Watching weekly Thursday’s question-and-answer session between the opposition and government can cause nausea. With parliamentary elections six months in April, expect opposition parties like the far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) to increase their attacks against ALL migrants.
The truth about the PS and Kokoomus, the biggest and second-biggest opposition party, respectively, is that they have declared hostile and open warfare against migrants and minorities in Finland.
Making up fear scenarios and copying the success of the Sweden Democrats in September’s elections in Sweden is what the PS and Kokoomus want to convey to their prospective voters.
The debate about youth gangs in Finland shows the social inequality that migrants and minority youths suffer in Finland. Read the full story here.
Mark my words, after the April parliamentary election, those xenophobic cries will simmer down. The ever-hostile rhetoric of the opposition has nothing to do with solving migration or gang violence. They are deceitful and an election stunt to lure voters.
Kokoomus must look a bit worried about the elections in Sweden. The open support of their sister party, the Moderates, enabled the Sweden Democrats to become the biggest right-wing party.
The lesson we learn repeatedly is that right-wing parties that support far-right ones lose support. Why would you vote for a party that is a lighter version of the real xenophobic thing?
Mahad Sheikh Musse* has worked in Helsinki as a youth worker in various roles and with various communities for the past 15 years. If there is somebody who understands minority youth issues, it is him. Migrant Tales had the opportunity to chat with Mahad during his busy schedule.
We all know how the elections in Sweden went. The far-right Sweden Democrats exploited and made gang violence their campaign message. Their rhetoric paid off, turning the Sweden Democrats into the biggest right-wing party and an opportunity to form part of government for the first time.
Even if in Finland, we are nowhere near Sweden regarding gang violence, politicians from the far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, National Coalition Party (Kokoomus), and Christian Democrats are trying to exploit the same issue with parliamentary elections in April.
Expect accusations and finger-pointing by these parties and the media will get louder in the months ahead.
Contrary to what the media and certain politicians are spreading, Mahad does not believe that there are organized youth gangs in Finland like in Sweden. In other words, so-called gang violence is not an issue but spread by politicians with an agenda.
Even if violent crimes suspects under 15 has grown, it has gradually fallen throughout the 2010s for the 15 and 17 age group, according to Yle News.
Even so, Finland is still far ways off Sweden concerning suspected youth crime cases.
“Finland’s biggest daily with the main headlines of the day: Brown youths are dangerous. Source: a hunch.” Source: Twitter and Migrant Tales.
“In my opinion, the worst mistake our officials can make is to group all of our youth minorities into one group,” he said. “You are not interacting with youths as individuals but as a group. Apart from exaggerating the problem, it is a racist way of looking at the issue.”
Mahad said that one of the biggest problems concerning minority youths is that they don’t have access to services that should help them and that we talk about their problems without their presence.
“Some journalists have little idea about about the lives of minority youths,” he added and stressed once again: “If we want to improve the lives of minority youths, we must deal with them individually and not by putting them into one group.”
Mahad said that the problem boils down to how we debate the matter publicly. It is important to remember that the authorities must distinguish between those that commit crimes and those that don’t.
“The message from the #authorities to #youth must be clear: Everyone is an individual and responsible for their crimes,” he said.
“We create two groups when we say that minority youths are a threat: one of these is a threat to society, while the other isn’t. This is wrong,” he said.
The youth worker said that one big challenge is overcoming ignorance of such youths. Moreover, some migrants and minorities like to hide inside their groups and be part of a system that promotes institutional racism and social exclusion.
“You have people [like politicians and the media] talking about minorities without even knowing anything about such people,” he continued. “When it comes to minorities, everyone is automatically an expert.”
“Pretty incredible, no?”
*Mahad Sheikh Musse is a board member of Rasmus ry, an anti-racism association.
We are sorry to hear about what happened to you. Abdirisak Ahmed (@HerraAhmed) Tweets:
This is what it looks when you are assaulted at a restaurant because of the color of your skin. Thank you #apolloliveclub bouncers for your quick response. I never thought I’d be in this situation being over 30 years old. This will cost me a month of work. “
Three judges of a Kanta-Häme district court unanimously ruled to acquit police and security guards of all charges for removing by force the hijabs of two Muslim women, according to Iltalehti.
