four congresswomen as “people of migrant origin,” revealed how Finland’s largest daily labels and racializes non-white people.
About seven hours after the story was published, Helsingin Sanomat corrected the story.
Even if Helsingin Sanomat corrected the headline and the story by taking away the term that referred to the congresswomen as “people of migrant origin,” it is a prime example of how the Finnish media, which is about 99% white, excludes and labels non-white people.
The term “people of migrant origin” or “people of foreign origin” are code or racial buzzwords for a person who is non-white and born outside of the EU. Never or rarely would a white EU citizen or USAmericans be labeled by the media as “person of migrant origin.”
*White Finnish media story of the day highlights how the national media racializes Finland’s ever-growing culturally and ethnically diverse society by maintaining antiquated, even racist and exclusive views about who has the right to belong and call this country their home.
White Finnish media story of the day*: Use words that promote inclusion and public spaces to people of color and other minorities
A headline in a Helsingin Sanomat news story about US President Donald Trump’s racist tweets to “the Squad,” four progressive women elected to congress in 2018, highlights how the media racializes non-white people in Finland.
While the story uses the Finnish News Agency (STT) and AFP as sources, the copy editors at Helsingin Sanomat could do a much better job instead of labeling people of color as people of migrant origin.
Helsingin Sanomat calls the four congresswomen, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar, “people of migrant origin” when, in fact, they should be called people of color or minorities.
In my opinion, people of migrant origin is a convenient term to deny people of color and other minorities the right to be equal members of society. How can one be equal if you are constantly reminded with problematic labels that you are outsiders and eternal migrants?
I wonder how the four US congresswomen would react in an interview if a white Finnish journalist called them “people of migrant origin.”
They would, I suspect, be surprised. It would prompt a swift reaction: Who isn’t a person of migrant origin in the United States, they’d ask.
Even if some ethnonationalist groups in Finland like to romanticize that they were chipping stones right after the Ice Age, every white Finn, every single one, in this country is “a person of migrant origin.”
That label used by Finland’s largest newspaper is not only offensive but shows Helsingin Sanomat’s ignorance and prejudice towards people of color. It reveals how racialized the media is when it speaks of non-white people in Finland.
Instead of seeing Finland through racialized lenses, the media should show leadership in promoting inclusion and public spaces to people of color instead of constantly reinforcing their exclusion with labels made up by them.
Does the Finnish language have a translation for the term people of color? If it doesn’t like integration (kotoutuminen) about twenty years ago, it should find one.
In the late-1990s and apart from the term integroituminen, Finland had to invent a new term for integration because there was no appropriate word in the Finnish language.
*White Finnish media story of the day highlights how the national media racializes Finland’s ever-growing culturally and ethnically diverse society by maintaining antiquated, even racist and exclusive views about who has the right to belong and call this country their home.
Two pictures, two situations, bought together by Déjà-vu
On the left SS chief Heinrich Himmler inspecting a prisoner or concentration camp in Russia around 1941; on the right US Vice President Mike Pence visiting a detention facility or concentration camp in Texas.
Finland’s hostile environment against Muslims, people of color and storms in teacups
THIS STORY WAS UPDATED
Finland’s hostile environment against migrants and minorities is relentless, unforgiving, even exceptionally vicious. Matters are in such a dire state in Finland that even the new government fears upsetting racists who hate asylum seekers, especially Muslims, migrants,
The best example of the latter is the cases of eleven, yes eleven, Finnish women who are stuck at the al-Hol refugee camp in Syria with their children, which total 33, according to Yle. Other sources state that there are eight women and 25 children.
Apart from giving the cold shoulder to these women, their biggest crime was alegedly joining a terrorist group but abandoning their white Finnish culture for the Muslim faith.
By not assisting these women and their children, who are Finns, to return to Finland is setting a dangerous precedent: We can bypass the constitution and unilaterally strip a person of his or her citizenship rights, which are supposed to be inalienable.
ted If these women are suspected of committing crimes when they were with Isis, they should be brought before a court of law and tried. Instead of allowing our worst lynch-mob reaction to getting the best of us, maintaining the rule of law is vital: People are innocent before proven guilty.
Apart from the eleven Finnish women in Syria, another case involving eight suspects that were handed prison terms is another example of racist mob bullying in Finland.
Even if one sexual assault is one too many, our reaction should reinforce the rule of law and not a hysteric knee-jerk reaction that labels a whole community. The politicians, media and police should understand this but apparently don’t grasp the consequences of their questionable actions
The coverage of the Oulu sexual assault cases by the media and police are a case in point.
One of the biggest lessons that these groups should learn is that they have a lot of power and what they say and do have serious consequences on a whole community like Muslims and people of color.
Here is a good example of how these three groups shoot an ant with a bazooka. In my opinion, media coverage of Muslims reveals that the Finnish media is Islamophobic.
Concerning the Oulu sexual assault cases, Migrant Tales reported that from November 27 to February 13, only the state-owned broadcaster Yle published 77 stories on the topic. On January 14 alone, Yle published 13 stories about the issue.
