Today, on Christmas Day, Migrant Tales wishes the following:
Sincerely yours,
Migrant Tales
Intolerance doesn’t only originate from the majority group, but is alive and kicking among some immigrants as well. White immigrants may have prejudices against their fellow black ones, gays against heterosexuals, religion x against religion y. In sum, there’s a lot of intolerance promoted out there that reveals itself in the most surprising places.
One of the pillars of our integration program in Finland should be to teach immigrants how to live in a culturally diverse society and the importance of mutual acceptance and respect for others. This may be easier said than done, taking into account that immigration and cultural diversity are new to some Finns.
Here’s the crux of the problem: If we don’t practice what we teach we encourage at the end of the day newcomers to hold the same negative values as us. Don’t we make a mockery of our own values like social equality (tasa-arvo) if we don’t practice what we preach?
Some immigrants have adapted so well to our society that they even parrot the language and jokes of those that loathe them.
I was quite surprised to hear an immigrant make a joke about another immigrant.
Here’s what he said: There was a bomb explosion at a white Finns’ and immigrants’ home. Why didn’t the Finns die?
Answer: Because the Finns were at work and their children at school. The immigrants were all at home because neither their parents were employed nor did their children attend school.
What?!
A black unemployed immigrant telling such a tasteless “joke” about other immigrants in Finland?
As far as our integration program is concerned, it got a big “FAIL” with this person.
Sad but true.
Even if an anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) is trying its hardest to look as mainstream as possible with the Euro MP and parliamentary elections of 2014 and 2015 approaching, respectively, a crucial question is being left out of the picture: How do they plan keep Finland white and undermine our ever-growing cultural diversity?
Since we’ve known perfectly well for years the answer to that question, the reason why we haven’t taken it onboard is because we haven’t connected the dots.
If you are a visible migrant or minority in Finland, connecting those dots is fairly easy.
The connection between the PS’ big picture of what it thinks of multicultural Finland was revealed recently by PS MP Olli Immonen, who sent a written question to parliament requiring that people in Finland should be registered by ethnic origin. Certainly the question that begs an answer is why do we need such a register in the first place.
The answer is obvious: It would be an effective way to maintain alive the perception that white ethnic Finns are superior and privileged in this society while labeling the other as “them.”
Parties like the PS understand perfectly well that they are walking in a minefield when they flirt with racism. Their shameful political opportunism and greed for power enables them to make pacts with the devil.
Even if some may argue correctly that the PS doesn’t have a master ethnic plan to keep Finland white, all the variables are in place to create one instantly whenever the time is ripe.
In order to clean the stains of their racist rhetoric, the PS has substituted different terms and arguments for original ones: Muslims for Jews; our white way of life is under threat; undermine cultural diversity by criticizing immigration policy; globalization-internationalization for International Jewry.
Even if the concepts used to defend white Finland are different from the past, the aim is the same: To hinder and undermine as much possible Finland’s ever-growing cultural diversity.
Like far-right parties throughout Europe, the PS feel the same urgency to defend white Finland from mutlicultural Finland. The only matter that doesn’t make some of the members of the PS as extreme as Immonen, Halla-aho and others, is that they may accept some ethnic diversity. Those that they accept must be white from the inside even if they are non-white from the outside.
Despite the threatening clouds rumbling over minorities in this country due to an outright hostile party to them like the PS, the question of questions that isn’t being asked by journalists of anti-immigration parties and politicians is if repatriation is their solution to our ever-growing cultural diversity.
Some of the PS have already ansered that question clearly. Some of them want to deport from Finland convicted immigrants, Romany beggars, undocumented migrants and those that haven’t been granted asylum in our country.
Fortunately there are some healthy signs that we are waking up to the menace of intolerance being spread wholesale by parties like the PS.
This is a positive sign but a lot more work must be still done to turn back the beachhead that landed in Finland in April 2011.
Zoila Forss es una poeta peruana que vive en Finlandia pero que se muda con su familia al Perú por un año a principios de enero de 2014. Leer a Zoila es transportarse a los paisajes personales de una persona que vive simultáneamente en dos países. Puede leer su blog, Ojos de ver/Näkevät silmat, aquí.
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aquí no se escucha cumbia
aquí no se escucha nada
y cada paso de baile es un cuento chino
una pisada de pies
una mezcla de tragos
y lo que los latinos
ordenan
y me hará volar
los latinos
el guetto de los colores
algunos
fugamos en el heavy metal
que se escucha como un idioma secreto
detrás del baño
los latinos
bailan algo parecido a este sótona
sin luz
algo más o menos cercano
a un desierto
bailan
ya sólo escucho la música
que poco a poco
va adquiriendo una forma siniestra
pocas cosas quedan claras
a esta hora
que besamos
las manos frías de las conversaciones
con risas intrusas
intrusas como queríamos ser
frente a la parquedad del vodka
ante la inevitable intromisión
de una cerveza
Hace falta una rockola
Que diga las cosas desde el corazón
Hace falta un viento fuerte
hacen falta
cortes de luz
hace falta algo
que le ponga orden
a esta pesadilla de bailar sola
Esta poesía fue publicada con permiso de la autora.
