Tag: Finland

Perussuomalaiset MP Leena Meri: Hiding coded bigotted statements as jokes

Posted on by Migrant Tales

One matter is what happened on Friday to singer Musta Barbaari’s mother and sister when they were stopped by plainclothes police Friday, the other is a bigotted comment by an anti-immigration politician and former police officer concerning the alleged ethnic profiling case. The MP, who is a member of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party, Leena Meri, said that if the singer doesn’t like living in Finland he’s welcome to go back to where he came from.

What the MP didn’t grasp at first is that the singer is a native Finn from the city of Turku.

Meri, whose anti-immigration and human rights opinions are well-known, apologized Tuesday for what she said in Ilta-Sanomat, a tabloid that gained notoriety in the 1990s for labeling minorities like the Somalis in a racist manner. She wrote off what she said by claiming it was “a joke” and she didn’t mean to hurt anyone.

The PS MP’s apology is a good example of how low Finland’s politicians and the police service have stooped in recent years.

Meri worked as a police service officer before she was elected to parliament.

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Read full story (in Finnish) here.

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When will the Finnish police service stop denying that ethnic profiling isn’t an issue?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The Finnish police service acts as if it has never heard of ethnic profiling. Even if ethnic profiling cases by the police are rarely brought to the attention of the media, there was one case made public Friday by singer Musta Barbaari, whose mother and sister were – according to a Facebook posting – treated in “a rude manner” and were “humiliated publicly” by the police. 

Musta Barbaari writes on his Facebook wall that after spending the night in Helsinki’s city center, his mother and sister were stopped by two plainclothes police officers who asked them for their passport. Even if the posting and the

Even if the posting and the Helsingin Sanomat story doesn’t mention that the conversation with the police took place in the Finnish language, the singer’s sister refused to show her passport and asked the police why they were being arbitrarily stopped and questioned.

Musta Barbaari writes: “The plainclothes police didn’t answer [my sister’s question] but proceeded to handcuff both of them rudely and forced my mother to lie on the ground. My sister asked once again why they were being treated in such a way and what they had done but didn’t get an answer from police. My mother feared for her life and thought she was going to be beaten since the behavior of the police was very rude!”

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Read full statement here.

The singer has brought criminal charges against the police.

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Post-Brexit Europe: There is a connection between scapegoating and hate crime

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Is there a connection between scapegoating migrants, minorities as well as Others and hate crime? If you look at what has happened after the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom it’s clear that there is a connection.

Victimizing and promoting suspicion of migrant and minority groups is one matter but the most worrisome issue that should concern us is indifference.

How low can you stoop? Too many politicians and the media blame migrants, minorities and the EU for the problems they have caused and inflicted.

The late Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner who passed away Saturday, pinpoints the problem in the quote: below:

“Action is the only remedy to indifference: the most insidious danger of all.”

Just like with the alarming rise of xenophobia in the United Kingdom after the Brexit vote, the same is happening in other European countries like Finland that have anti-immigration parties that provoke open conflict with migrants and minorities.

Right after the 2011 parliamentary elections, some Finns saw the victory of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party as a green light to attack migrants,  minorities, and our ever-growing culturally diverse society. Membres of the Somali community, one of the favorite scapegoats of the PS, were targetted.

Below is a comment Migrant Tales got from a visitor who believed that we’d be out of business because we would stop getting funding [1] from Kepa, an organisation that represents Finnish civil society organisations (CSOs) that work in development cooperation.

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Migrant Tales has received its fair share of attacks by people who want to keep Finland white.

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Finland’s ever-growing culturally diverse community must rise up and challenge hostile parties like the Perussuomalaiset

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Some ask me where do I get the energy and strength to write. My answer is simple: When I read and hear comments by politicians and people who hate and want to socially exclude me my blood begins to boil. The only remedy that calms me is writing and organizing my thoughts.

But we must do much more. It’s wishful thinking to believe that parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, with the near-silent approval of most other parties, have declared war on us and our ever-growing culturally diverse community.

Read and listen carefully what parties like the PS have in store for us: They aim to relegate us to second- and third-class citizens, separate our families and continue to whitewash our history and our right to live in Finland.

We have a lot of support from white Finns but the spark that will challenge this threat to us and Finland is in our hands. We must rise up and challenge this cancer spreading throughout Finland and Europe.

I’m confident that we can send back this ogre to where it came from.

* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The English names of the party adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We, therefore, prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings. The direct translation of “Perussuomalaiset” is “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” 

Ilta-Sanomat continues to publish racist stories even today

Posted on by Migrant Tales

It’s disingenuous of tabloid Ilta-Sanomat to publish a story on Monday about legendary Finnish sports television commentator Raimo “Höyry” Häyrinen’s racist comments without taking a long look at itself in the mirror. 

The story prints in full the racist comments made by Häyrinen when he talked about the black players on the Colombian and Cameroonian team during a 1990 FIFA World Cup match.  

Ilta-Sanomat pulls a fast one on the reader: it publishes something racist, which some readers will appreciate, but pins the blame on the television sportscaster for making the racist comments in the first place.

Shoddy journalism at its worst.

In 1990, or during the early 1990s, Ilta-Sanomat was busy publishing its own racist stories about groups like the Somalis.

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Read full story (in Finnish) here.

Below are some shameful examples of ads about Somalis published by Ilta-Sanomat in the early 1990s.

