anti-immigration Archives - Page 9 of 10

What does the PS’ new party secretary mean by “tightening [Finnish] immigration policy?”

Posted on July 12, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Left Alliance MP Risto Kalliorinne asks Perussuomalaiset (PS) new party secretary Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo to elaborate what she means by ”tightening immigration policy?” Apart from labeling herself a chauvinist, Slunga-Poutsalo “demanded” that Finland should tighten immigration policy.

Read original story here.

While Left Alliance MP Kalliorinne poses an important question, we all know the answer that Slunga-Poutsalo would give if she elaborated on what she said.

The answer lies with the far right Danish People’s Party’s EuroMP Morten Messerschmidt, who was invited to speak at the PS’ annual congress in June. He said recently:

“I think we need three sets of rules of immigration. One for Europeans, who will be regulated by EU-law. One for people from the rest of the Western World, including parts of East Asia, South America, etc. And then a third set of rules for the third world, who in general do not really offer anything we can benefit from…”

The latter statement by Messerschmidt is in line with the Nuiva Manifesto and the thinking of many PS anti-immigration extremists like MP Jussi Halla-aho, James Hirvisaari and others.

The interesting question, however, is why the PS hasn’t yet revealed more aggressively its DPP colors on immigration policy. The answer probably hinges on how much the PS thinks it can profit from an anti-immigration political stance.

Slunga-Poutsalo believes that the party can, which explains why she is making anti-immigration statements in the first place.

The problem lies in the PS as well. Ever wondered why its chairman plays down its far right anti-immigration faction? It’s not because he’s a nice guy and likes immigrants, but because he sees this faction as a threat to his political base.

Soini has claimed in the past that PS’ anti-EU stance played a key role (80%) and anti-immigration a minor role (20%) in its historic election victory of 2011.

If you want to know where the PS’ anti-immigration policy is heading and how it will end, study the far right DPP.

The PS’ not too public love affair with the Danish People’s Party

Posted on July 1, 2013 by Migrant Tales

The DPP is an anti-migration, ethno-nationalist, anti-Islam,populist anti-elitist and anti-EU party that wants welfare only for native Danes.
The PS is the a carbon copy of the latter.

If you want to know what kind of a Finland the Perussuomalaiset (PS) want to turn the country into, take a good look at their political mentors in Denmark, the Danish People’s Party (DPP). Was it a coincidence that DPP EuroMP, Morten Messerschmidt, spoke at the PS’ annual congress in Joensuu?

Messerschmidt was charged in 2007 for singing Nazi marching songs and giving the Hitler salute in a bar in Tivoli, the major tourist attraction in central Copenhagen.

He was cleared of such charges in 2009 by a court, which forced the daily BT to compensate Messerschmidt for libel. Together with two other DPP members in 2001, Messerschmidt was sentenced by a court for 14 days for ethnic agitation. A DPP ad in Studiomagazinet claimed that Denmark would face mass rapes, violence, insecurity, forced marriages, women would be oppressed, and gang crime if the country became a multiethnic society.

See original source here.

Despite this outburst by the DPP EuroMP, the anti-immigration Danish populist party has its hands full with its racists and neo-Nazis, which it expels from the party regularly. Soini’s PS, however, hasn’t been so eager to weed out its racists and neo-Nazis.

Two PS MPs have been sentenced for ethnic agitation.

The end of the DPP’s pivotal role in Danish politics came in September 2011, when a left-leaning alliance led by the Social Democrats won the election.

For over ten years, the DPP had offered support to a minority government in exchange for the passage of strict immigration laws. But that has now changed, according to a story by Time Magazine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0T1uItGjh-0

This video clip was published before the September 2012 election in Denmark.

How did the DPP influence Denmark’s immigration laws?

