Finland Archives - Page 227 of 359

Why is the Finnish foreign ministry so jumpy about Finnbay’s coverage of the crisis in the Ukraine?

Posted on April 6, 2014 by Migrant Tales

One of the most surprising stories that has circulated today in Finland is that Finnbay, a publication which has occasionally used Migrant Tales as a source, is a fake site, according to a tweet by Hannu Himanen, Finland’s ambassador to Moscow. Why is the foreign ministry so jumpy about what Finnbay publishes on the Ukraine crisis and its impact on Finland?

The answer to that question is pretty obvious. If you consider that large US media corporations like NBC are using Finnbay as a source then the matter takes a totally different dimension.

Who is Finnbay? From the few talks I’ve had over the phone in the past with the editor, it appears to be a publication that covers Finland and which is trying to become profitable. Thanks to all the publicity that Finnbay got on Sunday, that may be now possible.

Having reported on Finnish-Soviet affairs for publications like the Financial Times and others during the 1980s and early 1990s, the reaction of the foreign ministry to what Finnbay reported sends deja vu chills up my spine. Back then, the foreign ministry kept a close watch on what foreign journalists wrote about Finnish-Soviet relations.

Read full statement here.

Aleksanteri Institute head Markku Kivinen is quoted as saying on YLE in English that Finnbay maybe two things if one looks at the stories it publishes on Russia. “Either it is fishing for news and visibility or then it’s pure propaganda,” he was quoted as saying. “This kind of news is being traded globally because at this point Russian military actions are in the spotlight,”

The Aleksanteri Institute functions as a national centre of research, study and expertise pertaining to Russia and Eastern Europe.

So is Finnbay guilty of publishing propaganda as Kivinen claims? Shouldn’t large media companies like NBC know which sources are reliable and those that aren’t?

Finland was recently awarded by the World Press Freedom Index as the top country for press freedom. Does a country that respects press freedom single out and attack a publication because it disagrees with what it reports?

It would be good for all parties concerned that the foreign ministry gets to the bottom of the matter as soon as possible.

Finnish tabloid media’s dubious “achievment” is spreading intolerance

Posted on April 6, 2014 by Migrant Tales

The Finnish tabloid media has the dubious “honor” for having spread intolerance in Finland by giving populists and racists inflated respectability and importance. If we look at some of the billboards that tabloids published in the 1990s, it’s clear that they were responsible for spreading racism and prejudice in Finland.

Take for instance the most recent ad on Iltalehti’s website about Timo Soini, the right-wing populist leader of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party who is hostile to migrants and minorities. The ad asks readers to buy the weekend edition to read about Soini’s “opening up” and soft loving dad side.

Soft loving dad side? Certainly everyone loves his family. But when it comes to loving others that’s where clear lines are drawn.

Soini, who likes to portray himself as a political leader who has not helped racists and ultra-nationalists to get political power, makes it clear that he is against gay marriage and abortion. This fact speaks volumes about what kind of a hell Finland would be if he ever became prime minister.

What about if I posted the following billboards below to contrast with the one above? How do two from 1994 and 1996 contrast with what Iltalehti claims about Soini?

Tabloids may have a short memory but many in this country, especially migrants and visible minorities, remember many of the insults and outright hostility against them. Such intolerance is daily and not difficult to forget.

This billboard from 1996 by Iltalehti’s rival, Ilta-Sanomat, claims that those Somalis that got asylum in Finland in the early 1990s will remain permanently in Finland.

This billboard claims that Somalis conned authorities into giving them asylum. In 1994, Somali was absorbed in a terrible civil war that has been going on to date.

Muslim woman wasn’t admitted to the Finnish police training school because she would refuse to take off her headscarf

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Migrant Tales

A Muslim woman, 38, was not admitted to the police training school because she would not take off her headscarf during working hours, reports YLE in English. The woman was so disappointed with the rejection that she even contemplated leaving Finland.

Read full story here.

“In the [police] interviewer’s opinion it was not possible to negotiate, and I didn’t get in to the school,” said the Muslim woman. “I have always wanted to join the police and now I’ve been forced to give up on my dream. The scarf is my identity and religion; I cannot give it up during working hours.”

Conservative Christian Democrat Interior Minister Päivi Räsänen, who mixes too often religion with matters of the state, added salt to injury by claiming that the police should “represent official power, not certain religious convictions.”