The women, who were applying for asylum at the time, argued that in Helsinki, they didn’t have to take off their hijabs for a picture.
Source: Openverse/Wordpress
The incident, which happened inMay 2017, led to the charging of seven police officers and security guards with negligent breach of duty, assault, and incitement to assault.
Since the women refused to comply with the order, the police took off their hijabs by force.
Writes Ilatlehti: “The court agreed that the police officers and security guards did use force [against the women to remove their hijabs] but had a right to do so. The use of force was necessary because the women resisted the officers [taking off their hijabs].”
The tabloid adds that the court believed the women allegedly exaggerated how the police and security guards physically abused them. One of the victims said she was pressed against a wall for at least 45 minutes. Both claimed they had to use painkillers for over five years due to the altercation.
The case was heard by a panel of three judges. The decision of the district court is unanimous.
If you have any information about this case, please contact[email protected].
Watching the parliamentary question-and-answer session between the opposition and government revealed two matters: the opposition’s xenophobic politicking and the government’s sometimes infirm responses.
The debate between the opposition and the government occasionally appears like a shouting match, where the government caves into the opposition.
In a historic government decision on the same day, Finland closed its border to Russian tourists.
If one was to state, in a nutshell, the hostile diatribes of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, National Coalition Party (Kokoomus), and Christian Democrat MPs Thursday, it was to tar and feather Russians, asylum seekers from outside the EU, and undocumented migrants.
PS MP Jari Ronkainen parrots his party’s fear-mongering: “Fleeing military service is not grounds for asylum. If it were, up to 20 million Russians would theoretically be entitled to asylum. Despite this, the minister of interior [Kirsta Mikkonen] said yesterday that they are preparing at the border for an influx of asylum seekers and setting up processing centers. For potentially millions?”
“A visa on humanitarian grounds allows a person from Russia or any other country to apply in practice for asylum without even coming to the border of the country,” said PS chairperson Riikka Purra, “and this raises the same security concerns as the right to apply for asylum at the moment.”
The Finns Party (PS) is actively campaigning for the upcoming parliamentary election in April. The party published Monday its so-called “Finnishness program,” Suomalaisuuden ohjelma 2022.
The program attacks two groups: migrants and Finland’s Swedish-speaking minority.
The hostility and simplistic arguments against these two groups resemble an angry and spiteful person willing to lie and cheat to get his or her way.
The PS’ main argument in the program is to also play the usual victim. One of the arguments is that Swedish speakers, never mind migrants, “do not strengthen the linguistic cohesion and identity of Finnish speakers.”
In the PS xenophobic bubble. there is a surrealistic hope that Finland will return to a time that never existed, a time when everyone was white and spoke Finnish as their main language.
I’m not surprised the host on A-studio Tuesday, Marja Sannikka, did not ask the PS leader, Riikka Purra, to elaborate on her dog-whistle tweets of closing the border to all Russians.
Fortunately, Sannikka rebuffed Purra’s claim in a later tweet, where the PS leader claimed on her show that Russian asylum seekers would be treated on a one-by-one basis.
A later tweet below demanded that the border should be shut to all Russians.
RIikka Puura tweets: “Russia blows up gas pipelines and incorporates areas to itself, kills, rapes, destroys without remorse. I was asked many times at the studio how many Russians we should take and help. Close the border [to all Russians]. National security proceeds everything.You did not say it that way on air, but those Russian asylum seekers would be treated individually and receive asylum if they meet the requirements. Thus you are not shutting the border [to Russian asylum seekers].”
Purra’s tweets expose lies and deception. Say one thing and then another.
Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy election victory received applause from several far-right European leaders and the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party. While the PS chairperson Riikka Purra and the former leader of the party, Jussi Halla-aho, allowed MEP Laura Huhtasaari and Olli Immonen to do the talking.
As we saw in Sweden on September 11, Sunday’s election was another political earthquake ushering to power a far-right leader for the first time since fascist dictator Benito Mussolini ruled the country.
Adulations from far-right European leaders were quick to come, haling Meloni’s victory as a political game changer for the region.
In Finland, and since the PS leadership was too chicken to congratulate Meloni directly, even if the party forms part of the far-right and pro-Russian EU parliamentary group Identity and Democracy, Huhtasaari, and Immonen, chairperson of the far-right Suomen Sisu, showered praise.
