Tapanila sexual assault in Finland sends a disturbing signal about our society

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Something terrible happened on Monday night after 9pm at the Tapanila train station of northern Helsinki. A group of 15-18-year-olds were reportedly harassing a young woman on a train, who was later sexually assaulted by the same suspects outside the station, according to Helsingin Sanomat. 

No respectable news organization or police force with integrity should be interested in spreading racial stereotypes or fueling racial hatred. It’s not considered ethical in journalism to mention the suspect’s ethnicity if the person is under police custody.

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Read full story here.

Identifying somebody by ethnicity can be problematic as well. Even if the suspects had been apprehended, the police mentioned in a statement that those under custody were of “foreign background.”

Continue reading “Tapanila sexual assault in Finland sends a disturbing signal about our society”

UPDATE (Mar. 10): Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism will be updated separately. To see other examples of opinionated journalism in Finland about cultural diversity, please go to this link.

Mar. 10

PAM: Ulkomaalaisomisteisiin ravintoloihin tarvitaan lisää valvonta (YLE)

What’s wrong with this story? Right from the onset of the news story, in the headline, there is a serious problem: In one shot PAM, a trade union that represents workers in the private service sector, claims that the authorities should have more resources to monitor restaurants owned by foreigners since they exploit their employees. While this may be true in some cases, the article generalizes and labels all restaurants run by foreigners. While there are foreign employers that abuse their employees, the same practice happens at restaurants owned by Finns as well. Singling out only foreign restaurants, and suggesting that they exploit employees, labels and stigmatizes all foreign restaurants.  This is poor and careless journalism at its worst that reinforces prejudices against foreigners instead of  bringing solutions to the table.

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Racism and time

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Racism is harmful because it robs you of one of your most important things in life: time. 

In the same way that Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836-70) asked in a poem where sighs, tears and love go,* do we know where time goes after it’s used up? 

Since humans are social animals, attack and prey on others in a pack, how would we collectively rob others of a priceless commodity such as time? How would we deprive such a group of the same rights and privileges we enjoy?

Would racism and discrimination be formidable weapons in this task?

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European racism is like a Cadillac but has the ability to appear and vanish

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Racism is like a Cadillac, they bring out a new model every year.

Malcolm X (1925-65)

The story of the three Chelsea fans who are suspected of turning away a black person from entering a train on the Paris subway station of Richelieu-Drovat highlights the many “Cadillacs” and shades of racism in today’s Europe as well as its ability to appear and vanish.  

One of the suspects in the Paris metro affair is Richard Barklie, 50, when a black man, Souleymane Sylla, was shoved from entering a carriage. While this was happening, supporters were heard chanting: “We’re racist, we’re racist and that’s the way we like it.”

Barklie claims that the black man was shoved away because the carriage was full and had nothing to do with racism.

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Read full story here.

Continue reading “European racism is like a Cadillac but has the ability to appear and vanish”

UPDATE (Mar. 6): Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism will be updated separately. To see other examples of opinionated journalism in Finland about cultural diversity, please go to this link.

Mar. 6

Olli Immonen rajoittaisi somaleiden maahanmuuttoa (Verkkouutiset)

What’s wrong with this story? We all know what Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Olli Immonen’s xenophobic views are about migration and especially about Muslims. No news here. It wasn’t too long ago when Finnish officials avoided using the term “refugee” for Soviet citizens that were fleeing the USSR since the term wasn’t liked by its giant eastern neighbor. Similarly, there were so few migrants in Finland in the 1980s that such people weren’t even called migrants but aliens. In the Verkkouutiset story the term asylum is only mentioned once even if Somalis are considered refugees fleeing a civil war that has ravaged the country since the early 1990s. Not only does Verkkouutiset accept Immonen’s terminology but sides with it by default. The Verkkouutiset story is a good example of how the Finnish media plays down the humanitarian suffering of groups like Somalis by simply regurgitating an Islamophobes claims that “migration [not refugees fleeing war] from that country” must be halted.

 

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Continue reading “UPDATE (Mar. 6): Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism”

Koko Hubara: The brave woman who founded the brown girl’s blog

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Koko Hubara is a young energetic woman who founded a few weeks ago on Valentine’s Day a blog called Ruskeat Tytöt, or brown girls. The interest that her blog has received in such a short time surprised her.

Why would anyone be interested in a blog about Other Finns? Is it because there are already so many of them but so little attention is paid to such people?

 

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Koko Hubara founded Ruskeat Tytöt blog on Valentine’s Day.

For anyone like Koko, who has had the courage to make that long and difficult journey to her own identity, requires patience and courage. Her sojourn is like building a bridge across a body of water with no banks in sight. Is it a river? A lake? Or, possibly, it could be a vast and endless ocean.

How long will it take to reach the other side, if ever?

Continue reading “Koko Hubara: The brave woman who founded the brown girl’s blog”

Migrants are not a burden to Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The letter to the editor below could be perfectly well applied to Finland. In Finland, migrants and minorities are tired of being called a burden by opportunistic politicians that want to gain with xenophobic sound bites voter attention.  

Sensible Europeans know better and more of their voices are needed in the face of this hostile attack against migrants and minorities.

One good recent example of the near-constant attacks against the migrant and minority community is the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party program on immigration policy. On top of this, the PS chairman, Timo Soini, wondered in an interview with YLE in English why so few migrants move to Finland.

Silence shouldn’t be our language when challenging all forms of intolerance.

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Continue reading “Migrants are not a burden to Finland”

UPDATE (Mar. 6): Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism will be updated separately. To see other examples of opinionated journalism in Finland about cultural diversity, please go to this link.

Mar. 6

Yli puolet nuorista on kokenut syrjintää – ongelmia eniten kouluissa (Helsingin Sanomat)

What’s the missing story in this story? Migrant Tales has written before about how migrants, or children of migrant parents, are together with sexual minorities victims of bullying. The findings of the survey, which is monitored every year,  doesn’t reveal anything new except that the problem persists. The survey showed that 85% of those aged 15-28 years, and especially migrants and sexual minorities, suffered greater bullying than white Finns. But there is an important question missing in the story: What steps are being taken to challenge this type of anti-social behavior? What do the politicians and policy-makers think about the findings? What do they plan to do about the problem? Continue reading “UPDATE (Mar. 6): Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism”

Contemporary Immigration in Greece: A sourcebook

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Dr. Theodoros Fouskas, a lecturer at the New York College, Greece, is editor together with Dr. Vassileios Tsevrenis of a comprehensive book on immigration in Greece. As some are already aware, Greece has seen a surge in xenophobia due to the great number of refugees that enter the country from outside Europe.  

Dr. Tsevrenis is a lawyer, special scientific collaborator at Marangopoulos Foundation for Human Rights (MFHR), and member of the Scientific Committee of the Foundation of Greek Parliament.

Continue reading “Contemporary Immigration in Greece: A sourcebook”