Migrant Tales received a message from the Iraqi family in Kemi, which had only received 10 days of room an board after being forced to leave the asylum reception with his wife and two children aged 6 and 5.
The family first went to Helsinki and then to Tampere.
Asylum seekers (from left to right): the father, son, daughter, and wife.
The message was sent Wednesday afternoon:
After making a call to him, we discovered that he went with his family to Helsinki and then to Tampere, where he is staying with some friends.
We at Migrant Tales are especially concerned about the fate of the family’s children. How is it possible that the Red Cross and the Finnish Immigration Service can throw families with children in the street?
This is shameful and unacceptable.
This is a developing story and I will report when I have more information.
The ongoing debate in Finland if the so-called Isis wives and their children, who are Finnish citizens, should be given assistance and allowed to return to the country is another example of the former government’s lofty disdain of Muslims, human rights, and the rule of law.
It is shameful that a country like Finland, which stands by its laws and institutions, would put obstacles by prohibiting its own citizens and their children from returning to the country.
“Finnish citizens shall not be prevented from entering Finland or deported or extradited or transferred from Finland to another country against their will.”
The reason some ministers of former Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s government (2015-2019) have difficulty grasping Section 9 of the Constitution, is that politics and their prejudices against Muslims get in the way of their good judgement.
Petteri Orpo, the chairperson of the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) tweets: “Finland should not help Isis wives to return. I have no sympathy for them, who left Finland voluntarily to serve in a terrorist organization. The situation of the children is different and should be looked at on a case-by-case bais.”
Sakari Timonen, one of Finland’s most popular bloggers, would put it in the following words: First take away one group’s rights and eventually it will be your group’s turn later.
Orpo is the same politician who was interior minister responsible for tightening immigration policy against asylum seekers, who were mainly Muslims.
He belonged to the same government that wanted to water down civil and human rights even of Finnish citizens. Orpo has led Kokoomus in becoming, after the populist Perussuomalaiset*, the most anti-immigration party in Finland.
We should not be discussing whether a Finnish citizen has the right to assistance and if he or she can return to the country. If a person committed crimes while in Isis, that person should face justice. In our country, everyone is innocent before proven guilty by a court of his/her peers.
Comments by ministers of the former government sound like lynch-mob leaders that want to score the maximum amount of political points.
TweetAs I plan a beautiful summer filled with fun with my family, my heart is heavy knowing that there are hundreds of immigrant children from Latin America who are locked up in modern day concentration camps–U.S. detention centers. These children are waking up on concrete floors, do not have access to toothbrushes, or soap, and most importantly, do not know when or if, they will ever see their families again. They are suffering both physical harm leading to deaths under our government’s watch and great psychological abuse that will create long-lasting trauma for them.
On June 21, 2019 the PBS News Hour reported on the horrible conditions
in one of these detention centers in Clint, Texas where some of these
immigrant Latino children from toddlers to teenagers were being held
until yesterday when they were quickly relocated to another detention
center. They lacked basic needs such as food, water, or proper
sanitation. Willamette University law professor Warren Binford was
interviewed by the News Hour after visiting the facility. She states:
Basically, what we saw are dirty children who are
malnourished, who are being severely neglected. They are being kept in
inhumane conditions. They are essentially being warehoused, as many as
300 children in a cell, with almost no adult supervision….We’re seeing a
flu outbreak, and we’re also seeing a lice infestation. It is — we have
children sleeping on the floor. It’s the worst conditions I have ever
witnessed in several years of doing these inspections.
Under these horrific and inhumane conditions, it should come as no surprise that children are dying under our government’s care.
President Trump’s racialized immigration policy is killing immigrant Latino children. Six migrant children have died in U.S. custody between September 2018 to May 2019 for the first time in a decade.
The recent origins of this situation began last April when more than
2600 undocumented children were separated from their parents at the U.S.
border and locked up in detention centers that were not designed to
house children under Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy. Child separations
and detention is an example of the kind of tragic policy Bill Hong Hing argues brings shame to us as a nation and violates our constitutional rights. Hing states:
The age of hysteria over immigration in which we live
leads to tragic policies that challenge us as a moral society. Policies
that are unnecessarily harsh—that show a dehumanizing side of our
character—are senseless. They bring shame to us as a civil society.”