Both the Danish and foreign spouse must be at least 24 years old to live in Denmark
The Danish partner must post a bond of £7,200 collateral ($11,600)
The foreign spouse must pass a language and general knowledge test
Both need to demonstrate a combined attachment to Denmark greater than to any other country
They have to prove that they have ”actively participated in Danish society” for at least a year
Many asylum seekers were kept in limbo for years

If the PS ever got in government or became the biggest party in the 2015 election, I have no doubt that it will follow DPP’s anti-immigration and populist path.

Despite the usual assurances by Timo Soini that the anti-immigration hardliners in the PS are ”a myth” fabricated by the media, few serious analysts believe his words. Soini, like the worst used car salesmen, is a political animal that will do anything to pitch a political sale to voters, even if it promotes greater hostility towards immigrants and visible minorities.

Mark my words: The PS would love to play the same role that the DPP had played in Denmark.

The jury is still out whether voters will give the PS such a questionable mandate.

New PS party secretary Riikka Slunga Poutsalo “demands” tighter immigration policy

Posted on June 30, 2013 by Migrant Tales

As Migrant Tales correctly pointed out, it didn’t take long for the new party secretary of the Perussuomalaiset (PS), Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo, to show her far right anti-immigration credentials. Interviewed by YLE’s 8:30 pm news, Slunga-Poutsalo “demands” Finland should tighten immigration policy further.

Migrant Tales wrote Saturday that one of the aims of the PS annual congress in Joensuu was to make the party the biggest in Finland by 2015 with the help of an anti-EU and anti-immigration campaign. Finland will hold parliamentary elections two years from now.

“We shouldn’t commit the same mistakes [in immigration] than Europe but learn from them before it’s too late and when we’ll be in the same boat as them,” she said.

PS chairman Timo Soini played down as usual the role of intolerance and anti-immigration sentiment in his party.

“This is a myth that the media cranks out [constantly],” he said. “Crank it out [all you want] so the Perussuomalaiset will get more publicity.”

He denied that the anti-immigration wing of the party led by PS MP Jussi Halla-aho had got an important foothold in the party leadership thanks to Slunga-Poutsalo and Juho Eerola, who was elected third vice president.

In one of her first major policy statements as party secretary, Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo “demanded” that Finnish immigration policy should be tightened further.

The 8:30 pm news reported – as did Migrant Tales – that Slunga-Poutsalo is an anti-immigration hardliner who not only signed the Nuiva Manifesto but has taken part in anti-immigration chat forums like Hommaforum.

The new party secretary finds herself in good anti-immigration company with Eerola, who likes Mussolini-style fascism, Halla-aho and James Hirvisaari, both of which who have been sentenced for hate speech.

Slunga-Poutsalo was one of the signatories of the Nuiva Manifesto. She is on the top row right.

The PS’ new Cadillac model of racism

Posted on June 30, 2013 by Migrant Tales

How does intolerance and racism work in Finnish politics? How does it manifest itself today in anti-immigration parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)? A quote by U.S. civil rights leader Malcolm X (1925-65) provides us with a partial clue to these questions: “Racism is like a Cadillac, they bring out a new model every year.”

Is it a surprise that one of the first persons to congratulate Riikka Slung-Putsalo was PS MP Jussi Halla-aho? Both were responsible for drafting the anti-immigration Nuiva Manifesto.

If we took Finland’s most intolerant party in parliament, how do intolerance and racism manifest themselves at the PS’ annual congress (June 29-30) in Joensuu? What Cadillac model has the PS introduced?

The answer to that simple question is a complex one since the driver, party chairman Timo Soini, denies that he’s driving a Cadillac. While the PS may want to hide the new Cadillac model, there’s a lot of incriminating evidence that suggests the contrary.

How do we know? Easy.

Take a look at the new PS leadership for 2013-15. Four of its party leaders, which include Soini, are strongly in the anti-immigration camp. Be it the elimination of mandatory Swedish at schools (Jussi Niinistö, vice president), to liking Mussolini-style fascism (Juho Eerola, third vice president), to denying cultural diversity (Hanna Mäntylä, second vice president), it’s the same anti-immigration PS Cadillac.