Remember Huhtasaari? Apart from her alternate-reality statements and selfies with Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán, Huhtasaari said in an interview that all parties on the center-left are communists, even the conservative National Coalition Party.
With parliamentary elections in April, the PS is trying – but failing – to look like a straight party. It may explain why Purra is so quiet about the Italian election.
And wouldn’t you know it? Praising the inhumane and illegal Greek push-back policy, the PS encourages the new Italian government to get even tougher with asylum seekers and vulnerable migrants crossing the Mediterranean.
Melloni, her minions in the PS, and other far-right European parties believe that inhumane and let-them-drown policies will convince people to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.
Such parties are part of a conspiracy to replace our democracies with failed political experiments of the past that ended up hanging a dead Mussolini from his feet in Milan in 1945.
A paradox: “Liberal” Nordic countries like Finland have large far-right parties that feed off racism.
If I were to use the racist rhetoric of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party to solve social problems, I’d be lost. Solutions, like tougher laws, more restrictions, enforcing marginalization, and strengthening institutional racism, would leave me in a bind.
Fearmongering and stirring up the us-and-them message is the bread and butter of parties like the PS. They have nothing to offer except to feed your prejudices and embolden your hatred.
Politicians like PS chairperson Riikka Purra and Jussi Halla-aho are fortune tellers. All they can do is tell us the horrible things migrants will do if we let them in Finland.
The latest prank by the PS is to end Russian tourists from coming to the country. They claim that these people are a security threat. What about if some of these Russians are fleeing Putin’s terror? OK, I get it: the plan is to restrict asylum seekers from coming to Finland.
The ad by the youth chapter of the PS received a lot of criticism onsocial media. It reads: “Russians vacationing in Finland…genocide in Ukraine. Close the border.”
As the sign in Helsinki shows, it is time to close our easter border with Russia because there is “genocide in Ukraine.”
If there is something to reinforce from the Southern Ostrobothnia district court ruling of the Fares Al-Abaidi case, it is the following: In some cases, the police and the courts play down racist crime.The sentence was a miscarriage of justice.
Al-Abaidi has appealed the ruling.
Why is the ruling a travesty?
Because racism is a toxic component of Finland’s police and justice system.
Imagine scores of people attacked Al-Abaidi in June 2020, but only oneperson was convicted for assault. Racism was not a motive for what happened.
The Iraqi youth’s case is an example of hair-splitting and a miscarriage of justice.
If the authorities are to be believed, racism was not what motivated the attack. The vandalized car that had mamu (a racist term for migrant) sprayed on its side does not prove anything because they never found the suspect.
The victim’s car before……and after. Photo: Mari AaltolaMari Aaltola writes: “What I saw [the vandalized car] was unbelievable. I asked myself who could do something like this to another person’s property, smash every window, tear out the hubcaps and then spray paint in big letters mamu on the side of the car. I was also saddened by the sight and cried and [remembered when] I went with Fares to buy the car. He spent all of his and some of his mother’s savings to buy the car. The car was in bad shape, but I was happy that I had advised them to take full insurance coverage for the vehicle. This allowed them to get compensation for a new car after the insurance company repossessed it. Otherwise, they would have lost all the money since the culprit[s] were never caught [by the police].”
The recent parliamentary election in Sweden is only one of the worrying signs that Islamophobia is not receding in the EU but gaining strength. Muslims, like other minorities, must work together to challenge Europe’s ever-growing anti-Muslim racism. We must do this not only for ourselves but for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
The editors of the European Islamophobia Report 2021 are Enes Bayrakli and Farid Hafez.
In Finland, we supposedly live in the happiest country in the world. Even so, the biggest opposition party is Islamophobic and openly hostile to minorities. Even “straight” parties like the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) flirt, spread Islamophobic rhetoric, and support such policies.
You can access the full European Islamophobia Report 2021 here.
If the latest 2020 hate crime report is anything to go by, Muslims continue to suffer the most from hate crime attacks. Due to their “foreign-sounding” names, discrimination in the labor market is also a problem. Moreover, racism in the police continues to be a blow to trust, and the blind spot of the media to Islmophobia is equally worrying
