Immigrants in Finland must rise up and challenge the ogre of indifference

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

What can be done if Finland’s third-largest party in parliament is not only anti-EU but strongly anti-immigration? One of the things you should not do is stay home and gripe. Many immigrants and multicultural Finns had it worse in the early 1980s, when the then Aliens’ Office could throw any foreigner they pleased in jail or deport him from the country. 

That was before Finland got its first Alien’s Act in 1983, or 65 years after independence. Immigrants had few if any rights at the time. If you were a foreign resident, the Restricting Act of 1939 made sure that you could not own land and set up businesses in many sectors like forestry.

If you asked the police leadership at the time why Finland had such a restrictive policy against foreigners, their argument is bascially the same even today: To keep criminals from moving to Finland.

With public officials having that kind of attitude, that foreigners are potential criminals, it’s pretty clear why xenophobia and racism have grown strong roots in this country.

Rodolfo Walsh was a radical journalist from Argentina who was killed for speaking out against the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina in 1976-83.

Even if Walsh’s quote below has a 1970s spirit in it, the message is still applicable to immigrants and multicultural Finns: Our dominant classes have made sure that the worker has no history, doesn’t have a doctrine, any heroes or any martyrs. Every struggle has to be started from scratch, separated from previous struggles; the collective history is lost, their lessons are forgotten. History appears as it if were private property, whose owners are the owners of everything.

One will find that immigrants and multicultural Finns have hardly any history in Finland. Why? Because this group hasn’t been acknowledged. But if we look a bit closer, there is a lot that can be brought to the surface like that very important and symbolic march of October 19, 1982.

Hopefully it will inspire new immigrants and Finns from all backgrounds to march and demand their rights in a Finland that is still struggling to accept us.

This picture of the 1982 march was published on the front page of HYY=Peli.

As one can see from the picture that appeared on the front page of Kansan Uutiset (20.10.1982), the march attracted many people. It was also the main story on the 8:30pm news on television.


Who is responsible for the rise in hate crimes in Finland?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Enrique Tessieri

Apart from the usual social-media lynch mobs roaming the net, we have now seen since the April 17 election a worrying rise in hate crimes in Finland. The matter has escalated to such proportions that President Tarja Halonen expressed concern this week over the problem.

One important matter to keep in mind when battling a foe like racism is that we can never underestimate its devastating power never mind run away from its challenge.

Finland must do the same. It is pretty clear that we cannot any longer pretend that racism isn’t a problem in our society.

An important question to ask is what is fuelling it.

Even if we cannot blame a single party or group we can, however, demand parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) as well as others to address the menace with much greater resolve.

The same worrisome trend we are seeing in Finland is also present throughout Europe. Right-wing populist parties have grown in size in past years and are pointing the finger at immigrants for all of the country’s problems. This questionable style of politicking is unacceptable and should be strongly condemned by sensible people.

Another indication that matters may be spiralling out of hand was an attack this week of the speaker of the house, Ben Zyskowicz. The assailant tried to hit the Kokoomus MP before calling him a dirty Jew.

What can be done? Is their enough political will to tackle this problem? Would a party like the PS, which bases much of support on anti-immigration rhetoric, openly condemn racism and isolate MPs like Jussi Halla-aho and others that are members of the Nazi-spirited Suomen Sisu association?

Would the PS be the same party if it abandoned its strong anti-immigration stance?

Despite these serious challenges for Timo Soini’s party, it is pretty clear that the PS does not consider racism a big enough problem to condemn without conditions. The party lost a good opportunity to set the record straight in their statement against racism. Instead of condemning racism and discrimination, the PS preferred to make a case against so-called positive discrimination.

It would be naive to suggest that only the PS is responsible for the escalation of hate crimes in Finland. We should look at parties like Kokoomus and Social Democrats. A definite sore spot for Kokoomus has been Wille Rydman. Eero Heinäluoma has claimed, among other things, that hundreds of thousands of Estonian workers will invade and steal jobs from Finns.

The PS’ statement against racism, Rydman’s toughened stance against the treatment of immigrants and Heinäluoma’s scare tactics are not racist but they fuel a climate of suspicion and resentment of immigrants in Finland.

But who is the culprit for the recent spate in hate crimes in Finland?

One of these is poor economic growth and rising unemployment. Even so, an even bigger one are public officials who fuel it directly or indirectly with their statments and actions.

If we don’t nip racism in the bud in Finland it will end up nipping us.