(2006: p. 7).
The Trump administration argued in court this week that
detained migrant children do not require basic hygiene products (like
soap and toothbrushes) to be held in “safe and sanitary” conditions.
Lawyers who recently interviewed detained children report that kids are
living in “traumatic and dangerous” conditions – insufficient food and
water, going weeks without bathing, kids as young as 7 years old being
told to care for the babies and toddlers.
While most of the children from the Clint, Texas facility have now
been moved to another detention center since the story broke, the larger
problem is the underlying policy that allows for children to continue to be locked up and separated from their families. Taking them to another detention center doesn’t solve this larger policy issue, or remove the suffering these policy create.
This Administration’s cruel policy is exactly the kind of policy the
President likes. Why? Because it serves his ends and displays his bully
power over the most powerless. President Trump targets the vulnerable in
order to please his white base, and immigrant children from Latin
America are among the most vulnerable. It is a politically calculated
strategy designed to gain emotional support from an anti-immigrant, and
often, racist base.
Many of the greatest problems facing the Latinos stem from the
consequences of the racism we have experienced in this country because
of the still dominant white racial frame.
Caging and abusing innocent Latino toddlers and children could only
happen after centuries of the dehumanization of Latinos, who are
situated within a systematic racialization of people of color in the
United States. As Feagin and Cobas
argue, Latinos have been and continue to exist within a particular
racial frame, as part of a white-imposed “hierarchy of racialized groups
in this country” (2014: p. 48). Their analysis traces the subordination
of Latinos through the white racial frame, which has resulted in
discriminatory actions towards them by racist whites and in continued
race-based exclusion at all levels of society. They state:
For more than a century and a half, Latino groups’
positioning on this society’s racial ladder has been a powerful
determinant of their members’ racialized treatment, socioeconomic
opportunities, and access to various types of social capital (2014: p.
15).
It is in this context that this appalling abuse of immigrant Latino
children can take place without massive large scale civil unrest by
Americans throughout the nation. While there have been and are some
protests developing across the globe such as the upcoming one on July
12, 2019 by the Lights for Liberty,
can we imagine the continued national uproar that would occur if these
children were Swedish immigrants being locked up in cages, denied beds,
adequate food, water, and sanitation resulting in some of them dying? If
it were Swedish immigrant children being treated the way Latino
immigrant children are then more people would be protesting in the
streets. This abuse will go down in history among the worst atrocities
committed by the U.S. government towards people of color along with the
taking of Native American children from their families, the terror of
Jim Crow, or the Japanese Internment.
Donald Trump’s framing of immigrants from Latin America immigrants as
“criminals” and “rapists ” proved so successful to his election to the
presidency in 2016, that we should be prepared for more of what
political scientist Peter Andreas calls “performative art” as the 2020
election season intensifies. And the paint is going to continue to be
the blood of immigrant children.
How can we continue to dehumanize children to the point where
separating them from their families and holding them in these conditions
becomes our public policy? Why aren’t the Democrats calling out how
this Administration’s policies are killing children? Why aren’t we
insisting Congress pass comprehensive immigration reform? Why is there
not greater large scale civil unrest to this situation? Why aren’t we
all calling out how President Trump’s policies are killing immigrant
Latino children?
As we plan for our children’s summer of fun, we should all remember there are Latino immigrant children who are interned in modern day concentration camps–alone, scared, in metal cages, and without adequate nutrition, hygiene, or medical care. They are children, just like our children. Our government and our president are treating them WORSE than animals. There are animal cruelty laws that exist that prohibit people from leaving dogs unattended in inhumane conditions. These immigrant Latino children are receiving no such protections. The contrast between our healthy kids’ lives and the lives of these Latino immigrant children is truly heartbreaking.
After over twenty years working as a journalist and foreign correspondent in countries like Finland, Spain, Italy, Argentina, and Colombia, it becomes routine to spot fishy stories that are fake.
Fake news can encompass a lot of things. One area where it appears a lot is in stories about asylum seekers, migrants, especially people of color, and other minorities.
