Finland Archives - Page 212 of 359

Hate crimes in 2013 are up by 13.9% in Finland but who cares?

Posted on December 3, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Suspected hate crimes in 2013 rose by 13.9% to 833 cases compared with 732 in the previous year, according to the Police College of Finland. While one suspected hate crime is too many, how should we interpret these figures? What do they reflect? Do they reveal that there are high or low hate crime levels in Finland?

Do they show the migrant and minority communities’ mistrust of the police since the majority of hate crimes go unreported?

If this is the case, what do these figures reveal to us about intolerance in Finland?

Or maybe we should ask some hard questions of the police like if they actively encourage people to report hate crimes?

In 2013, total hate crimes rose to 833 from 732 in 2012. The first line reads “racist crimes” (rasistiset rikokset) and the second one “other hate crimes” (muut viharikokset). This table has two discrepancies with earlier figures published by the Police College of Finland. In 2008 the corresponding figure was 859 and in 2011 919. Source: Police College of Finland.

Meanwhile, a YLE in English reports that the police doesn’t consider diversity a priority in the face of budget cuts.

“We have a serious lack of police officers, there are so few of us. Lack of money could be a great cause of this, which also leads to a lack of diversity in my opinion. Our priority is not to gain in diversity, but to gain in numbers in general,” stated one of the protesting officers in November against budget cuts.

As Finland’s cultural and ethnic diversity increases, how many migrants and minorities will have to live in Finland for the police to understand that diversity is crucial?

When they understand this and when there are more minorities on the police force, possibly then we’ll probably start to make some sense of these hate crime statistics.

Same-sex marriage bill approved by Finnish parliament

Posted on November 28, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Parliament has approved 105-92 a bill that will pave the way for same-sex marriage, according to YLE in English. The vote in favor of same-sex marriage is the first-ever citizens’ initiative that has been approved by the Eduskunta, or parliament.

The vote was a big setback for Timo Soini and the Perussuomalasiet (PS)* party, which had spent a lot of political capital against the bill.

Other losers were Päivi Räsänen and the Christian Democrats.

The biggest winners were parties like the Greens, Social Democrats, Left Alliance and Swedish People’s Party, which voted in majority for same-sex marriage.

Migrant Tales believes that the passage of the bill will be a big boost for gay rights but for our ever-growing culturally and ethnically diverse society.

Read full story here.

With the passage of the bill, Finland finally joins the other Nordic nations that have approved same sex marriage.

Writes YLE in English: ”The reform will force wide-ranging changes in other legislation, which will take well over a year to finalize. The law will therefore not take effect until 2016 at the earliest.”

Gays and lesbians have been allowed to have registered partnerships since 2002.

* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The names 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.

Same-sex marriage bill vote Friday will be a cliff hanger

Posted on November 27, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Finland will vote Friday on the long-overdue bill that would make marriage legal between same-sex couples. A lot rides on tomorrow’s vote. In many respects, the outcome of Friday’s vote shows Finland to be at an important crossroads.

Some analysts see the passage of the same-sex marriage bill not only as a victory for gays but for all minorities in Finland.

At present, the social construct of the so-called white, heterosexual Finn is being seriously challenged by tomorrow’s vote as well as by our ever-growing cultural diversity.

According to political observers, the vote is still too close to call.

Read full story here.

The debate on same-sex marriage has divided Finland. Even so, Evangelical Church of Finland Archbishop Kari Mäkinen said this week he supports granting homosexual couples the right to marriage.

It’s highly probable that the historic vote Friday would not be a cliff hanger if it weren’t for the Perussuomalaiset (PS),* which are betting much of their political capital against the bill.

In 2011 the PS won their historic parliamentary election victory by gaining 39 seats in parliament from 5 previously. Their election victory was based on hostility and mistrust of the EU, immigrants, refugees, cultural diversity and homosexuals.

Friday’s vote will reveal a lot of things. One is whether we are a closed or open-minded society.

The closed society, supported by the PS, is outright hostile to minorities and keeps such groups excluded by building fences of mistrust with the help of myths.

The open-minded society is the new face of Finland in this century that cannot be stopped. That face and landscape comprises of minorities with equal rights.

* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The names 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.

Finland: A nation of emigrants

Posted on November 26, 2014 by Migrant Tales

While some heads of state like Barack Obama speak of the United States as a nation of immigrants, Finland has historically been a nation of emigrants. How does being a nation of emigrants differ from being a nation of immigrants? There is a big difference and reveals in part why some Finns are so hostile to immigration.