Sveriges Television (SVT) of Sweden anchorman David Fjäll said he would not go to Finland again to cover a hockey tournament due to the racist harassment he received in Turku from fans when he was going to interview the coach of the Swedish hockey team.
One of the matters that didn’t become evident in earlier stories is that the whole incident happened last year.
Why did Fjäll come out with the story a year later? Did this help take the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) off the hook so it wouldn’t have to take a stand against what happened?
Read full story in Finnish here.“In the back there were a bunch of persons [in the VIP stands],” he was quoted as saying on Suomikiekko, which cited Resumé magazine of Sweden. “When they started to throw objects and yell [at me] ‘get out of our country nigger ’ and ‘you’ll die,’ the security guards didn’t do anything and it was a very tricky situation.”
Fjäll said that he got spat and yelled at every time he passed the VIP stands and the security guards stood idle. He said that what happened to him in Turku almost made him give up his job as a TV journalist.
The big question after this shameful incident is if the Finnish Hockey Association and the organizers of the tournament in Turku are going to do anything about what happened to Fjäll.
It will be shameful, never mind unacceptable, that this kind of behavior can happen publicly without any consequences to the perpetrators.
The racist harassment of some of the fans is exactly the type of behavior we do not want to condone or reinforce in any way. The action of a few shames a whole nation.
If the organizers don’t react, it would send the following message to the Finnish public: It’s not only ok to be a racist, but to show it in the raw publicly.
How many visible minorities will bet harassed in this country as a result of what happened?
In the spring 1989 I was planning to travel to the Western African countries of Mali and Niger. Mali was cut out of my journey thanks to the Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Supo), which revealed to the honorary consul of Mali in Helsinki, Karl Jalkanen, what was written on my secret Interpol file.
The file that was revealed to Jalkanen is supposed to be secret since it has sensitive information about your personal life.
In an apparent state of inebriation, the honorary consul of Mali was highly suspicious about my travel plans to that African country. There was nothing suspicious about my motives since my plan was to do a travel story for Apu, Finland’s largest magazine at the time.
After Jalkanen made the phone call to Supo, it took about twenty minutes for his contact to call him back. The honorary consul said that I had taken part in three demonstrations, of which one I had organized. The Interpol files revealed as well that I was interested in human rights.
I got in touch with the Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman and wrote what happened in Apu. Pessimistic that anything would happen to the Supo agent, I heard from the data protection ombudsman that the security intelligence agent had been reprimanded.
Even if the incident is a drop in the bucket when compared with what Edward Snowden exposed in summer about massive global surveillance by the NSA, it was highly revealing since it showed how Finnish officials, like the secret police, perceived expats and immigrants.
Apart from being watched closely by Supo, another matter that the Interpol file revealed was that it had a network of immigrant informers.
Back in the Cold War days, human rights were considered in Finland as something “unpatriotic.” It was unpatriotic to speak out for human rights since it was in direct conflict with Finland’s sacrosanct foreign policy with the former Soviet Union. Since human rights were seen as a threat at the time, it has fueled the intolerance we see today. The price that Finland paid for its geopolitical isolation during the Cold War is it’s reluctance to interact today with the outside world in Finland.
Human rights was a big issue for me at the time due to the violations committed in Argentina under one of the region’s most ruthless dictatorships during 1976-83. Human rights became an important part of US foreign policy during Jimmy Carter’s presidency (1977-81).
The protection and defense of human rights in Finland is a relatively new matter. It reveals why this country pursued such a draconian policy against immigrants never mind Soviet citizens that fled the country and sought asylum.
Finland’s suspicion of human rights is best exemplified by its membership in the Council of Europe. Finland became in 1989, together with the principalities of Europe, the last Western European country to join the Council. Why did it take so long for it to become a member? Because it to be to vocal about human rights violations in the Soviet bloc.
Not only were human rights considered “unpatriotic” back then, but the very officials who ran things are still in office. Their view of the outside world is still that of a hostile place where we should react with suspicion instead of trust. It explains why some Finns still see foreigners as a threat and the rise of the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS) party in the 2011 elections.
Finland’s issues with intolerance and racism are tucked in the deep murky corners of its history. When Finland moves away from its present state of denial about its history and opens its past to critical and open scrutiny, only then we’ll know that we’ve taken a courageous step forward in accepting our ever-growing cultural diversity.
Opening up the past is our best insurance against a populist movement that wants to take us back to the times when writing these types of columns would not only get you blacklisted and part of smear campaign.
Ville Ranta’s cartoon below published on Helsinki Lutheran Church weekly, Kirkko & kaupunki, of Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Olli Immonen, is a good example of how Finland is waking up to racism and to a party that preaches intolerance. Immonen is in the same anti-immigration league as MP Jussi Halla-aho, Juho Eerola and many others who have no other agenda except to spread racism in this country.