In 2016, Migrant Tales published throughout 2015 a list of stories that were biased and racist. In my opinion, the one below is one of the worst examples of Finnish journalism. There are, unfortunately, many more.
The above story appeared in September 2018 on state-run Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle).Yle changed the picture of the story shortly after it was published. The story was a poll about different parties’ views on migration and migrants. There are no “niqab” or Muslim parties in Finland. The Muslim woman in the picture does not represent a party. Source: Yle.
Migrant Tales offers an easy guide to spot these types of stories. Below, is a “classic” trick used by populist anti-immigration politicians over and over again. When they get away with it, you can hear them laughing all the way to the bank.
Case #1
A politician makes an outrageous claim to a journalist, who doesn’t even bother to question its veracity. Eventually, the journalist may do some investigating and find out that he or she was fed malarkey. By then it’s too late because the story is already out there.
One example of the latter is when National Coalition Party MP Pia Kauma got a lot of media attention five years ago by claiming that welfare is obligedto buy new baby carriages to Somali mothers (sic!) while Finnish women were more “ecologically conscious” because they didn’t mind using used babby carriages.
Migrant Tales’ racist and biased news test
If you answer YES to any two, the chances are that you are reading a racist and biased story. If you answer YES to three or more, you are reading a racist and prejudiced news. If you answer NOT SURE three or more times ask a knowledgable person what he or she thinks about the story.
* 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.
AnIraqi family of two children aged 6 and 5, went to the Kemi social welfare office today to seek help since the family was forced to leave the hotel they were staying at today. According to the father of the family, the social worker told him angrily that he will not get any more assistance from the city after Monday.
The Iraqi family was granted room and board. They received 116 euros for food.
Asylum seekers (from left to right): the father, son, daughter, and wife.
Migrant Tales reported in an earlier story that the family would be forced to live in the street and penniless as of today. What we did not mention was that the Red Cross had directed the family to the social office of Kemi to seek help for the family.
Considering the fact that the family will be homeless and penniless as of next Monday, it was correct what we reported in the earlier story.
The family came to Finland in 2015 and had been staying at the Kemi asylum reception center but were told to leave after nine rejections for asylum.
While some municipalities assist undocumented asylum seekers for up to three months, the Iraqi family’s help in Kemi is for only 10 days.
“The social worker spoke to me angrily and told me that they would help us until Monday,” a friend of the asylum seeker who speaks Finnish, told Migrant Tales. “The social worker said that go back to your homeland, search for work or live with a friend, but we cannot help you anymore.”
Migrant Tales called the social worker, but she did not answer the phone. I contacted the Red Cross in Kemi but they would not give any information about the asylum seeker except to confirm that they had directed the family to the social welfare office in Kemi.
Migrant Tales understands that an Iraqi couple with two children who were forced to leave the asylum reception center and granted a five-day stay at a hotel is without money and will be homeless by Tuesday. The man, 29, who came to Finland in 2015, has a wife, 31, and boy and girl aged 6 and 5, respectively.
The Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) and the police have asked him to leave the country after getting nine rejections for asylum.
“I am worried because I don’t know where my children are going to sleep [after tomorrow] and where I am going to get them food,” he said. “I would go to Helsinki but I don’t have any money for the bus fare.”
According to the man, the Red Cross asked him to leave the reception center with his family and paid five days boarding at a Kemi hotel. The last time he received an allowance from the state was in May, according to him.
“I am very worried,” he concluded. “I don’t know what to do and what will happen to us.”
Ever wonder why there is an obsessive interest by the Finnish media of Perussuomalaiset (PS)* chairperson Jussi Halla-aho? Most of his views are centered on anti-immigration rhetoric and white supremacy (fear of becoming a minority) as well as conservative views on topics like economic policy and the environment.
The media’s interest in Halla-aho is one reason why he got the most votes (30,527) than any other politician in the parliamentary elections. His campaign budget was only 308 euros.
In Finland, the media played a critical role in the rise of the PS and politicians like Halla-aho. It’s clear that whenever the media writes about such parties and its leaders, it is because such stories sell well to their readers. Another culprit is the near-silence – and incompetence – of most of Finland’s political class to challenge the far-right threat.
In short, Finland lacks politicians with a vision to defend our institutions and reinforce the rule of law, which are under threat today thanks to parties like the PS.