Skilled labor, foreign investment and innovation rarely flourishes in hostile and bigoted environments.

Iltalehti: Suomalaisnäyttelijä joutui oudon rasistisen hyökkäyksen kohteeksi

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Comment: After reading of the hate crime against Kokoomus speaker of the house, Ben Zyskowicz, it was now Chike Ohanwe’s turn. According to tabloid Iltalehti, a man tried to drag Ohanwe into the water at the Finnish science center Heureka.

Ohanwe starred in Neil Hardwick’s movie Jos rakastat. 

The young actor was quoted as saying on his Facebook page that “these clowns do not represent Finland but themselves.”

With government talks going nowhere and the possibility of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) forming part of the next government, one only wonders how many more closet racists in Finland will be emboldened to attack innocent people. 

The PS would have done a service to themselves and Finland if they would have come out last week with a credible public statement against racism.  The problem of hate crimes and the rise of racism in Finland has become so alarming that President Tarja Halonen has expressed concern about this social ill, according to Iisalmi Sanomat.

What to do? Keep on writing and possibly organizing a huge march in Finland if the situation continues to escalates further.

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Irene Naakka

Jos rakastat -musikaalista tuttu näyttelijä Chike Ohanwe joutui rasistisen hyökkäyksen kohteeksi tiedekeskus Heurekan liepeillä Vantaan Tikkurilassa keskiviikkona.

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Migrant’s life: The call to ancestral homes

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

There are many types of countries but there is one quality that unites them: They are full of contradictions. No other person sees and feels these antagonisms so markedly than the immigrant.

My late father, who travelled and lived in many countries during his short lifetime, told me once that the best way to get to know oneself is by moving to a foreign land.

His words reminded me of Buck, the main character of Jack London’s The Call of the Wild. Buck was “dognapped” from its comfortable and warm home in California and ended up in the harsh days of the Yukon Gold Rush.

London writes: “The dominant primordial beast was strong in Buck, and under the fierce conditions of trail life it grew and grew. Yet it was a secret growth. His new-born cunning gave him poise and control. He was too busy adjusting himself to the new life to feel at ease.”

The rigors of late-nineteenth century Yukon played a key role in turning Buck into a formidable dog. Buck even found its long-lost freedom when it joined other wolves to live in the wild.

While London’s book is about a dog, it could well be a story of any migrant or refugee that moved to Finland.

Buck’s example shows as well that some countries can bring out the best in people while other ones can reinforce the worse.

Ancestral Finland

Our fascination with our ancestry explains why some of us continue to be drawn by a country where a relative was once from many generations ago. What is it exactly that we are so mesmerized by? Possibly the answer lies in the yearning, ideals and hope of the late relative.

Some of these sentiments are so powerful that they refuse to die. The secret code of such compelling feelings could be described as gut wisdom inscribed on a torch passed from generation to the next. The torch, which you receive at birth, may contain wisdom, even maps to assist you in your future travels.

The feeling, the interest, the fascination of where a relative was from remains inside some of us like a strong unexplainable force.

Time travel

If you ever get a chance to visit a residential neighbourhood of Buenos Aires like Flores, where I lived briefly as a child, you’ll still find those early twentieth-century Parisian-style two-story houses adorning the oak-lined cobblestone streets.

Many Argentineans still remember fondly their European grandparents and great grandparents. Some cherish their memory with so much respect that they have even succeeded at almost stopping time.

The residents of the neighborhood have ingenious methods of slowing the passage of time: They park vintage cars like Fords from the 1930s in front of their homes, some even keep portraits of ancient heads of state like King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy and Czar Nicholas II hanging on the walls of their homes.

Uncle Horatio once told me why time had to be slowed: “The faster time moves the faster we travel further from who we were. In other words, time is the migrant’s worst enemy because it distances us from who we were and shapes us by force into nationals of new countries and circumstances.”

Horatio tried to slow the past and the present to such a degree that they’d be perfectly balanced. He then tried to search for an answer to the following question: What did his migrant parents search for in new lands?

My uncle never found the answer but as a consolation his parents did find – as my father pointed out – who they are.

HS: Ihmisoikeusjärjestö moittii Suomen henkilökorttiuudistusta

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Comment: I was quite surprised to read that the police authorities want to have a blue ID card for Finns and a brown-colored one for foreigners. 

Michael Privot, the head of the European Network Against Racism, thinks that one ID card for Finnish citizens and another one for foreigners “could in part encourage discrimination” since the ID card shows immediately that the person is not a Finnish citizen.”Now a person has to show that he is a foreigners in such situations where it has little importance like when going to the bank,” Pivot said.