Hate forums and racism exist wherever we can find “the silence of our friends,” as Martin Luther King Jr pointed out.
Ranta’s cartoon not only is sobering but offers hope but that more people are speaking out against intolerance with a clear voice.
It’s not surprising that for far-right white anti-immigration MP like Immonen, who wants to register people by ethnic origin and being president of an association like Suomen Sisu that discourages Finns from marrying foreigners, that he sees nothing wrong with his racist views.
The problem with racism is that those that spread it aren’t immediately affected by it in the same manner as their targeted victims.
Ranta published a similar cartoon in December 2011 like the one below that had a number of prominent PS politicians wishing the country a “white Christmas.
Even if I have never met Abdulah* in person but only by phone and through his comments on Migrant Tales, it’s as if we’ve known each other for a long time. Abdulah moved to Finland from Somalia in 1990 with his parents and six sisters. He was eight at the time.
When Abdulah came to Finland, there were only 21,174 immigrants living in the country, accounting for a mere 0.4% of total population, versus 183,133 (3.4%) today, according to the Population Registration Center.
“For a child from Somalia, moving to Finland was at first exciting,” he says. “We were starting a new life in a new country. I was fascinated by the snow.”
Abdulah says that his brief honeymoon with Finland ended abruptly when he started elementary school. He was the school’s first and only black student.
“That’s when the bullying started; I was even attacked physically by my classmates,” he continues. “Something bad happened to me almost every day at school.”
Abdulah says that once all of his classmates, which numbered about 20, waited to attack him after school. Even a school “friend” assaulted him once with a knife.
Abdulah says that he’s tried to make friends with Finns but it has been virtually impossible. He did make some friends at school but their friendship never lasted long.
“First they’re your friend and then they abandon you,” he says. “I was nine when I met a very nice boy at school. On the way to his home a friend of his meets us and asks him why he’s with me. He then told me right their on the spot that he could no longer be my friend.”
Even if the bullying has left deep scars on Abdulah, one of the worst memories he recalls was when he was nine and walking with his mother to the market.
“A drunk man attacked me on the street and started insulting me,” he says. “My mother called out for help but nobody came. That incident really traumatized me. I was only a child.”
Abdulah admits that growing up and living in Finland has made him paranoid. The election of an anti-immigration party like the Perussuomalaiset didn’t help dispel his fears about racism against Somalis in Finland.
The matter that concerns Abdulah the most about the Perussuomalaiet is their belief that Finns should not have children with blacks.
“With the election victory of the Perussuomalaiset that brought to parliament some fascist [anti-immigration] politicians like Jussi Halla-aho, James Hirvisaari and others, things started to turn ugly in this country from an already very bad situation for Somalis and blacks.”
*Abdulah’s name has been changed to protect his identity.
When Abdulah*, 30, talks to you about his twenty-two years in Finland, one of the first questions that arises is how has so much suffering escaped our attention. For Abdulah, acceptance isn’t only virtually impossible from white Finns, but can be just as hard to get from the Somali community.
“I have decided to live outside this society,” he says. “I have learned that there is no place here. Even my people have turned their backs on me.”
Abdulah says that there are two matters you must never lose if you don’t want to be abandoned by the Somali community.
“Language and religion are crucial,” he explains. “I don’t speak Somali that well anymore since I grew up in this country. I became an atheist two years ago and left the Muslim faith.”
How long will it take for minorities like the Somalis to be treated as equals in Finland?
Abdulah admits that he no longer believes in god.
“How can there be a god if people are constantly killing each other in Somalia?” he continues. “How can there be a god if there’s so much hatred and racism towards you in this country? How can god exist in such hells?”
There are many young men like Abdulah in Finland, who grew up the greater part of their lives in this country. He says that some have problems with the law.
“I don’t identify with such people anymore because I used to be one of them,” he says. “If you start drinking and taking drugs, your situation will only get worse. That’s the reason why I changed my life.”
Abdulah hasn’t forsaken hope despite the difficulties he’s faced. Two factors give him strength: his family and plans to be a gardener.
Billboards like these in the early 1990s spread prejudice about Somalis in Finland. The tabloid ad claims that Somalis had made phone calls to the tune of hundreds of thousands of marks and supposedly passed the bill to the social authorities.
“But living in Finland still feels like being in a trap,” he adds. “I want to free myself but I don’t know how.”
Abdulah discovered Migrant Tales by chance when he was searching for an alternative forum that spoke up for immigrants and visible minorities like him.
“I used to visit Suomi24, Hommaforum and even took part in Iltalehtichat forums,” he says. “They always said the same negative things about immigrants and Somalis. I felt relieved when I found Migrant Tales. It was like a light at the end of a dark tunnel that gave me hope.”
Abdulah is a very sensitive and respectful person. Despite the difficulties he’s encountered, he believes that one must be outspoken if he’s going to challenge a social ill like racism.
“We have to fight back,” he concludes. “Silence hasn’t changed my life for the better. That’s why I’m active in forums like Migrant Tales.”
*Abdulah’s name has been changed to protect his identity.