Räsänen doesn’t believe that the restriction to wear a headscarf has anything to do with religion and our cultural norms.

In neighboring Sweden matters are done differently.

“Scarves, turbans and Jewish kippahs are allowed because the Swedish police want people from different backgrounds to become police,” said Carolina Ekéus of the Swedish police. “In addition, allowing headscarves was seen as an equality measure.”

The point by Ekéus is key: Do people who come from different religions and cultural backgrounds in Finland have equal rights? Is this another example of how we speak of two-way integration but it’s actually ethnocentric one-way adaption?

The headscarf case shows clearly that Finland’s police still believes that it doesn’t have to change and adjust to our ever-growing ethnic and cultural diversity.

Migrant Tales reported recently about a Sikh busman’s struggle right to wear a turban at work and there was a even a case where a Muslim woman was fired on the first day of work for wearing a headscarf.

Finland’s Constitution and non-discrimination act state clearly that a person cannot be discriminated because of his or her background. Such laws have little meaning if a public employer like the police interpret the law to suit themselves.

Moreover, it shows a total disregard for the fact that Finland is today a culturally diverse country. It is a visible thumbs down by the police to this fact.

Anti-immigration populist parties are a menace to democracy, ethnic and cultural diversity

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales has never hid its criticism of parties that base their message on populism, scapegoating minorities and nationalism. If such political parties ever got power, it’s doubtful that they’d know what to do with it except polarize our society more than before.

Anti-immigration and nationalistic parties are masters at scapegoating because they are incompetent at doing anything right. Since they usually fail at what they do, they blame others for their failures.

Blaming migrants and minorities for unemployment and the recession are classic examples. It not only reveals who they are, but the fact that they don’t have any credible and workable political program.

How can a party that victimizes minorities and polarizes society be taken seriously?

There are already some disturbing signs what these far-right and right-wing anti-immigration parties would do if they got power. In Holland we heard Geert Wilders assure supporters that he’d make it possible that there would be less Moroccans in his country.

Ukip leader Nigel Farage, whom the Perussuomalaiset (PS) of Finland consider their political soul mate, has praised Vladimir Putin’s leadership in Russia and claims that the EU is undemocratic. He blames Brussels for the crisis in Syria and the Ukraine.

“As an operator, but not as a human being,” he was quoted as saying on the Guardian, “I would say Putin [is the leader I most admire].”

An editorial by Oulu-based Kaleva asks what PS chairman Timo Soini thinks about Farage and that if it wants to be a viable political force in Finland, the PS leader must distance his party and denounce what Ukip’s statements of support for Putin.

Read full story (in Finnish) here.

Such a suggestion by one of Finland’s largest dailies shows more naivety than real understanding of what the PS is and why it is a threat and menace to our democracy and peace.

The PS bases its recent success at the polls on isolationist-nationalism, anti-EU, anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam rhetoric.

Asking such a party to denounce the Ukip, which has become the third-largest political force in the country according to recent polls, would be synonymous to committing political hara-kiri.

Waiting for the PS to “change” into something credible is nothing more than wishful thinking based on self-deceit. It’s this kind of thinking that is already costing our country dearly.

Sweden’s white paper on the abuses and rights violations against the Roma will have a positive effect on Finland

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Sweden published on March 26 a white paper on abuses and rights violations against the Roma during the last century. The white paper is significant since it is the first time that the Swedish government has published and acknowledged Sweden’s long history of discrimination against the Roma minority. Should Finland follow Sweden’s example?

If sociologist and economist Gunnar Myrdal (1898-1987) pointed out that “discrimination breeds discrimination,” contrarily positive concrete steps that challenge discrimination help undermine it. Myrdal referred to this type of knock-on effect as cumulative causation.

Read full story here.

Despite the white paper, discrimination against the Roma is still very much alive in Sweden. Migrant Tales reported last week that a Roma wearing her traditional dress was escorted out of the hotel’s breakfast room. The woman was an invited speaker at the event where the white paper was announced.

In Sweden, compulsory sterilization of the Roma took place between 1934 and 1974.

Already in the middle ages the Roma, which are the biggest ethnic minority in Europe with 6 million members, European states enacted laws that were specifically designed to marginalize and victimize them.