Finland is a good example of a country made up of emigrants. During 1860-1999, over 1.2 million emigrated, with the majority moving to Sweden (580,000) and North America (411,000).

If all of these emigrants would have stayed put in Finland, our population would be today about 7 million instead of 5.470 million.

Emigration has had a big demographic never mind social impact on Finland.

Source: Jouni Korkiasaari and Ismo Söderling: Finnish emigration and immigration after World War II. Migration Institute 2003. Source: http://www.migrationinstitute.fi/articles/011_Korkiasaari_Soderling.pdf

Since we are a nation of emigrants, it explains in part why some of our politicians and society don’t see immigration as a positive matter.

Being a land of emigration has distorted our view of things. Instead of seeing the world as an opportunity, it’s seen by too many as a threat. This is understandable considering our difficult history with the former Soviet Union. Even so, wars and conflicts end and we must learn to move on, even if the Ukraine crisis has reinforced our worst prejudices.

Finland is slowly learning to become a nation of immigrants. When we’ll be able to call ourselves a nation of immigrants, that’s when our perceptions of foreigners and newcomers will change, hopefully for the better.

This will take time. But we’re already on that road no matter how some resist this fact tooth and nail and throw everything they have against our ever-growing culturally and ethnically diverse nation.

Homophobic Finland? Thank the Perussuomalaiset

Posted on November 23, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Some weren’t too worried when the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* won their historic parliamentary election victory in 2011 by raising the number of MPs to 39 from 5. “They’ll implode like the Rural Party did in the 1970s,” and “This is only a passing [political] fad” was what one heard.

One matter is clear after almost four years of bitter-tasting PS politicking: Attitudes towards migrants, minorities like gays has stiffened; such attitudes have made Finland ever-intolerant and thereby less attractive to skilled migrants and foreign investment.

It’s clear that if the PS ever get into government, they would spearhead and breathe new life in this country to the conservative economic policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, who brought us mass unemployment and exacerbated social and economic inequality.

One of the best examples of hardening attitudes in Finland – thanks to the PS – is against gays and the long and winding road of approving same-sex marriage is a good example.

One of the most outspoken voices against same-sex marriage is the Perussuomalaiset party. Read full story here.

It’s clear that if the PS wouldn’t have won in 2011, same-sex marriage would have already been legal in this country.

Taking into account that recent polls show the Center Party to be the clear favorite to win the next parliamentary elections in April and the party’s voting record, Friday’s parliamentary vote for or against same-sex marriage will be the last for a very long time.

The PS has tried to pull many fast ones on the public. One of these was a recent claim that migration costs Finland near-2 billion euros. While such claims were conjured by the PS for obvious reasons, has anyone asked how much the populist party has cost Finland in the way of lost skilled migrants, jobs, opportunities and investment?

Finland has a problem: It’s population is aging and we need skilled migrants to fill the gap as well as new jobs. Why would any person in his right mind move to a country that is suspicious of migrants and foreign investment?

One problem with racism and ethnocentrism is that it distorts reality.

* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The names 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.

Systemic disenfranchisement of migrants and minorities in Europe

Posted on November 21, 2014 by Migrant Tales

One important question that doesn’t appear to bother too many politicians is why migrant voter turnout in Europe is so low. In the 2012 municipal elections of Finland, 20% of eligible migrants voted compared with 18.6% in 2008. This is a far cry from 59.5% and 62.2% of Finnish citizens that voted in such elections, respectively.

As we saw in the EU elections of May, the far right made important gains especially in countries like France, United Kingdom, Denmark Austria, Sweden and Greece. The low voter turnout coupled with the disenfranchisement of migrants from the political system and society in general has benefited the far right.

According to an opinion piece on euobserver by Thomas Huddleston, the low levels of voter participation and naturalization of Europe’s ever-growing immigrant population have become “the major disenfranchisement cause of our time.”

Table 1: Persons entitled to vote and those who voted by nationality in municipal elections during 1996-2012.

Source: Statistics Finland.

Some of the key issues that Huddleston points out are the following:

There are 51 million migrants aged 15-74 in the EU, or 14% of the adult population;
32 million migrants are first- and 18 million are second-generation migrants;
Two thirds of the first first-generation are not citizens of their country of residence;
A large number of young second generation adults are not citizens in around half of the EU member states;
Among non-EU citizens, 10 million live in EU countries (Germany, Italy, France, Greece and Austria) denying them even the right to vote in local elections;
Far right parties in countries like Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France and the UK are benefiting the most from this democratic deficit.

