Tag: Finland

Iraqi asylum seekers to demonstrate in Helsinki and Kemi Wednesday at 1pm

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Iraqi and some Syrian asylum seekers are planning to demonstrate Wednesday peacefully in Helsinki and the northern Finnish city of Kemi against a new assessment by the Finnish Immigration Service (Mgri), which sees countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia safe enough to return asylum seekers.  

Wednesday’s demonstration will take place in Helsinki in front of parliament and the city center of Kemi.

The new assessment by Migri makes it harder for asylum seekers in Finland to be granted residence permits.

Last year, some 32,500 asylum seekers came to Finland.  Most of them were from Iraq.

The tightening of government immigration policies is attributable to the rise in anti-immigration sentiment and to the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party, which is a member of government with the Center Party and National Coalition Party. 

“We were shocked about the decision by [the] immigration [authorities],” an Iraqi asylum seeker organizing the demonstration in Helsinki told Migrant Tales by phone. “There are militias, ISIL and a lot fighting taking place in [Iraqi] cities like Fallujah. In our opinion, Iraq isn’t a safe place at all.”

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Iraqi asylum seekers in Helsinki and the Kemi reception center will take part in peaceful protest Wednesday

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales understands that the Kemi reception center, which is located in northern Finland, will take part in a peaceful demonstration in solidarity with a larger one planned for Helsinki Wednesday. The source at the Kemi reception center said that the demonstration is against a new assessment for Iraq, which now sees that it is a safe country to return asylum seekers.

The new appraisal made by the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) includes Afghanistan and Somalia in its list of safe countries thus making it more difficult for over 32,500 asylum seekers to receive residence permits in Finland.

The source said that it hoped for at least 60 demonstrators to take part in the demonstration in Kemi tomorrow.

Despite the new assessment, Finland’s foreign ministry doesn’t recommend Finnish nationals to travel to such countries.

“This is a demonstration against Migri that claims that countries like Iraq are now safe,” the asylum seeker said. “We are grateful for all the help we have received up to now from Finland.”

Migrant Tales will update this story later this evening.

Why the PS of Finland is a hostile party to our ever-growing culturally diverse community

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A parliamentary committee, which is deciding on the future of the Finnish Broadcast Company (YLE), on important issues like how much state funding it should get and its role. If Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Teuvo Hakkarainen had his way, it cut YLE’s budget and thereby downsize the broadcaster’s Swedish-language service. 

But that’s not all. Hakkarainen, who is a member of the parliamentary committee and like many politicians of the anti-immigration party, wants white Finnish programs at the cost of those that promote cultural diversity or multiculturalism.

YLE is required in its bylaws to serve Finland’s ever-growing culturally diverse society, but this shouldn’t be a requirement any longer if Hakkarinan has his way.

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Kolari asylum seekers “very happy” about the closure of the reception center

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A number of asylum seekers at the Kolari reception center expressed happiness about plans by the Finnish Immigration Service to close Finland’s northernmost center on November 31. 

“This is good news and we are all very happy at the camp, the Iraqis, Afghans, Somalis and everyone,” an asylum seeker told Migrant Tales by phone. “We heard the news today and are hopeful that some of us will be transferred from here before November.”

While the closing of the reception center was welcome news, the asylum seeker said he was concerned about the hard line that the Finnish Immigration Service was taking on granting residence permits to asylum seekers.

“There are many negative decisions and this is something that concerns us,” the person said.

According to some estimates, about 10,000 asylum seekers out of a total 32,500 that came last year will get residence permits.

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Soldiers of Odin: Finland now “exports” hate and white supremacist ideology to the world

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Alongside our world-famous education system, Finland now becomes known for things that some would consider shameful but was never challenged enough like the Soldiers of Odin, a white (Finnish) supremacists hate group that has caught the attention of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a USAmerican anti-Semitism and anti-bigotry group founded in 1913.

Hatred, racism, and bigotry have a way of biting back at you if you don’t challenge it hard enough. In Finland, like in many parts of Europe, politicians, and the media have been too slow to react and lacked the courage to challenge racism and groups like the Soldiers of Odin.

In plain English, our lack of resolve on this front is our failure as a society to defend our Nordic values from hate groups like the Soldiers of Odin.

When we speak of Nordic ideals of social equality we must, however, ask a further key question: Which group is entitled to these privileges?

When reporting about extremist groups like the Soldiers of Odin, the media and politicians should keep in mind the following matters that the ADL points out in a statement below about the vigilante group. They spell it out pretty clearly. The Soldiers of Odin is an anti-Muslim, white (Finnish) supremacist neo-Nazi extremist group.