Let’s not forget Riikka Slunga-Putsalo, probably the worst anti-immigration pundit together with Eerola, who was elected party secretary Saturday.

One of the eeriest aspects of the PS is its ability to hide its racism model.What you see is not necessarily what you get. The culture of anti-immigration rhetoric is stuffed today with doubletalk and decipherable only by code.

Has anyone thought what kind of a country Finland would be if we’d allow the PS to draft laws that would strike the term multiculturalism from its youth law or prohibit the use of the burqa and nijab? What about if we banned male circumcision or decided that we wouldn’t accept Muslim refugees and immigrants to our country?

All these measures, which are wholeheartedly supported by the PS, would end up destroying Finland and its Nordic social welfare state democracy. It would be like leaving our future and democracy to chance.

Immigrants and visible minorities don’t need the acceptance or 5.4 million Finns never mind that of the PS to feel at home in this country. All of us who have moved to Finland know at least one person who has shown immense hospitality and given us hope that building a home in this country is possible.

The PS is not only a threat to Finland, but especially to immigrants and minorities.

Immigrants and minorities would be the biggest losers if the PS ever became the biggest party in the country. We’d be persecuted and our rights downgraded even further by making discrimination and prejudice “normal” and “patriotic.”

Annual congress: The PS aims to become the biggest party in Finland with anti-EU and anti-immigration platform

Posted on June 29, 2013 by Migrant Tales

The first day of Perussuomalaiset (PS) annual congress in Joensuu (July 29-30) did not produce any surprises but reinforced the party’s anti-immigration, and especially its anti-Islam and anti-cultural diversity stand. The party leadership, starting from Timo Soini to its new secretary, Riikka Slunga-Putsalo, confirm this.

Soini, who was reelected chairman of the party by a landslide, announced that he would not run for EuroMP in 2014.

“There are two reasons for this: I can’t afford to and I do not want to,” Soini was quoted as saying on YLE in English.

See original story here.

The new vice president of the PS is Jussi Niinistö, a member of the far right Suomalaisuuden liitto that campaigns against mandatory Swedish at school. Hanna Mäntylä and Juho Eerola were elected second and third vice president, respectively.

Niinstö’s political colors became evident in September 2011, when he stated in parliament Nazi playwright Hans Johst’s Schlageter, “Wenn ich Kultur höre … entsichere ich meinen Browning” (“Whenever I hear of culture… I release the safety-catch of my Browning”).

Niinistö replaced the word culture with parliamentarism when he mentioned Schlageter’s quote.

Eerola, who got elected to parliament thanks to his anti-immigration views and ties to far right associations like Suomen Sisu, which is no longer a member, doesn’t have the stomach to accept cultural diversity. One of his most infamous quotes is: “I am attracted to fascism and especially the economic policies of Benito Mussolini.”

Eerola was party second vice president in 2012-13.

Mäntylä is no friend of immigrants and visible minorities. She has supported a number of PS draft laws that see “multiculturalism” as a threat or that would ban the burqa and nijab in Finland.

Slunga-Putsalo was one of the 12 members that drafted and signed the anti-immigration Nuiva Manifesto, which aims to undermine immigrant and visible minority rights in Finland.

The type of immigration policy supported by Slunga-Putsalo would limit social aid for a year to all new immigrants that move to the country.

Another aim of the Nuiva Manifesto is to halt immigrants that would have a “negative” impact on society. It supports, however, immigrants whose impact would be “neutral or positive.”

While Slunga-Putsalo and Eerola, who signed the Nuiva Manifesto as well, won’t tell you what groups would be “negative” to Finland, it’s easy to understand that they mean Muslims, Africans and other visible immigrants from outside the EU.

Another example of the PS’ democratic credentials was inviting EuroMP Morten Messerschmidt of the far right Danish People’s Party to Joensuu to greet the PS delegates.