It’s clear why the far right and anti-immigration groups do not want to give migrants greater voting rights since such a move would undermine their power. But if we want to make the EU more inclusive, it’s clear that we are going to have to make an about-turn in voting rights to migrants.

Writes Huddleston:

Research finds that the electoral power of the far-right is the most important factor explaining the restrictiveness of European countries’ citizenship policies, which then has major effects on immigrants’ naturalization rates, even for high-educated and developed-world immigrants.

For those who still believe that parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS), which has far right roots, haven’t poisoned the air for migrants and polarized society should think twice. A good example is the ongoing debate on same-sex marriage in Finland. If the PS wouldn’t have won the 2011 elections and become the third-largest party in parliament, same-sex marriage would most likely have been approved a long time ago.

* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The names 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.

Do you think David Cameron should be given ‘a medal’ for immigration?

Posted on November 15, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Finnish Prime Minister Alexsander Stubb continues to surprise us. This time he proposed giving the UK, or Prime Minister David Cameron, ‘a medal’ for immigration. Taking into account how Cameron sees himself threatened by the UKIP and how he’s caved in to anti-immigration and anti-EU rhetoric, the distinction proposed by Stubb is odd to say the least.

Cameron’s anti-immigration rhetoric is nothing new.

One of the matters that becomes clear in Martin Barker’s The New Racism (1981) is that the same anti-immigration sound bites are used today. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher claimed before the 1979 general election on BBC Radio 4 that Britain was being ‘swamped’ by immigrants and alien cultures.

Remember when Cameron warned how Britain was going to be swamped by Bulgarians and Romanians that on January 1, 2014? Such claims were totally false.

Why do politicians make such irresponsible statements that victimize whole groups? Is it because they lack backbone and seek political gains at any cost? Is it because immigrants and minorities are easy targets to bully publicly?

Read full story here.

I never could understand how a country that was a colonial and imperialist power like the UK is so touchy about immigration. Since Cameron is into populist anti-immigration rhetoric, certainly we can make a case for the abuse of hundreds of millions of people under colonialism. What about its complicity in the slave trade?

Whatever happened to that Subb before the 2011 parliamentary elections, when he took a strong stand against the xenophobia, racism and ignorance gripping the debate on immigration and immigrants in Finland?

Should we give the Finnish prime minister ‘a medal’ for forgetting that intolerance and populist anti-immigration rhetoric, parroted by Cameron, have little to do with our Nordic values?

Defining white Finnish privilege #14: Losing sight of the real issue

Posted on November 13, 2014 by Migrant Tales

One of the matters that has always surprised me in Finland is that if you speak out against intolerance and racism, you are sometimes seen as the rude one, not the one making the inappropriate comment. Apart from playing down a social ill like intolerance, we too often lose sight of the real issue: the victim.

There are many factors that make us play down racism. One could be that we don’t want to rock the boat and get involved because intolerance doesn’t affect us directly. The issue is too complicated and hairy.

Take for example a recent case in Lieksa where parents don’t want their children to be taken to and from school by Somali drivers because they ‘don’t speak Finnish well enough.’

Read full story here.

The taxi owner, who hired the Somali drivers, claims that the parents’ motives are racist. The parents deny that their actions have anything to do with the drivers’ skin color or nationality.

But what about if both have some complicity in the matter and that we’re losing focus on the real problem?

‘I highly doubt that the man who hired the [Somali] drivers did so because he’s a good Samaritan,’ a Joensuu source told Migrant Tales. ‘Certainly there are racists among the parents but then again has anyone asked if the man who hired the drivers pays them less money [than white Finn driver] in order to maximize profit?’

Definition #14

While we still don’t know all the facts, white privilege appears to be written all over the most recent case in Lieksa: Parents can demand one thing and the owner of the taxis can say another. Nobody asks the Somali drivers their opinion.

Thus white privilege permits us to miss the real issue at play: suspicion, prejudice and exploitation of migrants.

It’s not always an open-and-shut matter. White privilege permits you to lose sight of the real issue because it is convenient. It allows you to forget the victim, or the taxi drivers, as is the case in Lieksa.

See also:

* 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.

Lieksa, Finland: Parents don’t want their children to be driven to school by Somali taxi drivers

Posted on November 12, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Leiksa, a far-flung town in eastern Finland, has attracted a lot of bad publicity in recent years from Perussuomalaiset (PS)* councilmen who demanded a ‘Somali-free’ meeting room to a migrant taxi driver that was assaulted recently, is once again in the news for all the wrong reasons. A group of parents from the town of 12,000 inhabitants don’t want their children to be driven to and from school by Somali taxi drivers.