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Uyi Osazee: The reality of ethnic and racial profiling in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Uyi Osazee*

I remember clearly the first time I was profiled by the police in Helsinki. It was the evening rush hour in the city and I had just made my way down the crowded escalator that leads to the underground metro platform in Hakaniemi, just two stops from the city center. As I got off the escalators, a metro was blaring out alarms, signaling it was about to depart. I quickened my steps, half running, half walking, determined to get on it. I rushed forward, hoping to beat the soon closing metro doors. A few paces off the doors, I was stopped by two individuals. They literally jumped in front of me, forcing me to stop abruptly to avoid colliding into them.

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Read full posting here.

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PS MP Tolppanen’s defection to the SDP is a good example that racism in Finland is still a debate between white people

Posted on by Migrant Tales

A lot of people were surprised Wednesday to hear that former Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Maria Tolppanen, who has made some pretty racist statements in the past, has defected to the Social Democrats (SDP). 

There are two matters that are extremely disappointing and shed light on Finland’s ongoing issues with racism: It’s still a discussion between white Finns who aren’t directly affected by it.

Since the racism issue in Finland is a debate between white people, it’s clear that the social ill isn’t treated seriously. There is a lot of lip service and empty claims that “we’re against racism” that don’t mean much.

In one move, the leader of the SDP, Antti Rinne, also given a serious blow to the party’s credibility on anti-racism issues.

Tolppanen’s defection is a good example as well of the former PS MP’s opportunism and her moral caliber. It also exposes, as we have seen in the polls, that the PS is a sinking ship.

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Read full story here.

I wonder what SDP MP Nasima Razmyar thinks about the defection.

Will the media even care to ask her opinion about the matter?

* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The English names of the party adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We, therefore, prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings. The direct translation of “Perussuomalaiset” is “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” 

The Finnish media doesn’t care to write about asylum seekers when they try to take control of their narrative

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Here’s an important question to the Finnish media: Why is it more interested to report on an event organized by far-right anti-immigration groups (see picture below) that are a flop but doesn’t care to report on demonstrations that took place Monday in Helsinki, Jämsä, Jyväskylä, Kemi, Kolari and elsewhere that attract a lot more people? Today’s “A right to live” demonstrations attracted in Helsinki alone up to 500 people. 

The demonstrations organized today were against a new government assessment that alleges that Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia are safe countries to return asylum seekers.

June 20 was World Refugee Day.

Why was most of the Finnish media silent and didn’t care about covering the demonstrations today? Does it show that most of the Finnish media is biased when reporting about asylum seekers?

The only media that wrote about today’s demonstrations were Karjalainen and YLE  in Joensuu. a city located in Eastern Finland.

Turun Sanomat and Demokraatti wrote about the demonstrations as well.

The fact that not even Helsingin Sanomat cared to cover the event(s) raises some disturbing questions about the daily and the Finnish media in general. How impartial is it and does it side with the government on its tough stand on immigration?

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A far-right event in Jyväskylä, located in Central Finland, attracted hardly any people on Saturday. It got covered in the media. Read more about this flop on Saku Timonen’s blog.

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Live coverage of Oikeus elää – A Right to live ???? ????? demonstration

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Oikeus elää – A Right to live ???? ????? demonstrations are taking place in Helsinki, Kolari, Kemi and elsewhere.

World Refugee Day is celebrated on June 20.

Is Iraq a safe country to return asylum seekers? Many disagree.

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Writes Beri Jamal: Today is an important day for humanity and for all refugees who have received a judgment to be sent back to Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. We want to protest against this decision that these countries are not safe for them to return to. Let us participate and influence the decision, let our voices reach to the authorities and tell them that this decision is unfair approved and is against all humanity!

16.42:  Narikkatori square in Helsinki is full and there are some 500 people taking part in the demonstration, according to Jamal.

16.42: The small town of Kolari, located in northern Finland is demonstrating and send us the following picture and video. Na?ytto?kuva 2016-6-20 kello 17.03.38

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Oikeus elää – A Right to live ???? ????? demonstration tomorrow at 4:00 pm in Helsinki (Narikkantori, Kamppi)

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The Finnish government of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä has done everything possible to make asylum seekers feel unwelcome in Finland. On Friday, they tightened family reunification guidelines and recently did away with giving residence permits on humanitarian grounds. 

The new family reunification law makes it virtually impossible for an asylum seeker who gets a residence permit to bring his or her family from abroad.

Asylum seekers and Finns will demonstrate against an assessment by the government that countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia are safe to return asylum seekers.

“We hope the government will change the decision [on Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia],” said an Iraqi asylum seeker who plans to attend Monday’s demonstration. “We didn’t come to Finland to live off your social welfare.”  

What is grotesque about the new law is that the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, with the support of their government partners, the Center Party and National Coalition Party (NCP), want to reassure their voters that they are as xenophobic as before even if their support in the polls has plummeted. 

The Center Party and NCP have struck a deal with the PS:  You have carte blanche to spread anti-immigration rhetoric and we’ll support the tightening of immigration policy as long as you support our massive budget cuts, which will hit pensioners, low-income and middle-class families.

After Sipilä’s government laid thorns on the path of asylum seekers in Finland, there is one matter that they can’t do anything about: Extinguish their hope.

That’s why tomorrow’s demonstration at 4:00pm in Helsinki (Kamppi) is one of the last chances that asylum seekers and concerned Finns have to show that they won’t be bullied by one of the country’s most anti-immigration governments seen in a long time.

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