In 2007, he was charged with singing Nazi marching songs and giving the Hitler salute in a bar in Tivoli, the major tourist attraction in central Copenhagen.

Messerschmidt was cleared of such charges in 2009 by a court, which forced the daily BT to compensate him for libel. Together with two other DPP members in 2001, however, Messerschmidt was sentenced for 14 days for ethnic agitation. A DPP ad in Studiomagazinet claimed that Denmark would face mass rapes, violence, insecurity, forced marriages, women would be oppressed, and gang crime if the country became a multiethnic society.

Finnish Swedish-speaking journalists and public figures receive death threats

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Is it a surprise that prominent Finns belonging to the Swedish-speaking minority received anonymous hate mail and death threats this week? If you want to find the roots of such hatred, one place to look is the anti-immigration, anti-Swedish language and anti-EU Perussuomalaiset (PS) party.

Members of the Swedish-speaking communities are not the only ones who have received death threats. Feminists, researchers and even Migrant Tales have received such threats as well. It is a sad reality of life in Finland these days.

It’s no news that part of the PS’ survival plan as a political party includes a concerted campaign against immigrants, visible and language minorities in this country. Another target of the conservative populist party is the Finnish media, which it claims is biased against the populist party.

Amid all this intimidation and attacks, PS chairman Timo Soini claims with a poker face that his party doesn’t hate anyone.

Read whole story here.

YLE journalist Bettina Såghbom said that she and her family have received death threats on Monday and Tuesday by email, according to YLE in English. Helsingin Sanomat managing editor Paula Salovaara is another journalist who was sent death threats by email this week.

Apart from being strongly opposed to immigration and Finland’s Swedish-speaking minority, the PS has attacked the Finnish media as well.

The views of PS MPs like James Hirvisaari should worry us since Finland’s third-largest party in parliament believes it’s acceptable to pry in the newsroom and tell the media how to do its job.

MP Hirvisaari has branded journalists in the past as “bloodthirty hyenas” as well as “arrogant lying scum.”

Tom Packalén is another PS MP who is eager to teach the national media what they should write about his party. He called Finland’s largest daily, Helsingin Sanomat, former Soviet daily Pravda (a favorit term used by many PS politicians), and accused the daily of limiting freedom of speech.

Migrant Tales has never hid its concern about the ever-worsening anti-immigration and anti-minority climate in Finland exacerbated by groups like the PS and assisted by the recession.

Death threats against prominent figures of the Swedish-speaking community in Finland as well as prying into the newsroom by politicians should send alarm bells off. An attack against any minority in the vile manner of the PS and steps to compromise the independence of our national media should be strongly condemned as well.

We have fresh examples in Hungary how anti-Romany and anti-Semitism sentiment promoted by nationalist parties has led to greater scrutiny by the government of Viktor Orbán of that country’s media.

In today’s Europe what goes around comes around much faster than before.

Suomen Sisu and its red herrings: Radical Islamists are now gaining a foothold in Finland

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Suomen Sisu, a far right anti-immigration association, said in a statement today that it was concerned about “radical Islamists” gaining a foothold in Finland after Anjem Courdary’s visit to Helsinki on Thursday.

Is the extremist association were honest, it would take a good look at itself in the mirror and warn us as well about neo-Nazi groups like Golden Dawn of Greece, Hungary’s Jobbik and other far right anti-immigration groups threatening Europe these days. In that group it should include itself.

While Suomen Sisu speaks in the future tense of an oncoming threat to Europe by Muslims, these don’t hold water. According to the EU Terrorism and Situation Report 2012, most terrorist attacks in 2011 were carried out by ethno nationalist and separatist terrorist groups. Who could forget Anders Breivik?

The Suomen Sisu statement reveals beyond any doubt that the association is the same group it used to be. It still holds the same views on cultural diversity like the Ku Klux Klan and U. S. American Nazi Party.