The different-colored ID cards are a sad example of how some authorities like the police want to stress “us” and “they” in Finland.

Some columnists in Sweden were very critical of the decision by Finland to have two types of ID cards.

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Bryssel. Rasismin vastainen eurooppalainen järjestö moittii Suomen henkilökorttiuudistusta, jossa Suomen kansalaisille ja Suomessa asuville ulkomaalaisille annetaan eriväriset henkilökortit.

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Iltalehti: Zyskowiczin kimppuun hyökättiin

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Comment: A middle-aged man stepped in front of the speaker of parliament (Kokoomus), Ben Zyskowicz, and tried to attack him, according to tabloid Iltalehti.

Zyskowicz was quoted as saying that the unidentified man got in front of him started to call him a Jew and act aggressively. “There was a clear racist motive for the attack,” he said.

The recent incident against Zyskowicz is another lamentable example of how racist-motivated crimes have become more common in the country after the Perussuomalaiset won the April 17 election.

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Tommi Parkkonen

Eduskunnan puhemiehen Ben Zyskowiczin (kok) kimppuun käytiin myöhään keskiviikkoiltana Helsingin ydinkeskustassa. Zyskowicz oli tulossa hallitusneuvotteluista Säätytalolta yhdessä kokoomuskollega Kimmo Sasin kanssa, kun keski-ikäinen mieshenkilö yritti yllättäen lyödä häntä.

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Your example is the best weapon against racism

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By Enrique Tessieri

We cannot change the world we live in but we can influence with our example those that live next to us. In the same way we can change matters for the better there are other people who can with their example impact society adversely.

The Internet is one of the most important breeding grounds for racism in Finland and elsewhere. Any person who wishes, no matter how ignorant he or she may be, can write on any topic.

There used to be a saying a long ago that one must write volumes before he can publish. That doesn’t seem true any longer.

When I was a young journalist working for the Buenos Aires Herald, an editor gave me some valuable advice: “Remember that words are like bullets. Don’t overkill.”

The Internet seems today like a free-for-all killing field for racism where overkill is the rule. We even have social-media lynch mob leaders that masquerade as defenders of our values sounding hostile battle charges against immigrants and minorities.

I would like to introduce you to Hemmo Koskiniemi’s blog. He is a PS city councilor of Rovaniemi and in my opinion one of many examples of what is wrong with the PS.

His May 21st entry, Justified racism – “Nigger” lives alone in a 75 m2 home, makes the following claim: An n-word immigrant lives alone in a 75 m2 home with all expenses paid by the City of Rovaniemi and Finland while an ill single father with two children was turned down by the city to pay a guarantee equalling one-month rent.

What is outrageous about Koskiniemi’s entry is that he doesn’t even bother to verify what he alleges. Or did he get the information from a spiteful social worker? Either way, accusing a man of abusing the system without getting an official reply from the authorities is not only lazy but irresponsible and malicious blogging.

Migrant Tales got in touch with the City of Rovaniemi, which denied any wrongdoing in the case. I have sent an email to the editor-in-chief of Uusi Suomi, Markku Huusko, about Koskiniemi’s claim and the City of Rovniemi’s response to it.

We will keep you informed on how the case evolves.

MRN: 10 years after the race riots, Britain’s ‘patchwork heritage’ is not the problem

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Comment: It’s always the same story in every European country: multiculturalism is a failure, immigrants don’t integrate and immigration policy is in shambles. The blog by Ruth Grove-White below published on Migration Rights Network (MRN) attempts to look at how Britain’s ever-growing cultural diversity has evolved since the 2001 Oldham race riots broke out.

The Oldham race riots were the worst in the United Kingdom in fifteen years  that sparked similar confrontations in Bradford, Leeds and Burnley.

Grove-White asks were Britain is in 2011 after a decade when the riots took place. During that period, Britain’s foreign-born population rose to 7% in 2011 from 4.5% in 2001.

“It is the effects of this diversity that are under dispute,” she writes. “With rising net immigration, we are told by politicians and media that it is an inevitable symptom of diversity, that these problems are worsening, that migrants should be made to do more to integrate, and that multiculturalism has failed. But are we really facing a crisis of this sort?”