Writes the European Roma Information Office (ERIO): “In fact, a number of heads of state legalized the killing of Roma and anti-Gypsyism became widespread amongst the generation population across the continent. The long-held and socially ingrained prejudice

against Roma, culminated in the destructive and violent ideologies of the Nazi’s in the Third Reich…Along with numerous other

communities, the Roma were classified as Untermenschen (subhuman creatures) by the Nazi regime, and between 220,000 and 1.5 million Roma were systematically exterminated in the Holocaust.”

While the number of the Roma has been smaller in Finland than Sweden, today numbering about 10,000, greater official recognition pf the wrongs committed against the Roma in Sweden, effective anti-discrimination legislation and the role of education on cultural diversity play key roles in not only improving the lives of the Roma in this country but other minorities and migrants.

“This is a step in the right direction,” said a Roma official in Finland. “But there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.”

The new look of anti-immigration parties: Over-simplify complex social issues like cultural diversity and racism

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Observing for a number of years the language and behavior of how anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam parties operate in Europe, it’s clear that the codewords used by such parties has changed in countries like Finland. Eyeing power, the compromise that parties like the Perussuomaliset (PS) have made recently is to look more mainstream by toning down their hateful populist rhetoric.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that they have changed their views on cultural diversity and migrants, which they loathe and consider a threat to “their culture and identity,” but instead offer simplistic solutions to complex issues.

Thus it is in the simplistic solutions to matters like cultural diversity, racism, Roma panhandlers, youth unemployment, poverty and crime in general where the prejudice and racism of politician are exposed. This doesn’t only include the PS of Finland, but members of all political parties.

Over-simplistic solutions to social issues has always been a dead giveaway of those that house intolerant views. We should be worried especially today because those that house such views are appearing more mainstream.

Disagree? How many politicians from your country speak in favor of the Romany minority? Cultural diversity? Civil rights for everyone irrespective of your background?

What politicians aren’t defending is what is leading us on a slippery intolerant slope.

PS MP Maria Tolppanen, like so many of her anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam party, have become master trolls of simplistic solutions to complex social problems.

In the blog entry below, Tolppanen asks if forcing Romany panhandlers from registering with the police if a new law is passed by parliament, will turn these people into migrants and thereby be eligible to social welfare.

Read full blog entry here.

Other examples of simplistic solutions to our ever-growing cultural diversity were offered in 2011 by another PS MP, Teuvo Hakkarainen. He said that homosexuals, lesbians and Somalis should be relocated to the Åland Islands.

Another extreme example of a politician crossing the line and burning their fingers by simplifying a solution to cultural diversity is Geert Wilders of Holland, who told a crowd of supporters that he’d ensure that there would be less Moroccans in the country.

There are many examples I could cite about how anti-immigration parties like the PS over-simplify complex social matters. Why is this wrong? Because when we simplify a social issue we take our focus away from the real issues. Instead, we feed our prejudices, which in turn permits the plant of racism to bloom its poisonous fruits.

When we simplify a social issue we not only reveal our intellectual laziness and lack of resolve to challenge our own prejudices, we end up giving racism the benefit of doubt.

What Finnish school children from a small town think about racism?

Posted on March 30, 2014 by Migrant Tales

During the European Action Week Against Racism (March 15-23), I had the opportunity to visit an elementary and middle school in rural Eastern Finland. The event, which was organized by the Red Cross, asked elementary and middle school students to do a posters pointing out the good and bad things about Finland. Some did short plays demonstrating intolerance.*

Since the educational system in Finland is one of the best in the world according the Program for International Student Assessment (Pisa) results, we’re speaking of well-informed students.

Gathering from some of the posters that the students made, I’d be surprised if some of the students didn’t list prejudice as a negative factor about Finland. What do these posters reveal to us about some of the challenges we face in strengthening our Nordic values, which rest firmly on social equality and against all forms of intolerance?

Here’s some food for thought:

The posters don’t mention anywhere multiculturalism, or about our ever-growing culturally diverse society;
Insight: Cultural diversity is here and now. It’s not tomorrow or after tomorrow. What positive steps must we take in order that everyone, irrespective of his or her ethnic and cultural background, is treated with respect?
Since there are very few migrants in this town, its’s clear students see foreigners as refugees, which are a minority of Finland’s migrant population;
Insight: How do we change this image to show that migrants bring progress, hard work and new blood? Aren’t these new inhabitants going to pay taxes and some take care of our elderly?
The most revealing matter of the day happened at the cafeteria during lunchtime. The schools only foreign student was eating alone at the table.
Insight: What steps can be taken at schools to bring students together, even if they have different backgrounds?