The most recent scandal suffered by the Perussuomalaiset (PS) is by Vaasa councilman Risto Helin, who gave a clock with Hitler and swastikas to a neo-Nazi club in that city.

Olli Immonen, Suomen Sisu president, is a PS MP.

Suomen Sisu attempts to pull a fast one at the end of the statement with a Timo Soini stunt.

What is a Soini stunt? Stating with a poker face, and sometimes even with crocodile tears, that you’re against racism. It’s something like Heinrich Himmler telling you that he’s not anti-Semitic even if he leads a vast network of mass murderers working overtime at concentration camps.

The statement claims at the end: “The best way to ensure that immigrants don’t radicalize is to get them to adapt to Finland’s society by teaching them [our] language, education and by getting work…The only way to maintain stability in society is by immigrants adapting to our society and not staying outside of it..”

Can we believe such a claim? Is there any logic in it? Has Suomen Sisu turned over a new leaf?

Not really. Just like racism, it’s logic is an irrational and immoral social construct.

Timo Soini and Olli Immonen, the foxes in the chicken coop

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Perussuomalaiset (PS) chairman Timo Soini was asked Tuesday by YLE what he thought about PS MP Olli Immonen being elected as the new chairman of Suomen Sisu, an extremist anti-immigration association. Soini offered his usual cock-and-bull answer by comparing Suomen Sisu to a harmless hunting, farming or youth association.

It appears that YLE has learned a thing or two from BBC’s HARDtalk, when Soini was put on the hot seat about racism in his party. YLE understood the wider context of the story and correctly pointed out that Soini had no objection to one of his MPs being chairman of an extremist association.

Another PS MP, James Hirvisaari, said last month that he was pressured to resign from Suomen Sisu.

Suomen Sisu has been called a lot of things in the past, from Nazi-spirited to extremist by the Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Supo). The group still lives in the murky world of eugenics, a disgraced pseudo-science whose aim was to create a master white race by wiping out other ones.

Suomen Sisu openly supports “racial hygiene” and discourages white Finns from marrying foreigners.

Watch news here.

Yle spoke to Immonen, who admitted last year never visiting the very neighborhoods that he claims are becoming ghettos in Eastern Helsinki.

“For example, we can see small examples of neighborhoods where certain national groups want to live and marginalize themselves from the rest of society,” he said. “This type of development must be stopped.”

Immonen’s comment about ghettos mirrors his negative views of cultural diversity, which is the main core of his anti-immigration stance. According to him, immigrants don’t have a right to live in the same neighborhood.

The PS MP, who is a security guard by profession, forgets that the most normal thing in the world for immigrants is to live together. That’s how many Finnish immigrants lived when they migrated to the Americas. Some even founded colonies in countries like Argentina and lived near-isolated from the outside world.

Let’s not expect anything but the usual denials from Soini concerning Immonen. Why? Because he’s leader of a party that has given a political voice to a record number of racists, Islamophobes, immigrantphobes, isolationists, anti-EU supporters, male chauvinists, homophobes, neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers.

Asking Soini to condemn Immonen for being a member of a Nazi-spirited association is like asking two foxes starved for many days to behave inside a chicken coop.

Finland’s biggest threat is itself

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Migrant Tales

As Finland awakens to the reality that it is a culturally diverse society, one of the biggest threats and challenges we face doesn’t come from abroad but from our backyard. When the Civil Rights Movement ended in the United States in 1968, the first matter that we learned we should stop doing is generalizing about blacks and other groups.

It’s sad to admit that some prejudices in Finland are so old that people believe them to be scientific fact. Prejudice is a powerful political force that was capitalized by the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset party in the April 2011 election.

Finns are even prejudiced against themselves. Some believe that Hämäläinens in southern Finland are “slow” and that people from Savo in eastern Finland are “crooked.”