Social activist Joacine Moreira of Portugal was asked Friday if she feared the rise of the far right in Europe. The PS is in our opinion a far-right party. Her response was the following: “I am not afraid of the far right. I’m afraid of the mainstream parties [which should know better] but don’t do anything to change the situation.”
The political situation of Europe today could be compared with the rise of fascism in the 1930s. How many of those that supported Nazi Germany in the 1930s ever thought they would end up defeated and in ruins in 1945? Instead of facing justice, many of their leaders preferred the easy way out by taking a cyanide capsule.
Brazilian LGTB activist Jean Wyllys said that “The alternative media is the answer [to the traditional media for oppressed voices to be heard and construct their narratives].”
I could not agree more.
It is clear from the reporting by Finland’s and Europe’s mainstream media that alternative media is needed more than ever. That media, which gives a voice to minorities, must also adhere to ethical journalistic standards and fair reporting practices just like the mainstream media should.
The faster we act to elevate that voice, the better.
* 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.
Jean Wyllys is a Brazilian LGTB politician who gave up his seat in congress due to death threats he received. He is an outspoken critic of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s government and a fierce advocate of gay rights in Brazil. He is presently on “vacation” abroad and does not plan to return to the country anytime soon.
Wyllys was due to be sworn in for a third term in February but decided to relinquish his seat and flee the country. “This environment isn’t safe for me,” he was quoted as saying in Folha de S. Paulo.
Migrant Tales got a chance to hear and speak to the Brazilian activist. He said that the media is a big issue on how the narratives of Others are silenced and oppressed with the reporting styles of the traditional media. He offers us an answer on how we are changing matters:
“The alternative media is the answer [to the traditional media for oppressed voices to be heard and construct their narratives],” he said.
It is amusing to hear how some people, usually white Finnish males, are so concerned about free speech. From rock bands like Eppu Normaali to politicians from the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party and others, the message is clear: the state is undermining our free speech.
Really?
How can people who grow up with privilege and power in Finland feel so threatened? Why is it usually that white Finnish males and women who support them, usually those that hate migrants and minorities, the ones that feel so threatened?
We all know the answer to that question. The issue isn’t undermining your rights to free speech but the fact that white Finnish men and women are scared because their privilege is being challenged. One of these privileges is to insult, oppress, and bully Others.
A good example is the racist and disgraceful tweet in March that cost the Perussuomalaiset Youth chapter 115,000 euros of funding by the ministry of education and culture.
Those that remember the tweet, there is a picture of a black couple smiling happily at their newborn child with the following tweet: “Vote for the Perussuomalaiset so that Finland won’t look like this.”
PS chairperson Jussi Halla-aho gave his usual defense of why racism should be seen as a “normal” matter by society and why it was wrong to cut funding to the youth chapter.
“My view is that cancelling and recovering funding is an unreasonable action over one silly tweet. There’s reason to appeal the decision – and if needed – take it to court,” Yle News quotes him saying on Facebook.
Anyone who is familiar with the actions of the PS Youth will conclude that it wasn’t a “silly tweet” by a member of that youth chapter but a clear pattern used over and over again by the party.
Playing down the impact of one’s racism is a common strategy used by racist parties like the PS. If racism happens, it is an exception “or silly” (sic!).
White Finnish privilege #62
It is a good matter that the ministry of education and culture cut funding (taxpayers’ money) to an organization that builds its support on racist ethnonationalistic views.
But the interesting question is why such parties feel so threatened that their free speech is being watered down?
The only answer I have is that it is the main thrust of the far-right message: Vote for us because you will be a minority. Are you scared? Vote for us!
White Finnish privilege allows you to cry about your privilege so you can continue to oppress and malign Others with impunity as well as keep institutional racism unchallenged.
If these people want, I will gladly offer a handkerchief to help them wipe the crocodile tears from their eyes.
* 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.
At a European Network Against Racism general assembly in Brussels (June 20-22), feminist and anti-racist activist Joacine Moreira of Portugal, gave her view if we should fear the rise of the far right in Europe.
“I am not afraid of the far right. I’m afraid of the mainstream parties [which should know better] but don’t do anything to change the situation.”