Certainly the reason why the refugee student eats alone may be her fault as well. Even so, one of the complaints of some refugee students who attended the same school was their difficulty in making friends with Finnish classmates.

Some of the short 3-5-minute plays that the students performed showed how prejudice works. According to them, underestimating a migrant’s intelligence or language skills by speaking slowly like to a child were seen as clear cases of prejudice.

This poster lists unemployment benefits, free schools, associations like the Red Cross and refugee centers as “positive” factors about Finland, while cold winters, people with prejudices, cold winters, expensive country, unclear ingredients listings and language as negative factors.

This poster by middle school student listed free school meals, peace, free elementary school, nature, high educational level and other factors as reasons why migrants should move to Finland. Bad things were junk food and litter in the yard.

Some posters didn’t mention any negative things like this one above. According to this poster, landscape, school, health, lakes, security and food are factors why you should move to Finland.

This picture was added Monday. It is the only poster that claims racism as something negative about Finland. Other negative factors that it lists include prejudice, taxes, alcoholism. Some positive factors include brave people, beautiful nature, warm summers, health care, friendly people, free comprehensive school.

So what do Finnish school children from a small town think about racism?

Answer: It’s wrong.

Even if these children show that there is hope that we will be successful in building a society that based on respect for others, a lot of work still remains to be done.

* Even if it was the Action Week Against Racism, term racism was only mentioned once in a poster. They preferred instead to use prejudice as a synonym for the former.

MPs in Finland should not seek populistic and quick fixes to issues like poverty

Posted on March 25, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Is it a coincidence that MPs of Finland’s four largest parties aim to pass anti-begging legislation in the face of ever-growing poverty in this country as a survey by YLE showed? Aren’t the four MPs, who claim the bill has the backing of 102 lawmakers, concerned that the anti-begging motion is a copy from Norway, which came into force thanks to the anti-immigration Progress Party in government?

Mass killer Anders Breivik was temporarily a member of the Progress Party before he murdered 77 people on 22/7.

The MPs, Arto Satonen of the National Coalition Party, Social Democrat Kari Rajamäki, Center Party’s Antti Rantakangas and Reijo Tossavainen of the Perussuomalaiset party, can’t be serious. It appears they are since the Euro MP elections near on May 25 and want to show how tough they and their parties are against Europe’s most oppressed minority.

Is this the best these MPs can do? Is this how they plan to eradicate the problem of a minority like the Roma by sweeping the issue under the carpet?

The other question that this new bill brings to light is why is it so important for these lawmakers? Finland isn’t being invaded by thousands of Roma panhandlers. According to the MPs that drafted the law, an estimated 300-500 came to Finland last year from countries like Romania and Bulgaria, reports Helsingin Sanomat.

So what gives? Satonen claims that a register would permit the police to determine if the panhandlers are victims of human trafficking or organized criminals. This is an odd excuse considering that the police stated in July 2013 that these Roma beggars aren’t victims of human trafficking or linked to organized crime.

The anti-begging legislation is in my opinion racist because it singles out a single group, the Roma, as the culprits.

Read full story here.

The survey by YLE interviewed 48 welfare and religious leaders as well as charity and social workers in Helsinki, Espoo, Tampere, Vantaa Oulu and Turku. A clear majority of them, or 42, agreed that poverty has increased under the present government’s mandate.

In 2012, 18.3% of Tampere residents were low-income earners, while in Helsinki those receiving income subsidy rose to 65,000 in 2013 from 60,000 in 2010, reports YLE in English.

Matters are not expected to get better. Statistics Finland announced today that unemployment rose to 9.1% in February from 8.7% a year ago.

Even if dark clouds have gathered over the Finnish economy and there is every indication that poverty will grow instead of retreat for the time being, one matter is for certain: We shouldn’t succumb to populism and simple solutions and fixes to a social ill like poverty.

People like the Roma should be helped, not victimized.

