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
The election in Sweden was of special interest to me since I live next door to the country in Finland. Will the good showing of the far-right Sweden Democrats boost our far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party in the April parliamentary election?
While it is fair to predict that the election result in Sweden should not hurt the election prospects of the PS, I am certain that the party took a lot of notes from the election and is now drafting a campaign strategy that hinges on migration.
Like many, I am not surprised by the election result in Sweden and the rise of the Sweden Democrats. Considering that all the Nordic countries now have large far-right parties that wield political power, it was only a question of when the chickens would come home to roost in Sweden. In Finland, the PS plays the same anti-Muslim tune as in Denmark (Social Democrats today and formerly Danish People’s Party) and Norway’s Progressive Party (FrP).
How can affluent countries with a comprehensive social welfare system that values and professes social equality end up with far-right parties that are hostile and want to exclude people from society who come from different backgrounds?
If we can’t receive an answer to the latter question, could we figure out how got here? Possibly we were always there. Our Nordic social welfare system and values were not meant for people who aren’t like us.
While some will blame migrants for the success of the Sweden Democrats, I would point the finger at the media and political parties like the Moderates, which gave the far-right party a platform of legitimacy to strike.
As of September 11, the future looks bleaker in Sweden and the Nordic region if you are a migrant or minority.
The Nordic saw a predictable political earthquake on September 11, when the right-wing bloc led by the far-right Sweden Democrats nudged the right-wing bloc to victory. The election brought Sweden in line with its other Nordic neighbors: all four now have or had large far-right anti-immigration parties.
Of the four countries, the entrenchment of the far right is best seen in Denmark, where mainstream parties like the Social Democrats tow the Islamophobic line.
The far-right Danish People’s Party came to power in the early 2000 and had steadily worked to turn Denmark into a haven for anti-Muslim rhetoric and hatred.
In light of what happened in Norway and in Finland, what will be the path of the Sweden Democrats to implement their Islamophobic policies?
Step 1 was the election. Step 2 is polluting Swedish politics with more racism. Like in Denmark, “straight” parties like the Moderates or Social Democrats may rob the Sweden Democrats of their support by becoming as Islamophobic as them. It is what happened in Denmark.
September 11 is a bad day for many: 9/11 and the coup in Chile that ousted democratically elected Salvador Allende.
That infamous day will also be remembered when far-right politics came home to roost in the Nordic region.