Writes ADL:

FROM FINLAND WITH HATE

The Soldiers of Odin originated in the tiny Scandinavian country of Finland in late 2015, but the group’s formation and rise are tied to the larger refugee problem that countries across Europe have experienced in recent years. Conflicts in places such as Libya, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan have created large numbers of asylum-seekers fearing persecution in their home countries, as well as refugees seeking better economic conditions than the ones in their war-torn nations.

The fact that we now “export” bigotry on such a scale should set alarm bells ringing.

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Read full ADL statement here.

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How the Finnish police and media play down hate crimes

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Violence against asylum seekers is nothing new in Finland. We’ve read about arson attacks against asylum reception centers and now the head of a reception center in Lahti, who claims that between five and ten residents have been physically attacked by groups of Finnish men, according to YLE News.

Like in many countries in Europe, hate crimes go underreported in Finland and are only the tip of the iceberg, according to a recent shadow report by the NGO European Network Against Racism. With this in mind, attacks against asylum seekers in Finland go mostly unreported.

Two matters caught my eye about this story. The first by YLE News quotes Häme Police Service Detective Inspector Martti Hirvonen as stating that they “are taking this seriously and will react vigorously if more cases come to light” but in an MTV3 story he plays down what happened.

“Hirvonen doesn’t believe what happened is widespread,” he said.

Here’s the question: If investigations into the matter are at a preliminary stage, how can he conclude with certainty that such crimes aren’t more widespread than believed?”

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Read full story here.

 

Police allegedly threatened asylum seeker with deportation if “he didn’t behave” and stop protesting

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A fight that took place today between two families at the Kolari asylum reception center forced five police service vans and 12-15 police to arrive at the camp, which is located in a far-flung village of 3,857 inhabitants, according to sources contacted by Migrant Tales. The fight is one matter but what the police allegedly told an asylum seeker is equally worrying. 

While some may see dispatching five squad cars to break up a fight between two families as an exaggeration and a waste of taxpayers’ money, it’s what the police sometimes says and does that can cause concern.

While we want to believe that the police service tries to be impartial and do its job professionally, we sometimes learn that this isn’t the case.

If the story of an asylum seeker is to be believed at the Kolari reception center, two police told him that they didn’t want to speak to him, a potential witness of the fight, “because he [and another person] at the camp cause problems [like organizing a peaceful demonstration this month against the manager].”

The source claimed that the two policemen, who were in the presence of a Red Cross employee, told the asylum seeker that they would be “sent back to their country if they didn’t stop causing trouble.”

If this is the case, we consider the police to have crossed the line. Asylum seekers, like us, are guaranteed the human right to demonstrate.

Moreover, is this the job of the Finnish police to tell them that they’ll be deported if they don’t shut their mouths up? If this actually happened today, what does it say about the Red Cross employee who didn’t react to what the police said?

For one it shows that matters are still in pretty bad shape at the Kolari asylum reception center.

 

 

 

Facebook: White Finnish woman hurling racist insults and a bucket of water

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Migrant Tales insight:  When I read Ruth Waweru-Folabit’s story on Facebook below I wondered what is going on with this country. She is a black woman from Kenya sitting with her two children aged 8 and 3 years with another woman, a white USAmerican and her two children aged 8 and 5 years. It happened in the Helsinki neighborhood of Herttoniemi.

What is most upsetting about this story is that the police didn’t bother to ask her if she wanted to press charges against the woman that insulted her in a racist manner in public and threw a bucket of water on her, her two children and her friend’s children.

“When another neighbor told the woman to shut up, she called her an n-word lover,” Waweru-Folabit said. “She said that she was a Finn, and therefore, nothing would happen to her [for harassing her in a racist manner and throwing a bucket of water].”

Now here’s one question that we should all ask: What would happen if Ruth Waeru-Folabit threw a bucket of water on a white Finn and started to insult her in the same was as she was insulted.

Ruth Waseru-Folabit said she would press charges against the women and would get in touch with the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman tomorrow.

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This Facebook posting was reprinted by Migrant Tales with permission.

Is the Kolari asylum reception center a copy of PS immigration and regional policy that is unconstitutional?

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There is a strong argument that the Kolari reception center, located in the far-flung village of 3,857 inhabitants in the middle of nowhere, is a copy of Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and specifically Social Welfare Minister Hanna Mäntylä’s contempt against asylum seekers and of regional policy that is unconstitutional.

In January 2015, the PS suggested sending unemployed migrants to live in far-flung regions of Finland, according to the party’s official immigration policy. If an unemployed migrant refused, their welfare and unemployment benefits would be affected.

While such policies are a clear violation of human rights and of Section 6 of our Constitution, which guarantees that we are all equal before the law irrespective of one’s background, they are tested with dismal results at the Kolari asylum reception center.

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Read full PS immigration program (in Finnish) here.

Unhappiness at the Kolari reception center runs high. Below are two messages from an asylum seeker published in a precent Migrant Tales story:

 

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