Finland ponders whether to forbid the Summer Hymn at schools

Posted on March 25, 2014 by Migrant Tales

The Finnish suvivirsi, or Summer Hymn, may be forbidden at schools for having religious overtones, according to YLE in English. Such plans, which are under review by the national board of education, have raised stiff opposition from Finland’s most conservative and nationalistic politicians like Interior Minister Päivi Räsänen and anti-immigration Perussuomlaiset (PS) chairman, Timo Soini.

Read full story here.

Deputy Chancellor of Justice Mikko Puumalainen called on the Board of Education to see if the suvivirsi runs counter to religious freedom, equality and neutrality at Finnish schools.

In order to understand this debate, we’d have to look at it from Räsänen’s and Soini’s perspective.

Räsänen, who is a member of the Christian Democratic party and who considers homosexuality to be a sin, said that the board of education and schools should not under any circumstances forbid the suvivirsi. “…the best practices and traditions inherent in Finnish culture are weighed again in very conflictive interpretations,” she wrote on her Uusi Suomi blog.

Soini, who is a staunch Catholic that opposes abortion and gay marriage, is naturally against forbidding the singing of the suvivirsi at schools. “It a part of Finland’s spiritual landscape and cultural traditions,” he was quoted as saying on Ilta-Sanomat. “This is totally incomprehensible.”

Räsänen and Soini represent, in my opinion, a Finland that still believes that our society must not change even if our society becomes ever-culturally and ethnically diverse.

The fact that our society is more diverse today puts under scrutiny some of our traditions like the suvivirsi.

Instead of attacking minorities and migrants in this country for putting the suvivirsi under the spotlight, we should ask why schools should be secular institutions and the role of religious freedom in our society, which is not under question.

Helsinki District Court fines clothing store managers for firing Muslim woman

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Migrant Tales

The managers of Guess, a Helsinki clothing store, have been fined for firing a Muslim woman for wearing a headscarf to work, reports YLE in English. It is the first case ever decided by the Helsinki District Court, according to YLE.

Read full story here.

Reports YLE in English: “Helsinki District court has fined managers at a Helsinki clothing retailer for discriminating an employee on the basis of religion. They receive 20 day-fines for sacking a Muslim worker who was told she should not wear a headscarf.”

The new worker was fired on the first day of work.

The Guess store managers denied that their decision to fire the worker was discriminatory. They claimed that the headscarf did not fit the company’s brand.

Tag: Finland

Why is the Finnish foreign ministry so jumpy about Finnbay’s coverage of the crisis in the Ukraine?

Who is Finnbay? From the few talks I’ve had over the phone in the past with the editor, it appears to be a publication that covers Finland and which is trying to become profitable. Thanks to all the publicity that Finnbay got on Sunday, that may be now possible.

Read full statement here.

Finnish tabloid media’s dubious “achievment” is spreading intolerance

What about if I posted the following billboards below to contrast with the one above? How do two from 1994 and 1996 contrast with what Iltalehti claims about Soini?

This billboard from 1996 by Iltalehti’s rival, Ilta-Sanomat, claims that those Somalis that got asylum in Finland in the early 1990s will remain permanently in Finland.

This billboard claims that Somalis conned authorities into giving them asylum. In 1994, Somali was absorbed in a terrible civil war that has been going on to date.

Muslim woman wasn’t admitted to the Finnish police training school because she would refuse to take off her headscarf

Read full story here.

In neighboring Sweden matters are done differently.

Anti-immigration populist parties are a menace to democracy, ethnic and cultural diversity

How can a party that victimizes minorities and polarizes society be taken seriously?

Read full story (in Finnish) here.

The new look of anti-immigration parties: Over-simplify complex social issues like cultural diversity and racism

Read full blog entry here.

MPs in Finland should not seek populistic and quick fixes to issues like poverty

Is this the best these MPs can do? Is this how they plan to eradicate the problem of a minority like the Roma by sweeping the issue under the carpet?

Read full story here.

Finland ponders whether to forbid the Summer Hymn at schools

Read full story here.

In order to understand this debate, we’d have to look at it from Räsänen’s and Soini’s perspective.

Helsinki District Court fines clothing store managers for firing Muslim woman

Read full story here.

Reports YLE in English: “Helsinki District court has fined managers at a Helsinki clothing retailer for discriminating an employee on the basis of religion. They receive 20 day-fines for sacking a Muslim worker who was told she should not wear a headscarf.”