Exposing white Finnish privilege #47: President Sauli Niinistö’s “culture inside four walls”

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THIS STORY HAS BEEN UPDATED

Instead of showing leadership and giving a public face to our ever-growing culturally and ethnically diverse non-white society, President Sauli Niinistö does the opposite again. I have said it before and I wil say it again: President Niinistö is no friend of non-white Finland. 

In an interview on YLE, Niinistö gave an Iraqi man’s example of how he thinks foreigners should practice their culture:

He said: “I read in a newspaper about an Iraqi who had lived a long time in Finland, and he said that this [his culture] isn’t any problem. When I leave home for work, go to the store, or anywhere, I behave like a Finn. In this society, [I] follow the rules of the [cultural] game. But when I come home, I have Iraqi culture – truly impressive. And together with acquaintances can practice [my culture] very well, but the starting point is that Finland’s values are respected, democracy, gender equality.”

Listen to the full Ylen Aamu TV talk show here.

President Niinistö speaks conveniently of gender equality but doesn’t mention the importance of non-discrimination.

White Finnish privilege #47

If we study a bit closer what Niinistö said, it suggests that cultural diversity has no public place in Finland. His affirmation is full of holes that expose his ignorance and prejudices of “other” cultures.

Even if Finnish public officials, politicians, and the president speak of two-way integration, it doesn’t mean that at all because it works as a one-way adaption process.

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President Sauli Niinistö office wants to censor the Feminist Party of Finland

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President Sauli Niinistö’s track record on defending Nordic values and cultural diversity (non-white society) has been a disappointment for many. He is more than ready to protect white Finnish privilege and power but rarely, if ever, the rights of asylum seekers, visible minorities, and migrants. 

The latest action comes from President Sauli Niinistö’s office which requested in the fall the head of the Feminist Party Katju Aro to retract from criticizing the president’s interpretation of the ongoing debate on migrants, minorities, and racism.

The Feminist Party chairperson said in a statement that President Niinistö isn’t serious about defending human and migrant rights in Finland when he referred to people who spoke out against racism as “one extreme.” According to Aro, this view reveals that President Niinistö doesn’t understand the context of the ongoing debate.

We at Migrant Tales couldn’t agree more with Aro’s analysis.

Read the full statement (in Finnish) here.

While Niinistö has, like Prime Minister Theresa May of the UK, referred to threats such as “uncontrolled” migration, that asylum seekers are a danger to European values, and that dual citizens threaten national security, the president’s office request to Aro is a direct glimpse into the stuffy closet Cold War Finland.

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Ahti Tolvanen: Defense Minister Jussi Niinistö’s announces legislative initiative to cleanse the ministry of foreign dual citizens

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This brought me back to the days of my reckless youth when I arrived in Finland in the early 70s to study at university. At that time a foreign citizen was not allowed by law to hold any kind of “virka” i.e. permanent public job.  A foreign citizen was also not even allowed to marry a Finn.  There were also a host of  private sector and community jobs a foreigner could not hold like newspaper editor, city counselor, shop steward and board member in a company or association.

Little did I know at the time that I would eventually take on all of these ” illegal” activites.

Defense Minister Jussi Niinistö is a member of an anti-immigration party (formerly Perussuomalaiset, today Blue Reform*) with ties to far-right groups. Read the full story (in Finnish) here.

This was not the Finland, the fierce defender of freedom, I expected to find. This was a closed society with apparently a huge case of xenophobia with one administrative rule after another to exclude and kick out foreigners. There was actually no appeal process for foreigners who got deportation notices. Just leave or else. It was worse than Trump’s USA in that everyone seemed resigned to it and it had gone on for decades. In some ways it was like North Korea in that everybody seemed happy with the very closed system. The exception was that almost everybody had enough to eat.

I turned into a kind of career rule basher or a kind of a reluctant corporate guerrilla. It probably started when I fell in love with a Finnish woman. I actually had to chase down the Minister of Justice to get special government permission to marry. After that success I decided to stay and make it stick. That was in the vows too.

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Finland’s immigration policy is a failure and inhumane

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Finland’s immigration policy is a failure because it is inhumane. It is a failure and inhumane because the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset*, which imploded into two parties in June, has lobbied for tighter and unrealistic immigration policies with the blessings of the Center Party and National Coalition Party.

According to the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri), “a few thousand” asylum seekers who fled the country in hopes of getting asylum elsewhere were sent back to Finland from other EU countries.

Read the full story (in Finnish) here.

When a country like Finland, which claims to uphold human rights and treats people fairly starts to label and deport people wholesale to countries that aren’t but considers “safe,” time is ripe to reconsider and replace such policies.

If there is one matter that we have learned from the handling of asylum seekers since 2015 and ever-tighter immigration policy is that it is a disaster and inhumane.

A case in point was in spring 2016 when parliament voted to do away with residence permits on humanitarian grounds. By doing away with this option, Finland created an ever-growing army of undocumented migrants. Politicians stuck their heads in the sand and hoped that the problem would go away.

The problem has not gone away. It has only gotten worse.

While tough anti-immigration rhetoric may go down well with some voters in Finland, it only adds salt to an open wound, which is our broken and inhumane immigration policy.

* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017 into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform Party. 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.

Laura Huhtasaari show us the way up the pyramid of hate

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Staying on the topic of Perussuomalaiset* presidential candidate Laura Huhtasaari, I took the liberty to ask her a question on Messenger. To no-one’s surprise, she didn’t care to answer my question. 

I wrote: “Hey! You speak a lot about ‘Finns’ but who are these ‘Finns’ [you so often speak of]. Are they all those who were born in Finland? Black Finns? Muslim Finns? Argentinean Finns? Could you explain and state clearly what you mean by ‘Finns.’ Thank you.”*

A question arises from these types of “us” and “them” labeling: Where are they supposed to lead us? First, it was uncommon in Finland to have politicians like Huhtasaari openly label and blacklist migrants and minorities. Today, her hateful speech is “normal.”

If you want a harrowing answer, check out this blog post. If we study the pyramid of hate, the final stage is genocide. It’s an escalation of hatred that leads to the annihilation of a group.

One example was the scapegoating and outright hatred against the Jews and other minorities in Germany in the 1930s.

The final stage of racism and hatred is genocide.

Is this where politicians like Huhtasaari and her band of Perussuomalaiset [1] want to lead Finland?

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Perussuomalaisten presidenttiehdokas Laura Huhtasaari on itse epäonnistunut kokeilu

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Perussuomalaisten presidenttiehdokas Laura Huhtasaari jakaa vihapuhetta, kutsuu kansainvälisyyttä ja kulttuurista moninaisuutta – siis minuakin – “kokeiluksi.”

Olen kestänyt hänen kaltaisten politiikkojen vihaa ja rasismia koko 2010-luvulla. Nahkani on paksuntunut ja ylpeys siitä kuka olen on kasvanut kiitoksia tästä vihasta.

Perussuomalaisten presidenttiehdokkaan viimeiset plagiaattipaljastukset näkyvät hänen retoriikassaan. Se on räikeästi kopioitua vihapuhetta ja “plagioituja” iskulauseita ulkomailta.

En ole, Laura Huhtasaari, ”kokeilu.” Olen oikea ihminen jota et ikinä saa pois täältä.

Onko sinun ideologiasi epäonnistunut kokeilu?

Uskon vankasti, että on.

Would Martin Luther King Jr. defined his scorn for white moderates as “tolkun ihmiset?”

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There’s been a lot of debate about the so-called tolkun ihminen, a concept in Finland introduced by President Sauli Niinistö to help politicians and public officials do little to nothing to challenge racism and discrimination in Finland. Migrant Tales has defined tolkun ihminen as disgraced President Richard Nixon’s attempt to kill criticism of him by praising the silent majority of a small Oklahoma town called Muskogee. 

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-68) gave a spot-on description of tolkun himinen when he was incarcerated in 1963 for holding a mass demonstration in Alabama. For the Civil Rights leader, white moderates were the biggest obstacle to the emancipation of Black people in the United States.

The aim of tolkun ihmiset is the same as what MLK referred to his scorn for “white moderates.” Both white moderates and tolkun ihmiset do a lot of harm to migrants and minorities by not doing anything and turning a blind eye to racism.

Tolkun ihmiset are the most significant obstacle in Finland to furthering social equality for migrants and minorities in Finland.

 

Read the full story here.

Wrote MLK:

“First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action;’ who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.'”

Send an email and words of encouragement to an Iraqi asylum seeker at the Metsälä immigration detention center

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Migrant Tales wrote on Thursday about the detention of a twenty-four-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker who escaped deportation on January 3 by acting in an unruly manner on a plane. He now awaits deportation to Iraq next week.

Like all deportation cases that we are able to cover, we would like to ask the readers to send words of encouragement to the person. You can send emails to this asylum seeker via [email protected].

We also took the opportunity to ask the asylum seeker presently detained at Helsinki’s Metsälä immigration detention center, any news he’d like to share with us.

He responded:

The asylum seeker’s room at Metsälä.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Bringing people from “shithole countries”

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Is U.S. President Donald Trump a racist? Some are still having a difficult time figuring this out despite Trump’s recent outburst, bringing people from “shithole countries,” which not only exposes the president’s racist worldview but the history and legacy of racism in the United States. 

After the Civil Rights Movement of 1955-1968, there are still a lot of issues with respect to racism in the United States and elsewhere like Europe.

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Another young Iraqi asylum seeker faces deportation from Finland

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Another hapless asylum seeker, 24, was about to be deported a day after he was detained by the police on January 2. The deportation failed after he started to yell at the top of his voice prompting three civilian police officers to remove him off the plane. 

The asylum seeker, who is now awaiting deportation at the Metsälä immigration removal center in Helsinki, said that the police plan to deport him to Iraq next week.

While it is scandalous that a person who searches for a better life in Europe is being deported against his will, there are legal loopholes that permit deportation, like that of the Iraqi asylum seeker, to happen swiftly.

Bruises on the head and arm. An ID snapshot of the asylum seeker.

The asylum seeker’s deportation a day after he was asked to visit the police station was possible because a court hadn’t challenged the deportation order by the National Immigration Service (Migri). The asylum seeker’s lawyer should have stopped the deportation and asked the court for more time to review the case.

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