When compared with a similar sexual abuse case of minors involving white Finns, there was a different reaction. The story about the pedophile ring accused of sexually abusing 6-15-year-old boys lasted only a week in the news with seven stories published by
Last but not least, is Center Party MP Mikko Kärnä who shows us another example of how storms are created in teacups with the help and encouragement of the hostile environment. He was quoted as saying in Uusi Suomi that the Center Party should ditch the government if its migration policy is “reckless.”
Kärnä was referring to the government’s plans to accept 13 of the 53 asylum seekers on the Sea Watch
Apart from showing how the hostile environment works in Finland, what else does it reveal? Deep-seated institutional racism, bigotry, power, privilege, and impunity.
White Finnish media story of the day: Muslims are grossly underrepresented in the media
Media studies that look into social ills like Islamophobia and racism in general in Britain offer us a view of how matters could be in Finland. With little scrutiny of institutional racism in the Finnish police, similar studies of the mainstream media still appear light-years away.
A study published by The Muslim Council of Britain revealed that 59% of all coverage of Muslims in the British media “has a negative theme.” Another study by the University of Leeds of The Mail, The Sun, The Guardian, and The Independent, showed that 70% of the stories were hostile to Muslims.
Sexual assault is one common theme found in the Finnish media is about “asylum seekers,” which is code for Muslim.
With respect to the Oulu sexual assault cases in which former and present “asylum seekers” were implicated, Migrant Tales reported that from November 27 to February 13, only the state-owned broadcaster Yle published 77 stories on the topic. On January 14 alone, Yle published 13 stories about the topic.
When compared with a similar sexual abuse case of minors involving white Finns, there was a different reaction. The story about the pedophile ring accused of sexually abusing 6-15-year-old boys lasted only a week in the news with 7 stories published by Yle.
Which dailies in Finland would have the most negative coverage of Muslims?
Why don’t we know the answer to that question and what does it reveal about denial?
A documentary about Islamophobia in the UK published by Redfish offers us some answers about how the mainstream media portrays Muslims and migrants in Finland.
Roshan Muhammed Salih is a journalist of UK-based 5 Pillars after he left mainstream journalism.
Salih states:
“The mainstream media is institutionally Islamophobic in my point of view. We have had inquires into the police that
are institutionally racist, but we haven’t had the same scrutiny of the media. The Sadiq (?) University says that 94% of British journalists are white. There are three million Muslims in the country and that equates to 5% of the total population, but it is something like 0.3-0.4% are journalists.So you can see how woefully Muslims are underrepresented in the mainstream media and the Muslim journalists that are in the mainstream media don’t tend to kind of reflect their community. Their answer to underrepresentation is tokenism. It’s not the dressing that is the root issue how do we tell the story of minorities communities, but let’s get some brown or black faces who say exactly the same thing as the white faces.”
As Salih of 5 Pillars pointed out, Muslims account for 5% of Britain’s population but only 0.3-0.4% are journalists. What would the corresponding figure be for Finland? Zero?
Finland’s Muslim population is estimated at 100,000 people, accounting for 1.8% of the total population.
Migrant Tales Podcast: Is Finland too white?
White Finnish media story of the day: Is media coverage of Muslims usually negative?
THIS STORY WAS UPDATED
With the rise of Islamophobia in Europe, one culprit culprit is the media. In the United Kingdom, 59% of coverage of Muslims had a negative theme, according to The Guardian, which cites The Muslim Council of Britain. If a national media has an appetite for biased news reporting of Muslims, it gives politicians and hate groups a lot of space and power.
Writes The Guardian: “The study [by the Muslim Council of Britain] found the Mail on Sunday had the most negative coverage of Islam, with 78% of its stories featuring Muslims having negative themes – above an already-high industry average of 59%.”
If one did a similar study in Finland, would it show the same results as in Britain? Taking into account the rise of Islamophobia in Finland through parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, one would think that such a study would be necessary in understanding the rise of far-right populism.
Which dailies in Finland would have the most negative coverage of Muslims?
Yle ? Iltalehti? Ilta-Sanomat? Uusi Suomi? Kaleva? Helsingin Sanomat? Others?
Quality journalism aims to be fair and
With respect to the Oulu sexual assault cases in which Muslims were implicated, Migrant Tales reported that from November 27 to February 13, only the state-owned broadcaster Yle published 77 stories on the topic. On January 14 alone,
When compared with a similar sexual abuse case of minors involving white Finns, there was a different reaction. The story about the pedophile ring accused of sexually abusing 6-15-year-old boys lasted only a week in the news with 7 stories published by
One of the matters that becomes evident in stories is the code used to talk about Muslims. While the term Muslim isn’t that readily mentioned, stories talk about “asylum seekers” or “people of foreign origin” to mean the former.
* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017, into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. In the last parliamentary election, Blue Reform has wiped off the Finnish political map when they saw their numbers in parliament plummet from 18 MPs to none. 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.