Racism has powerful roots in Finland. One could even see it on a Suomen Kuvalehti article published in 1940 that attempted to show how superior the Finnish white soldier was to blacks.

Blacks are no longer found on racist ads but other ethnic groups like Latinos. This picture was taken at the Pieksämäki train station in July 2007. The owners of the café no longer use this sign outside their premises.

Giving up one’s prejudices isn’t easy but not impossible.

We fortunately have great laws that are based on social equality (tasa-arvo) and respect. Our successful society would be nothing today without these laws. Instead of building bridges of acceptance, respect and tolerance, we’d be destroying those bridges with intolerance.

How, then, is it possible that such an exemplary society like ours could breed people with so much hatred and prejudice against other groups?

While there are many people who understand the importance of cultural diversity in this country, there are still too many who are reactive to it.

Despite the spirit of our present laws, they mean little and are robbed of their power if they are caged by prejudice, racism and above all by our silence.

Blaming our history on some of our intolerance is a too simple but it is one answer that sheds light on the present problem.

Few young people in Finland know that we used to be a very closed country only thirty years ago and our laws reflected this situation as well.

Foreigners were not only barred from investing in the country but the Aliens’ Office made everything possible to ensure you didn’t move here.

If is shameful that a country that saw over 1.2 million emigrate between 1860 and 1999, treated immigrants in Finland like stateless persons who didn’t even have the right to habeas corpus. Immigrants were seen at the time as a threat to national security.

Prior to our first Aliens’ Act of 1983, which came into force sixty-five years after independence, foreigners could be arrested at will by the police, held indefinitely in jail and deported without the right to appeal.

During the Great Depression, Finland enacted the Restricting Act of 1939 that kept foreigners and outside investment to a minimum. The act prohibited foreigners from owning real estate and acquiring a majority stake in Finnish companies – limiting this to 20% normally and 40% under special permission.

The act stipulated that foreigners could not own shares in sectors such as forestry, securities trading, transportation, mining, real estate and shipping.

To maintain this climate of suspicion against foreigners, the school played an important role in teaching young Finns myths in order to be prejudiced against other groups.

At schools, Finnish children were taught at an early age that “n” stands for the n-word.

Fortunately times are changing!

If you’re anti-gay you’re probably anti-immigration (or don’t understand what is at stake)

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Migrant Tales

It is surprising that a country like Finland, which claims to be a Nordic democracy, we see so much opposition to gays not only from anti-immigration parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS), but from other ones as well like the National Coalition Party.

PS MP Mika Niikko, a fierce opponent of gay rights, echoed on Helsingin Sanomat what other PS politicians think about homosexuality.

”I made a question that if homosexuality was as normal as people want us to understand, why must this fact be hidden from the employer…” he said.

For some reason, Niikko believes that employers should know their worker’s sexual preference.

It’s nothing surprising that an anti-immigration party like the PS houses anti-gay sentiment as we have seen from MP James Hirvisaari and MP Pentti Oinonen, who refused to go to the annual December 6 independence day reception because there were gay couples.

Even if Christian Democrat (KD) Interior Minister P’ivi Räsänen may appear to voice the greatest objection in government to gays rights and marriage by claiming on a TV show that homosexuality to be a sin, she’s not alone.

One of the conditions for the KD to be in government was that gay marriage would not be brought up or promoted.

MP Anne Holmlund of the National Coalition Party and former interior minister appears to be against gay rights as well. She has reportedly sabotaged a petition as chairman of the legal committee to debate and legalize gay marriage.

It’s important to note that these types of MPs and their parties that oppose gay marriage are a reflection of the general intolerance that is raising its head and gripping Finland. Approving gay marriage would not only benefit such couples but have a positive effect on all minorities.

Advancing tolerance is good for ALL minorities. Promoting or maintaining intolerance is a bad matter for minorities.

MPs that opposes gay marriage are most likely to oppose the rights of immigrants and are most likely against cultural diversity.