The parents claim that the taxis that the children are taken to school haven’t passed the annual vehicle safety and roadworthiness test or have alcohol ignition locks required by law.

Some parents have filed complaints to the police and threatened to boycott the taxis if the drivers aren’t changed and that the cars have passed the annual vehicle safety test.

Pauli Meriläinen, the owner who hired the Somali taxi drivers, denies the accusations made against him.

‘The whole fuss started when I hired by mistake migrant taxi drivers,” he was quoted as saying on Joensuu-based Karjalainen. ‘Right after that the problems began. Parents started to made up these accusations.’

Read full story (in Finnish) here.

One of the parents told YLE Pohjois-Karjala that the parents don’t feel comfortable with the Somali drivers because they don’t speak sufficient Finnish.

‘This has nothing to do with the color of their skin or their nationality,’ the person said. ‘In the agreement it states that [Finnish] language proficiency must be sufficient but in this case it isn’t.’

The parents of the children accuse Meriläinen of using the ‘racism card’ to not resolve their two demands: change the drivers and the roadworthiness of the taxis.

‘I wonder what the union thinks if parents demand that I change the drivers?’ Meriläinen said. ‘Is that a reason to layoff [these drivers]? The [taxi] drivers [are qualified and] have driven buses in Helsinki.’

* 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.

Anonymous migrant: Known – unknown

Posted on November 12, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales’ insight: Anonymous is one of the many readers that not only visit our blog but contribute their stories and poems. I’m not at liberty to disclose her identity but can vouch for her story. We have been in touch countless of times on the phone and she has told me her six-year ordeal in Finland many, many times.

I am honored to publish her poems and insights of life in Finland. Having power over others gives you certain privileges like not questioning yourself. But being marginal opens up a different world that Anonymous’ poems bring.

One of my favorite writings by Anonymous is Against all odds human spirit cannot be crushed.

__________________

By Anonymous

KNOWN-UNKNOWN

A fate of life hanged in the balance. Nothing to ease the suffering. Devoid of any means of sustainance. Left to ponder on unknown fate rest on the assumption that nobody will be aware nor figure out her plight as she is kept under surveillance 24/7. In the event becomes an invisible victim. She exists… known but her plight unknown…

WOUND-UNWOUND

incident ripped open healing wound

past suffering sutured by mound

re-opens and gushes blood without a sound

where does it end…

but leaves a trail a around

to where the acts of revenge surround

to the heart of discord- pattern -bound

where does it end…

destroy every ounce of effort with pound

slash existing roots of hope without sound

and any progress made and found

where does it end…

induce a fall down against enemy with hound

not to be able to pick herself from ground

for it will take a miracle this time around

where does it end….

Tag: Finland

Hate crimes in 2013 are up by 13.9% in Finland but who cares?

If this is the case, what do these figures reveal to us about intolerance in Finland?

Same-sex marriage bill approved by Finnish parliament

Migrant Tales believes that the passage of the bill will be a big boost for gay rights but for our ever-growing culturally and ethnically diverse society.

Read full story here.

Same-sex marriage bill vote Friday will be a cliff hanger

Read full story here.

It’s highly probable that the historic vote Friday would not be a cliff hanger if it weren’t for the Perussuomalaiset (PS),* which are betting much of their political capital against the bill.

Finland: A nation of emigrants

Homophobic Finland? Thank the Perussuomalaiset

One of the most outspoken voices against same-sex marriage is the Perussuomalaiset party. Read full story here.

Systemic disenfranchisement of migrants and minorities in Europe

According to an opinion piece on euobserver by Thomas Huddleston, the low levels of voter participation and naturalization of Europe’s ever-growing immigrant population have become “the major disenfranchisement cause of our time.”

Table 1: Persons entitled to vote and those who voted by nationality in municipal elections during 1996-2012.

Source: Statistics Finland.

Do you think David Cameron should be given ‘a medal’ for immigration?

Read full story here.

Defining white Finnish privilege #14: Losing sight of the real issue

Read full story here.

But what about if both have some complicity in the matter and that we’re losing focus on the real problem?

Definition #14

Lieksa, Finland: Parents don’t want their children to be driven to school by Somali taxi drivers

Read full story (in Finnish) here.

The parents of the children accuse Meriläinen of using the ‘racism card’ to not resolve their two demands: change the drivers and the roadworthiness of the taxis.

Anonymous migrant: Known – unknown