Evidence, however, shows the contrary, according to Grove-White. “Research summarised in Nissa Finney and Ludi Simpson’s excellent book, ‘Sleepwalking to Segregation?’ reports an increase in ethnic mixing, greater tolerance in social attitudes and more mixed-ethnicity friendship groups among diverse communities in Britain since 2001.”

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Ruth Grove-White

As the anniversary of the 2001 Oldham race riots comes around and fresh stats show that net immigration has leapt up once again, we need to rebut claims that our society is divided along ethnic lines.

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Malicious insinuation of minorities in Finland

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By Enrique Tessieri

In one day Finland’s image changed in the eyes of many people and the world. On April 17 the racism and malicious insinuation of minorities in Finland achieved a beachhead because of our lack of resolve. That weakness has now spoon fed a right-wing populist party that is threatening values like social equality for all.

Finland is learning how to throw good punches back at the ogre of racism. One of the best ways to tackle this monster is to question the countless malicious insinuations of minorities by parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS).

One of the biggest stereotypes being marketed by some PS MPs is that immigrants and refugees abuse social welfare, are lazy, and therefore have little to no worth in our society.

Here is a blog on Uusi Suomi by PS city councilman Hemmo Koskiniemi of Rovaniemi, where on the basis of he-said-she-said testimony, labels an immigrant living in public housing of abusing the system. Migrant Tales called the City of Rovaniemi and asked if they ever got a call from Koskiniemi and if what he claims is true.

This type of insinuation by politicians like Koskiniemi not only shows their laziness to get the facts first before pointing the accusing finger, but the eagerness of some PS politicians to become social-media lynch mob leaders.

Sociologist Alan Bruce shows how the culture of prejudice is built:  “Its (racism) final stages sees it as it really is: hate-fuelled, other-centered loathing with a set of solutions (final or temporary) to address what is now labelled a “problem,” he writes. “Yes, a ‘problem’ created by…. the racists themselves… They minimize their nastiness by a desperate and false effort to blend in to normal politics. It looks like a rat, it walks like a rat, it sneers like a rat, it stinks like a rat: it is a rat.”

The ability of the PS to build good ethnic relations in Finland is a near-impossible task for the party. They don’t care about integration but instead drive home the point that diversity is some illness that must be stamped out with hearsay and stereotypes.

When politicians like the PS vehemently claim that immigrants and refugees abuse the social welfare system, they conveniently forget to back up their allegations and mention how the system is being misused by Finns, who are the majority in this country.

As a reporter working for Apu magazine in the early 1990s, when Finland was suffering from one its worst-ever recessions in history, I did some investigative journalism on social security fraud. At the time, Finland’s immigrant population totalled a mere 55,587 people, or 1.1% of the population.

One of my sources was a ministry of labor official who told me that moonlighting alone cost the state yearly between 100 million and 900 million Finnish marks (16.8 million and 151.8 million euros).

We could ask two important questions in light of the 1994 article that was never published by Apu because it was a hyper-sensitive topic in those days for politicians as well:  Why are we still in the dark about how many people in this country abuse social welfare?

Overturning and busting myths is a key weapon in the fight against prejudice. Sensible politicians should stand up to the malicious insinuations put out by the PS of immigrants, refugees and minorities.

Such leadership is needed now.

MTV3: Rasistit joutumassa uuden hallituksen silmätikuiksi

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Comment: After calls last week by President Tarja Halonen for the new government to make a pledge to combat growing racism in Finland, it appears that not only most political parties but the public are taking a more vociferous stand against this social ill.

One matter that the victory of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) brought to the table with the election of people like Teuvo Hakkarainen, Jussi Halla-aho and others is that Finland can no longer deny that racism is a minor problem that will go away by itself.

Finland’s ever-growing polarization due to the PS victory in April has had a positive impact on parties like the Greens and Left Alliance, which have seen their membership soar by 45% and 13%, respectively.

Some PS politicians are politically off track if they believed that a few xenophobic blog writings would turn Finland into a subsidiary of the Danish People’s Party or the Sweden Democrats.

The embarrassing episodes that have been splashed in the country’s tabloids and newspapers only a month and a half after the election show that the PS are going to face a very rough four years. 

Just as pain tells a wounded soldier that he is still alive, Finland’s reaction to the PS shows that it will not tolerate free-fall racism and populism.

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Rasismin rajoittaminen voi saada uusia aseita seuraavassa hallitusohjelmassa. Kovempia otteita vauhdittaa muun muassa viimeaikainen julkisuuskohu perussuomalaisten kansanedustajan Teuvo Hakkarainen lausunnoista.

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