A good example of how some Finns label Others and how the media fuels the “us” and “them” mentality is when a teenage asylum seeker on Thursday was caught watching naked women taking showers at a local swimming hall in the Finnish town of Haukipudas, located 640km north of Helsinki.
Tag: discrimination
Finland must get off its whining horse and seek proactive solutions to the asylum seeker situation
Like many anti-immigration politicians, even former National Police Commissioner Mikko Paatero believes that there is some magic number that we shouldn’t cross concerning the number of asylum seekers that arrive to our country. In 2015, a record 32,000 asylum seekers came to Finland. How many arrive this year is an open question.
UPDATE (December 1): Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism
Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism will be updated separately. To see other examples of opinionated journalism in Finland about cultural diversity, please go to this link. December 1 Two rape stories weighed differently – (Helsingin Sanomat)* What’s wrong with these two stories? Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s largest daily, published two rape stories Tuesday….
Finnish fitness center advertises migrants needn’t apply as members
Believe it or not in Finland there are fitness centers that advertise to their Finnish customers that foreigners won’t be allowed to use their facilities, especially those that live in an asylum reception center nearby.
M. Blanc: My Finnish experience
M. Blanc* I’m a non-muslim Persian student in Finland and this is my story. I was born in Iran but due to the strict islamic rules and the islamic belief I couldn’t fit in from the early ages. I moved to Cyprus as a young teenager and after a while I came to north. I…
Why do migrants have too little say over their matters in Finland?
The Finnish ministry of education allocated 1.3 million euros in 2015 compared with 1.2 million euros the previous year to support migrants in sports, according to YLE. Despite such sums of money migrants and their children still face obstacles like discrimination and racism in sports. Discrimination today in Finnish sports appears as exclusion, name-calling, insults, even violence…
What do Jim Crow, Nuremberg Laws and Finland’s Restricting Act of 1939 have in common?
All forms of intolerance have one factor in common: They are violent ways to disenfranchise and control groups through social exclusion. Jim Crow laws in the United States sought to ensure that blacks remain marginalized in the same way as the Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany took away all power from the Jews. In Finland, foreigners…
You can live in Finland as long as you are culturally invisible (and conform to our stereotypes)
Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Vesa-Matti Saarakkala’s statement on Seinjäjoki-based daily Ilkka is another clear example of how some politicians, and even the National Board of Education, continue to deny our ever-growing cultural diversity. There is a lot of talk about “multiculturalism” and little action. This leaves us with a hostile message lingering above us: We, white Finns,…
Jallow Momodou: Invisible ‘visible’ minority on the European political agenda
Jallow Momodou* ‘Numbers count’ is a statement we often hear, especially when speaking of democratic weight and power as a means to influence a group’s socio-economic conditions. So far, however, people of African descent and Black European are the most invisible ‘visible’ minority on the European political agenda. This despite the fact that there are…
Institute of Race Relations: Roma – fascism’s first victims, again
Liz Fekete Anti-Roma violence draws strength from fascist ideas that linger on in mainstream European thought. On 15 September, a Roma man from Romania, homeless in Sweden, died of injuries sustained on 31 August, when a fire broke out at a Roma temporary tent camp in Högdalen, southern Stockholm. We will probably never know whether…